Comments on: Personality type for to-be Project Managers

By: selena

selena — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:13:00 +0000

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.

By: David Green

David Green — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:52:00 +0000

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.

By: Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:31:00 +0000

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/

By: Glen B. Alleman

Glen B. Alleman — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:25:00 +0000

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.

By: Josh Nankivel

Josh Nankivel — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:34:00 +0000

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.