The truth of the matter that recently there have been some discussions in blog-land regarding the question of whether or not Project Management is a form of art or is it plain simple common sense. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle as Project Management is a bit of both. You are right regarding the need to adapt the communication style to the personality of the recipient. One of my favorite techniques is DISC (see my DISC post). It is a relatively easy to grasp and implement technique that unlike the MBTI approach does not require much training in figuring it out.

Feel free to come back and comment again in the future.

Cheers,

Shim.

I would like to suggest that one of the more intuitive skills of the successful PM is being able to adjust their approach to different stakeholders in order to set up the appropriate incentive for each category or type of stakeholder. E.G. the “I warned you that that would not work here” stakeholder may be handled totally differently to the “I’m too busy in my real job to help you” stakeholder. Each of these specimens can be managed very differently in order to get alignment and ownership from the get go, thus avoiding the 11th hour Where is my xxx, you guys are crap… comments against the project team.

Keep the article coming, your experience really comes through in them.

Cheers,
Andy Knorr.