3 Essential Leadership Qualities of Successful PMs
Johanna Rothman, known as the "Pragmatic Manager," offers frank advice for your challenging problems. She consults with leaders and teams to help them learn about practical and possible options. They can then decide how to adapt their product development. Her most recent book is "Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility." See www.jrothman.com for all her books.
Every so often, someone asks me what makes a successful project manager. Is it a certification? No. Although, the studying for a certification never hurts.
Is it understanding the technology? No. Although, understanding the project’s technology might help with understanding risks.
Using artificial intelligence? While I use AI primarily for insights into past projects and to assess the value of my Monte Carlo predictions, AI use does not make a successful project or program manager.
Instead, successful project or program managers reinforce their facilitative and human leadership skills:
- Supporting the team as they create visual status of their progress.
- Encouraging bad news from the people who know the real state of their work.
- Maintaining a sense of humor as the risks or problems arise.
While PMs need to use these qualities on behalf of their projects and programs, these qualities are even more vital when the project or program managers supports their management.
1. Create a Visual Status for Progress
Amy, an experienced agile project manager, sighed as she read the email from her VP. Tom was an old-school project manager who had ascended the corporate ladder. He believed in Gantt charts, PERT charts, and percentage done. And he wanted them—now!
While Amy was familiar with all of those ideas, she knew from experience that all those …
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
|
"I know the meaning of life - it doesn't help me a bit." - Howard Devoto |
