Project Management is a valuable skill set. The skills of a project professional enable you to deliver big, complex, important changes. And organizations are prepared to pay for that. This is what makes Project Management a career option.
But not everyone wants to build
a Project Management career.
You may have developed your Project Management skills so you could deliver a specific Project. Maybe you got them as a part of your overall professional or managerial skill set.
Or, maybe you set off to build a Project Management career, and then you discovered that this is not the career for you. At this point, you may wonder:
‘How useful will these Project Management skills be, in other areas of my work?’
‘Are my Project Management skills transferable to other domains?’
The Value of Project Management Skills
We’ll examine the answers to these questions and consider:
- Are Project Management Skills Transferable?
- Ten Transferable Project Management Skills
- Is Organizing Activities Truly the Most Fundamental of All Project Management Skills?
- Once You Have Your Project Management Skills…
Okay! Let’s get started…
Are Project Management Skills Transferable?
Without a doubt, the answer is an emphatic ‘Yes’.
Not only is Project Management a core workplace skill that all professional and managerial workers will need… You can take that as read. But the component Project Management skills will all make you better at your job.
Maybe you are supervising a team in professional services, leading a shift in a factory or warehouse, or managing yourself as a creative solo entrepreneur. For all of these, and more, Project Management skills will help you be more effective, more disciplined, and more successful.
Not Knowledge Areas, Not Domains, Not Processes, Not Practices…
Before we look at the skills I have selected, I do want to clarify that I am not here referring to knowledge areas, domains, processes, practices, or even principles. Some of the labels will, inevitably, overlap. But I am not linking this to the way any of the methods or frameworks break Project Management down.
Where I Have Applied My Own Project Management Skills
In a moment, we’ll take a look at ten areas where Project Management skills can contribute to a successful career. Inevitably, the selection will be somewhat subjective. These are Project Management skills I find useful outside of Project Management. I have used them in:
- starting businesses,
- running them,
- serving clients,
- writing books,
- speaking at events and conferences.
- training project managers, and
- building a YouTube channel.
If you are wondering how deeply these skills became ingrained during my years as an active Project Manager, perhaps my writing career is relevant. I have written 14 print books of which 4 are unambiguously Project Management books. Of the other 10, all but one are based on skills I learned and developed as a Project Manager.
So, let’s take a look at these…
Ten Transferable Project Management Skills
In amongst this personal list you will find both hard and soft Project Management skills. One thing that strikes me, as I prepare the list, is this. The skills I list are neatly balanced between the two. I didn’t plan the list that way, but it does endorse my general view that a balance between these two aspects of Project Management is essential.
Self Discipline
People often ask me:
‘How can I create the habit of getting up early to start work in that super creative, hyper productive, early morning slot?’
Glancing at the clock on my Mac, I can see I have been up just over an hour. It is 6:05 am. And I have made a cup of tea, chosen my blog topic, sketched out its structure, and written as far as here.
People also ask:
‘How can I motivate myself to do something difficult, over an extended period?’
You may want to launch a business, create a book, or deliver a project.
The answer to both always includes self-discipline.
I wish there were an easy answer here, but there is not. It’s practice and determination. So, it may be simple, but I will grant you that it is not easy! But, do it often enough, and it becomes habit.
As a Project Manager, you will spend your working life looking ahead and struggling with the now. You will combat setbacks as well as bask in success. You’ll need to put on your ‘game face’ for your team and your client. And you’ll need to do all this whether you feel at 100 percent, or at 20 percent. If training to serve in the military is not for you, then becoming a Project Manager is one of the best ways in civilian life to learn the habit of discipline.
By the way… This may be one of the many reasons I have found that ex-service personnel so often make excellent Project Managers.
Personal Effectiveness
One of the essential Project Management skills is the ability to balance a range of different workloads. Examples include:
- co-ordinating your team,
- tracking progress,
- solving problems,
- engaging stakeholders, and
- managing your own admin.
Multi-tasking is a poor way to get things done. So Project Managers need to find other ways to be effective. We do.
Indeed, my best-selling book is not a Project Management book. It is How to Manage your Time, since you ask. At the heart of this book is my OATS Principle for personal time management. It is based on two things: human psychology, and Project Management principles.
Another of my best-selling books is Powerhouse. In this book, I take the essential steps of managing a project, and apply the principles to personal effectiveness.
