What Makes a Great Project Manager … Today?

This is a topic of perennial interest for us; Debbie Crawford has written articles about it; so have I … and in 2003 we published an entire book on the subject. Last year, we engaged over 300 organizations in a discussion about the elements that make up this skill set in our PM Skills Benchmark study.

But great project management is a moving target, morphing in response to technology and markets; it’s worthwhile to revisit it often. Recently, as I prepped for an interview with our new President, Dr. Zeitoun, I had the opportunity to view a video that shared his ideas on “what makes a great project manager.” You can watch the whole interview here, but the ideas I derived from it included:

A career can’t be just a fixed goal; it gives us multiple “opportunities to adjust.” Dr. Z referred to the concept of flow, a state of timeless concentration on an all-absorbing task. Those who find flow in the art (or science) of project management will know they are on the right path.

Though project management skills can be learned, obviously, there are also some personal characteristics that make one “great.” The project manager is “an aligner, an integrator, a communicator.”

The greats are global citizens. Whether they have been fortunate enough to travel the globe or not, they seek to grow in sensitivity to others and refrain from judging those who are different from them. Today we all have the opportunity to be global citizens, if only via our virtual teams, which are “just the norm now … get over it!”

“Building relationships is the key to everything.” This applies whether we are speaking of our relationships with executives (and PM-exec communication barriers are an issue identified in our skills study, as well as in this year’s PMI Pulse) or with clients or with co-workers.

“Rotate.” Project managers who apply themselves to different areas, industries, cultures … who develop the skills to work across boundaries of department, language, or expertise, are using project management in the optimum way. “Project management is like a lab, where you test ways to resolve problems.”

And what is the outlook for the great project manager? Zeitoun believes that “the power of a PM’s wide repository of experiences make them executive material.” This is something we at PM Solutions have believed for decades, and that we have seen transpire, especially in some of the PMO of the Year finalist companies. The cross-functional, portfolio-balancing superior project manager has a lot to offer. Train them up right and lock in this dynamic skillset for your organization’s succession plan.