Like many others, I am an aspiring Project Manager. 
Apart from all the hard core techniques, certifications, networking and trying to motivate your team- the asset of a project manager more than often is his or her own personal soft skill set.
Ever thought about the personality type you belong to and how it can contribute towards your effort in becoming a PM?
I happened to stumble on this article which talks at length about the qualities needed.
Here are few questions taken from the article which to-be-PM’s perhaps should think over.
- What basic skills do I lack, and will they interfere with my work?
- What non-Project-Management experiences will help a person be a good Project Manager?
- What are my strongest skills, and will I exercise them daily?
- If I become a Project Manager, what style of management would I tend towards?
- What organizations will best reflect my own values and complement my personality? Where will I “fit in”?
- Why are certain parts of the job so difficult for me?
- How can I grow into the job? What training or experiences will help?
To find out about your personality and use it wisely, visit here .
(Picture:Google Images)
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Soma, thanks for posting! And thank you for your perspective in this post as an aspiring PM! I believe that building and maintaining good relationships are the most important aspects to project management in general. Once you have a grasp of the fundamentals and principles of project management, I suggest focusing more on soft skills and less on the tools.
Tools are important, but I get the impression many new PM’s focus too much there, and become PM tool-heads. My definition of a tool-head is someone who ends up with a lot of busywork and “cool” tool-centric stuff that doesn’t deliver much value or add to the success of the project.
Always remember you are not managing a tool. You are managing people in the process of creating something. A tool is just there to help achieve the goal, and every bit of effort in a tool that doesn’t get you closer to the goal is waste.
Soma and Josh,
I’d conjectuire that ALL types are needed for success. Maybe not in equal values, but all within 10% – 15% of each other. If you drew the spider diagram for these attributes, they should fairly smooth.
One over the other woudl lead the person into a speciality – cost acounting, schedule analysis, capture manager, project admin, etc.
But at the same time the people aspects are secondary to keeping the project an cost, schedule, and techcnial performance. This does not dimish in any way the inportance of people and the their care and feeding. But I have seen many times a very good people person PM that utterly fails as a project manager because they could not get the hands around the “execution” of the project.
As Collin Powell suggested at the PMI Global Congress – Leaders not Managers. Leaders have all those attributes in equal proportion, but when it comes to getting things done, the leader does just that – Lead.
Thanks for the link to my article. This topic inspired me to write one of my first original articles about project management, many years ago. Unfortunately I have seen very little written on the topic since then.
I like Glen’s comment that we need all types. There is a lot of truth in that. Today I look for people whose personalities are not too extreme in many of the classical measures. Often they are the best project managers.
Ultimately I believe that any personality can succeed as a project manager, as long as they recognize their strengths and weaknesses. Leadership is a strange skill, and there are a huge variety of leadership styles. Sometimes the most important thing is not “who you are” but “whether you understand and accept yourself.” Even more important is whether your strengths suit the challenges that are in front of you, and whether you can form alliances with people to help create a great overall team.
Thanks for citing the article and for refreshing the ideas. If anyone wants to talk further about it, I would welcome the chance to do so.
–Alex
http://www.alexsbrown.com/
I’d be reluctant to pay attention to any personality ‘test’ (what would a ‘failed’ personality be I wonder?) that had anything to do with either Jung, or his amateur followers Myers and Briggs. I think the mistake is that personality is not something that exists in isolation, but emerges in relationships. Different relationships, different personality exhibits.
hi ,I am confused to know how to be a good project manager. Should a project manager be extroverted? While I am a introverted. And I am still a beginner and find it difficult to communicate with our group. So I want to find out which kind of personalities are needed in project management and how to develop them if I lack of them.