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Academic research conducted in the last few years has highlighted the fact that while project management, as a discipline, is dealing well with identifying and promoting the hard skills required to manage projects, further work is still required in order to bring project management attention to the crucial need to promote and strengthen project manager’s soft skills. A recent 2009 publication from the University of Southern Indiana suggests that project managers, unlike other managerial disciplines, are required to operate in unique organisational structures, and in those circumstances they are required to communicate with a large and diverse population, with varying and quite often conflicting needs and agendas. An earlier publication, published by the University of South Africa in 2005, focused on Software Project Management, and in that context made the observation that there apparently a positive correlation between the high rate of project failures in Software Development projects, as, unlike other project management domains, they are more heavily reliant on the implementation and proper utilisation of soft skills.

Unlike the set of tools and techniques available for project managers, which collectively make up the hard skills, soft skills are usually described as an art and in most cases are harder to learn. Also, unlike their hard skills counterparts they are not intuitive or easy to grasp without proper training, coaching or mentoring. Whereas hard skills, like constructing Gantt Charts or Work Breakdown Structures, can be self taught and independently practices, a much more involved effort is required in order to master soft skills associated with people management and communication. Given the fact that 90% of the project manager’s work requires communication of some sort, it is surprising that no greater attention is given to promoting those skills, methods, behaviours and attitudes required to ensure some improvement in the way we communicate and generally deal with other people. If we were to use risk management as a temporary guide and assume (albeit very simplistically) that 50% of all of our communication is misinterpreted, that would result in 45% of our project effort rendered ineffective (being 90% x 50% = 45%). If we were to increase our communication efficiency by just 10% to 60%, our overall project effort effectiveness would increase to 54% and so on. It is obvious then that while some of the key hard core project management activities can be ‘outsourced’ to other project management technocrats, helpers and administrators, communication is uniquely seen as the sole responsibility of the project manager and thus any marginal improvement in his/her performance on this front can generate significant dividends in the overall efficiency of his/her performance.

It is obvious, yet worth pointing out, that the area of communication with the most need of improvement is the verbal communication, where direct (i.e. face to face) or indirect (e.g. over the phone) communication takes place. With the proliferation of presentation and writing aid tools, most project managers are able to produce quality (although not necessarily accurate or effective) communication. Written communication is a skill that can and should be improved on, but as mentioned earlier, the best bang for the buck will be achieved by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of our verbal communication.

A number of techniques, based on proven psychological models, are now available to explain communication tendencies based on personality types. Two of the main ones are the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and the DISC Assessment model. The two models provide extensive elaboration on the effect that specific personality ‘ingredients’ have on the way people communicate. Both can be used to suggest ‘pre-emptive’ actions one can use in order to minimize conflict and drive communication to a successful completion.

In my next article I will discuss the applicability and ease of use of the DISC model for improving project managers’ communication skills.

In the meantime any comments on the above will be greatly welcome.

Here are other articles you might enjoy reading as well:

• Project Communication for Getting it Correct | Project Management … – In a project, communication is the single most important variable. Without it, a project can be a success but the time to overcome the pitfalls and corrective action.
• How to Create a Project Communication Plan – The next phase of a project communication plan should be setting its objectives so that during the progression of a project, all parties that have a need to know about the different aspects of the project are informed. …

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