“Behavioral, people and communication skills are just as
important and potentially harder
to learn, as we are, in some cases,
attempting to change our habits
and potentially our personalities
to work more effectively with
others,” says Ms. Osgood, now
project manager at The Nichols
Group, a management consultancy in London.
Core communication skills combined with traditional technical
prowess will be a defining characteristic of the next generation of
project managers, says Dennis
Sommer, PMP, CEO of Executive
Business Advisors, a consulting firm
in Columbus, Ohio, USA.
But they could stand some
work on the listening front. Sitting
down and holding out for the
answers is proving difficult for a
generation accustomed to moving
at digital speed.
“I get the feeling that younger
project managers assume more of
what needs to be done sometimes,”
Mr. Sommer says. “They are asking yes-and-no questions because they want to
get out of there and just get back to the
project.”
Entrenched in the convenient culture
of texting and tweeting, many young
project managers expect immediate
answers, he says, but it’s not always that
simple.
“A lot of times you have to talk
someone through a 15-minute answer,”
Mr. Sommer explains. “You have to
have the patience to listen to it, understand it, repeat it back to them: ‘Is this
what you are telling me? Do I understand it correctly?’”
THEY’RE HERE TO HELP
Sometimes it simply takes time on
the job.
John McDonagh, PMP, says the
“art” of project management was a
process he could only begin mastering
through hands-on experience.
this way up?
For young project managers looking to advance, the age-old
quandary remains: Should I stay or should I go?
Over the course of four years at Orange Business
Services in Gurgaon, India, Debojyoti Sarker, PMP, has
moved up from team member to team leader to people manager.
He argues for staying put—especially in today’s unstable
environment.
“A strong foundation is very important for future career
progression, which can only be obtained if a person remains in
the same organization for quite a while and takes up different
transversal job responsibilities,” says Mr. Sarker.
But Janella J. Funés, PMP, says the decision to stay with a
company should depend, in part, on the opportunities available
for advancement. Her work at a biotech start-up opened many
professional doors, but she decided to make the move to
another company that allowed her project management skills
to shine more fully every day.
“If your organization doesn’t have an obvious ladder, you
may have a supervisor who is not a project manager and may
not recognize how to coach you to the next level,” says Ms. Funés,
now at Abraxis BioScience in Los Angeles, California, USA.
“This makes it difficult to progress, unless you can find other
project mentors within the organization.”
“I think people coming into project
management at a younger age tend to
be very well-trained in terms of
process—how do you manage risks,
plan work and track budgets?” says Mr.
McDonagh, vice president, projects
standards and governance at Northern
Trust, Dublin, Ireland.
But emotional intelligence and people
skills “can’t be learned in a book,” he says.
Part of it comes down to knowing how to
ask questions—not only of stakeholders,
but of team members as well.
“It was a shift in terms of realizing
that as a project manager, I don’t have
to have all of the answers—I just need
to be able to help other people facilitate
a solution,” says Mr. McDonagh.
While previous generations remained
hyper-focused on the so-called hard
skills, younger project managers seem
keenly aware their responsibilities
reach far beyond scheduling and
assessing risk.