For more on personal effectiveness, do take a look at our guide to: The Best Personal Effectiveness Books for Project Managers.
Multiple Projects
One of the biggest challenges Project Managers ask me about is how to manage multiple projects at the same time. I have answered this three times in text and video:
- Here are My 12 Secret Strategies to Manage Multiple Projects Effectively
- How to Manage Multiple Projects | Video
- Multiple Projects: How Can I Manage Five Projects at Once? | Video
Forward Thinking
As a Project Manager, you need to be thinking ahead: project planning is one of the core Project Management skills. And, if you want to be successful in business; particularly at a senior level when you’ll be making strategic decisions, this is crucial.
The ability to think ahead and make plans will be a huge asset to you. Did you notice that there are two aspects here?
- Strategy: On the strategic side, there is the ability to see what may be coming (which we’ll consider below).
- Tactics: On the more tactical side, there is the capability to set in train a series of activities that direct the future. This planning.
You may want to read our Project Planning Process: Navigate the Many Steps You Need or watch a video covering much of the same content: Project Planning Process – How to Build Effective Project Plans | Video.
Planning often goes wrong, though. So do take a look at our guide to 12 Project Planning Mistakes… and How to Fix Them.
Anticipating Events
Of all the Project Management skills, one will be most highly valued in a commercial world. This is your ability to see into the future. Share on XAnd this is what the discipline of risk management will teach you. In risk management, you learn to anticipate a range of possible events (scenarios) and plan for them. We use mitigations to minimize the impact or likelihood of unwanted events. And we use contingency plans to handle them should they occur.
Fundamentally, risk management starts with systematically anticipating what could happen in the future. And it does so without the kind of ‘optimism bias’ that gets organizations into long-term difficulties.
Risk Management Content
As you might expect, we have written a lot of articles about risk management. You can read them all in a convenient Kindle format, or one at a time for free on this site. There is a huge amount of content about risk, so here are some of my favorites, focused on the them of anticipating events:
- What is Project Risk Management? | Video
- How Project Risk Management will Make You a Better PM
- Risk Management 101: An Introduction to Project Risk Management
- Ultimate Guide to Project Risk Management
- Project Risk Management – How to Manage Project Risk | Video
- 4 Types of Project Risk – Different Forms of Uncertainty | Video
- Indispensable Guide to the Sources of Project Risk
- The Project Manager’s Guide to Simple Risk Analysis
- Risky Analysis: Pitfalls and Good Practices in Estimating Likelihood
- Risk Response Strategies: Full Roundup
- 10 Things Project Managers Need to Know about Strategic Risk Management
Analytical Thinking
Whatever career you choose, your ability to think analytically will serve you and your employer well. It will allow you to understand a complex web of influences. And, once again, Project Management offers a fabulous environment in which to learn these skills. You need to be able to monitor your project, evaluate what is going on, and prepare structured, concise, and accurate reports. This is another of the essential Project Management skills.
You also need to be able to understand status and diagnose what is wrong, when things start to slip away from your plan. This leads us to another skill that Project Managers get to practice a lot…
Problem-Solving
One humorous definition of a Project has a lot of truth to it:
‘A Project is a series of problems which when solved, lead to the creation of something new.’
So, as a Project Manager, you will find yourself solving new problems every day. And that’s as it should be. Because you are doing something new and often complicated and ambitious.
For most Project Managers, this is one of the more exciting aspects of our career choice. But it is far from the only career that throws up problems to solve. So problem-solving is another of our highly transferable Project Management skills.
- Could You Survive on Mars? Problem-Solving | Video
- Two Approaches to Solving Project Problems | Video
- Solving Problems in the Gray Areas of Projects | Video
- What is Design Thinking? Human-centered Problem-solving | Video
And, finally, to learn the systematic skills, read:
- Problem-Solving: A Systematic Approach – Feature article
Communication
All human endeavor rests on communication. In the mid-1990s, Daniel Goleman published Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence. Since then, we have understood that our abilities to manage our moods, to get on with others, and to work with and through other people, are more important to our career success than our intellect.
Problem-solving is valuable. But the ability to do it with others is more important than the ability to do it alone. And, at the heart of interacting with others, is communication. Four of my 14 books are explicitly about communication. All four build on skills I learned as a Project Manager. I also have a low-cost eBook, Emotional Intelligence: A Management Courses Introduction.
