The Five Essential Characteristics of Project Managers

Week 7– Case Study Tiantian Shi Keiser University Dr. Salas-Amaro Project Management February 23, 2013 Introduction In the case 4-1, Pureswing Golf prefers to promote voluntary and promising engineers to project managers because they are familiar with the company’s philosophy of competitive success and they can run new product projects well. However, because project managers are volunteers, the failure rate of projects is high to 40%. Pureswing Golf has realized this issue and wants to search high-performance managers in more scientific way.
This paper focus on the positive personality traits of project managers which can contribute to project success and negative personality traits of project managers which would hamper the effective management of projects. The Five Essential Characteristics of Project Managers 1, Good interpersonal and communication skills The ability of communication is always one of the most important skill for effective management. Project managers need to know how to clearly and accurately present the right information to the right people in the appropriate manner (Rosenhead, 2012).
For the external environment, project managers need to be able to explain the needs and decisions to a wide variety of stakeholders (Pinto, 2010). It is also necessary to convince stakeholders to keep focus on project benefits to get more supports. For the internal environment, project managers need to have a good interaction with team members throughout the project implementation process which include talking and listening concerns and potential problems of the project, giving the feedback and coach to team members, motiving team members keeping high-performances (Pinto, 2010).

It is good to create an openness and directness communication environment for the project team. Obviously, a bad communicator cannot be a project manager. 2, Team-Building skills Because the team member come from different department of the organization, it is hard to make them from a group strangers to a single cohesive unit. Project managers must understand this progress and relevant requirements for the transformation (Rosenhead, 2012).
In order to build a motivated team, project managers need to take time to understand each team member’s personality, strengths, and weaknesses (Barry, 2013). Meanwhile, project managers also need to have the ability to handle the conflicts. It is also necessary to provide the substance to hold team members together toward the project goals, such as to praise outstanding team members (Brown, 2012). 3, Leadership abilities Good leadership is commitment to ethical practices (Barry, 2013). Project managers create standards of ethical behavior for themselves and team members.
The team living by these standards are responsibilities of project leaders. For example, project leaders should reward team member who exemplify these practices. Leadership based on integrity and a set of values, behavior consistent with values (Brown, 2012). In other words, the project leader earns trust from to do what he/she say. Good leadership requires appropriate reaction to changes (Barry, 2013). There are a lot of uncontrolled factors could affect project implementation. Under any of situation, project managers cannot be panic.
A leader should show a positive image to the world and let everyone to see that he/she are not flustered by any sudden changes to the plan. “Being able to react in the right way and show everyone else that you are still in control is a tremendous attribute for any project manager (Rosenhead, 2012). ” 4, Ability to Delegate Tasks Project leaders need have the ability to delegate tasks to team members, especially, there is a huge amount of work that need be done in a limited time (Barry, 2013).
Trust is an essential element in the relationship of project leader and team members (Rosenhead, 2012). To delegate tasks to others is an action to prove the trust to team members. Some of project leaders do not want to risk to let somebody else to do a poor-performances job, they almost do everything. However, this is a wrong perspective. The project leader often fail who are unable to trust his/her team members (Barry, 2013). It is important to allow team members to participate project tasks.
Project managers have to delegate tasks to right people which depends on the understanding of each individuals’ level of skill or limitations (Brown, 2012). 5, Understanding and appreciation of differences As the word is becoming more global, the workplace is becoming more diverse, project leaders have to learn how to manage projects globally. Sensitively to deal project personnel who are from various ethnic, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds is critical to build an effective project team (Barry, 2013).
Conclusion The characteristics of project managers have a great influence to the success of a project. How to choose right people to lead a project is critical or the company. Basically, an effective project managers should have good interpersonal and communication skills, team-Building skills, leadership abilities, tasks distribution ability, and the understanding of multi-culture. References Pinto, K. J. (2010). Project management: Achieving competitive advantage, 2nd ed. Pearson Education Rosenhead, R. (2012).
Can the personality traits of a project manager contribute to project success? Retrieved from http://www. ronrosenhead. co. uk/4630/can-the-personality-traits-of-a-project-manager-contribute-to-project-success/ Brown, S. (2012). Factors most critical to the success of a project manage. Retrieved from http://www. brighthubpm. com/resource-management/63002-factors-most-critical-to-the-success-of-a-project-manager/ Barry, R. T. (2013). Top 10 qualities of a project manager. Retrieved from http://www. projectsmart. co. uk/top-10-qualities-project-manager. html