What Executives Want: Stand Out When You're Starting Out

  Career Development   PM Network  

Enter the words “project manager” into the search field on the popular professional network LinkedIn, and almost 6 million results pop up. That’s a lot of competition. How can you stand out among a dense pack of project managers?

To be sure, budgeting prowess and familiarity with Gantt charts still are necessary to oversee projects. But nowadays, organizations want other noteworthy traits in young project managers.

Here are five attention-grabbing traits a rookie project manager needs to impress executives.

1. Emotional Intelligence: Executives know project managers deal with all sorts of people, and a large part of the job involves the ability to perceive and understand the complexity of emotions.

“There are always dynamics at play in teams, and being able to deal appropriately with the emotions of team members is key to motivating the team and getting it to deliver,” says Brigitte Bilodeau Cobb, program director at BMI Healthcare, a private hospital group in Kingston upon Thames, London, England.

Emotional intelligence also ensures that project managers do “not get stressed and continue to think rationally about solutions when things do not go according to plan,” Ms. Cobb adds.

Advice: Consciously work to increase your self-awareness by examining how you react to stressful situations. Do you get overly upset…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.