Adapting Your PM & Leadership Style to the Project Economy

PMI Kenya Chapter

Stephanie is the Principal Project Manager at Redtie Consultants in Nairobi.

When I started my career as an accidental project manager in the IT world (which I knew nothing about), I was very thankful when I quickly realized that I didn’t need to be the technical subject matter expert in my projects. This helped me tremendously to get started in my career, and when I did my PMP training, I learned the technical PM skills.

In today’s project management world, however, a lot of these skills are being taken over (at least partially) by software and artificial intelligence. When, for example, did you last create a WBS with a pencil and a ruler on a piece of paper?

In this day and age as projects become more complex (and are often hybrid), project teams are becoming more multi-disciplinary and often have virtual team members. This requires the project manager to use ever higher levels of people and leadership skills.

As project managers, we need to keep upscaling these skills quickly and continuously. Becoming complacent—thinking we have the skills we need—would be our downfall. Each generation of young project managers also needs different approaches and guidance to fit in with the existing project teams. Hence, our people skills are slowly becoming our best asset.

PMI has long since realized that and adapted by introducing the PMI Talent Triangle®. We need to consciously work on these skills to prepare for the future…

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“If you work on a lobster boat, sneaking up behind people and pinching them is probably a joke that gets old real fast.”

– Jack Handey

Published at Wed, 04 Mar 2020 05:00:00 +0000