The Top 7 Essential Skills for Project Managers in 2022

The Top 7 Essential Skills for Project Managers 2022

If you’re starting a new project management career, or are an experienced PM looking to brush up on your skills, these seven essential skills will help you be successful in any project management role. Strong working knowledge of the following topics will ensure that you don’t leave anything out when managing your team and successfully completing your projects.

 These skills are: 

1) Time Management, 

2) Resource Management, 

3) Status Updates, 

4) Quality Control, 

5) Accountability,

 6) Communication,

7) Leadership.

Project Management

1) Setting Goals

As a project manager, one of your most important tasks is setting goals. Without goals, your project will lack purpose and direction. To set effective goals, you need to be clear about what you want to achieve and why. You also need to involve stakeholders in the goal-setting process so that they buy into the project and are committed to seeing it through.

2) Managing a Team

A project manager is responsible for managing a team of people to complete a project within a specified timeline. To be successful, a project manager must have excellent communication, organizational, and leadership skills. They must also be able to use project management software to create and track milestones, tasks, and deadlines.

  PMOs (project management offices) can help formalize processes and provide templates and best practices to follow.

3) Managing Change

As a project manager, one of your most important responsibilities is managing change. After all, projects are all about change. Change is hard, and it can be scary, but it's also essential for growth. 

Here are seven essential skills for managing change effectively 

1. Have a plan to guide the team through the change process 
2. Communicate regularly with stakeholders 
3. Offer support to employees going through changes in their personal lives 
4. Keep tabs on how projects are affected by changes to company policies or other external factors 
5. Recognize that there will always be resistance to change and that you need to manage this as well as best you can 
6. Talk openly about the problems that come with changing from the old way of doing things to something new - Focus on what will remain constant

4) Communicating Effectively

Project managers need to be able to communicate effectively in order to ensure that their projects are successful. In order to do this, they need to be able to share information clearly, listen to others, and understand what is being communicated to them. Additionally, project managers need to be able to adjust their communication style to fit the needs of their audience.

1. Problem Solving: Project managers should have the strong problem-solving ability so that they can deal with any issue that may arise during the course of a project or task. 
2. Creativity: Creative thinking is essential when it comes to brainstorming new ideas for projects or tasks that haven't been completed yet. 
3. Patience: When there's an issue on a project, it can sometimes take time before you find out what happened and how you can resolve it.

5) Time Management

If you want to be a successful project manager, you need to be good at time management. That means being able to schedule tasks, set deadlines, and track progress. But it also means being able to recognize when a project is running behind schedule and taking steps to get it back on track. Here are seven essential skills for project managers.

Time Management 

• Risk Management 

• Change Management 

• Stakeholder Management 

• Communication Management

• Procurement Management

• Team Leadership

6) Working Under Pressure

There's no doubt about it: project management can be a high-pressure job. You're constantly balancing deadlines, budget constraints, and the needs of your team. But there's also no doubt that it can be an incredibly rewarding career. If you're up for the challenge, here are seven essential skills you'll need to succeed as a project manager. 

1) Strong Communication Skills - Clear communication is one of the most important skills in project management. Not only will you have to communicate clearly with your team, but also with stakeholders and clients. In fact, successful project managers devote 50% or more of their time communicating with people who are not on their team. 

2) Logical Thinking\ Programming \ Problem Solving \ Networking \ Etc.: It might seem odd to include logical thinking in this list since it seems like common sense for anyone working in project management.

7) Delegation Skills

One of the most important skills for project managers is delegation. You need to be able to delegate tasks to team members and trust that they will be completed in a timely and efficient manner. This can be difficult for some people, but it's essential in order to successfully manage a project.