Soft skills training or more practical applications for future PMPs

Dana -

One would hope that there are experienced PMs already comfortable with #1 and #2 before they attain their PMP certifications. Otherwise, the CAPM might be a more appropriate choice for them...

Interpersonal skills are critical to succeeding on almost any project, so it would be hard for someone to be an effective PM without them. However, as competency in those falls on a continuum, practitioners should definitely avail themselves of opportunities to continue to develop those skills, but formal training may not be needed as much as relationship & experience-based learning.

While PMI does have online learning options, it is not focused on being an education provider. For #3, a better question might be "What gaps are there in the courses being provided by project management training providers (whether those are REPs or not)?".

Focusing more on strategic skill sets and less on rote administrative work will be critical for PMs, especially if you accept the statistic which was provided by Gartner about 80% of project administrative activities being replaced by automation over the next decade or two.

PMs also should continue to work on their soft skills and develop some competency in ancillary domains (e.g. change management, product management) depending on the industry and business domain they find themselves in.

Kiron

Dana

Kiron pretty much nailed it all, he never leaves a room for the rest of us to add when he comments first :D

Anything skills related especially interprsonal skills are acquired through practical experience, and no course can teach you that.

Knowledge combined with practical experience is the recipe for success.

If you create a course for PM beginners and go through practical examples, they might not be able to relate much between theory and practice because they didn't do it themselves.

Those are my 2 cents.

RK

Dana,

@Kiron and Rami already mention all key points , I only could add that there are already in the market many courses of soft skills, like communication, negotiations , conflict management etc..

This skills can be trained, even some experience PM's need training in this area, but it's a fact that training will never replace acquired experience.

In fact Toastmasters was created as a way to provide communication , presentation and leadership training.

Alexandre.

Dana,

regarding soft skills, I agree that practical experience is needed to get better at them.

There is a whole industry teaching and coaching them. At IBM I attended over 20 years classes for presentations, team building, negotiations, C-Suite communication and many more. In parallel, many providers have offerings to improve your emotional intelligence, self wareness, confidence, control etc. influencing skills can be learned, e.g. from interogation techniques, applying tools from David Rock, Joseph Grenny, octalysis and others who offer books, classes and coaching.

Several PMI Chapters team up with toastmasters who offer a leadership path.

The new PMP exam will include 84 questions about leadership. Most of the contents is already included in PMBoK ed6, but may need some additional reading and learning. It will be hard for a multiple choice exam to test if you are a leader, but it can test if you know and understand what it takes.

Practical application applies to all skills tested by the PMP exam to become better. You need to have some (3 years) of experience, but in my view the real win for experience comes after you have the PMP. Like a drivers licence.

Happy to help.

Thanks! I teach those soft skills (I have created/presented 8 PMI webinars ranging for negotiations to human-ness... ). So, your comments are helpful ... what strategic skills would you suggest