Here is a list of my favorite communication skills books for project managers:
And, you may also like these videos and articles from our archive:
- Boost Your Team’s Success with 10 Effective Communication Techniques
- How to Get Project Communications Management Right… Every Time
- How to Communicate Big Ideas with Maximum Impact | Video
- Project Communication: Stop Using Telegrams – Get Better Project Results | Video
- How to Build a Great Project Communications Plan | Video
- Challenging Communication Tips for Better Project Communication | Video
- Visual Communication for Better Project Results
Stakeholder Engagement
One of my four Project Management books is about Stakeholder Engagement (The Influence Agenda). In whatever role you find yourself, you will need to be able to hear a range of views, take them into account, and communicate your perspective.
Stakeholder engagement goes beyond consultation, informing, and influencing. It does these things in a planned and managed way. It is that deliberateness will lift you from being a good communicator to a strategic communicator.
Like risk management, stakeholder engagement is another of the essential project management skills. So, as you’d expect, we have a lot of articles about this, and a Kindle-format eBook that collates them for your convenience. Here are some of my favorites:
- What is Stakeholder Management? | Video
- Project Stakeholder Management Knowledge Area: A Guide to Stakeholder Engagement
- Do You Know the Top 20 Techniques for Stakeholder Analysis?
- What Goes into a Full Stakeholder Analysis? | Video
- How to Plan Your Stakeholder Engagement Campaign
- Stakeholder Engagement Strategies: Don’t Miss 40-plus Ways to Power up Your Project
- How to Do Stakeholder Engagement Management | Video
- Top 10 Ways to Inspire Your Stakeholders and Team | Video
- 4 Steps to Engage Difficult Stakeholders
- Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders – Conversation with Andy Kaufman | Video
- Influencing Stakeholders: Start at the Bottom | Video
- Good Customer Service: How to Keep Your Client and Stakeholders Happy
- Win Stakeholder Compliance: Use the 5 Paths to Stakeholder Persuasion
- Astonish Your Stakeholders… with a Stakeholder Listening Plan | Video
- How to Handle Stakeholder Objections
Organizing Events
If there is one part of the Project Management skill set that almost defines Project Management, it is this… ‘Imposing structure and control over events’. Organizing activities is the most fundamental of all Project Management skills. It includes:
- sequencing and scheduling tasks,
- securing and allocating resources to them, and
- sharing them out.
And it is also one of the most transferable. All of your life – not just work – demands that we can organize events to make things happen. You may be managing a marketing campaign, maintaining equipment, constructing a product, or delivering goods. The list is endless.
Is Organizing Activities Truly the Most Fundamental of All Project Management Skills?
Maybe not…
Leading People
Organizing activities is one thing. Motivating and leading people to carry them out is quite another.
Not only is it pointless to organize just the tasks if you can’t lead the people, but tasks are ‘easy’. They do what you tell them to do. It was Tom Peters who pointed out that it is the ‘soft stuff’ that is truly hard, and in my experience, he is right. Getting a grip on how to co-ordinate a thousand activities is nothing compared to motivating your team to deliver them all on time, to budget, and at the quality you want.
Some people may see Project Leadership as a separate discipline from Project Management. But it is impossible to imagine a successful Project Manager who is not also a great Project Leader.
Of all the Project Management skills, I suspect it is leadership that is the most transferable.
If this is an area where you want to learn more, we really have you covered! We have a lot of articles for you to read:
- How to Get the Best from Your Project Team with Situational Leadership
- What is Situational Leadership? | Video
- LEAD: Your Four Project Leadership Priorities
- How Coaching Skills will Make You a Better Project Leader
- The Four Essentials of Project Team Leadership
- What is Transformational Leadership? | Video
- Get Better Project Results with Personal Leadership
- Three Project Leadership Challenges for Tough Times [and what to do]
- What does Cross-Cultural Leadership Mean for Project Managers?
- Book Review: Leadership, Rudolph Giuliani
We also have those articles collated into a handy Kindle-format eBook.
And, we have a hugely popular video course:
Learn more about this course, about which Nadia Panchaud said:
I like that the course was not pretentious and that it focused on concrete situations and aspects of leadership.
Once You Have Your Project Management Skills…
When should you use them? This is the subject of an accompanying article to this one called ‘Right Time, Right Move: When Should You Embrace Project Management?’. Why not take a look?