Leadership Skills for PMs – Edition 2 – Communication

Leadership skills play a significant role in being an effective project manager.  Based on poll results, this is the second in a series of articles on leadership skills that help project managers succeed. To get and maintain stakeholders’ support and be effective leaders, project managers have to communicate accurately and diligently.

• • Make communication central to the PM role. The greatest expectation placed on project managers is to communicate. Project status information, what team members need to deliver, project outcomes, and the presence of risk are some of the topics that stakeholders must understand. Communication from the project manager is the source of this understanding. Successful project managers are almost obsessive about communicating to ensure all stakeholders know the project’s status and how they can contribute to its success.
  • Provide access to details. Many project artifacts, such as status reports, are designed to be high-level summaries. That doesn’t mean details aren’t communicated. Many people advise against sharing details, as they may trigger time-consuming questions from senior managers who don’t understand the project’s intricacies. Don’t believe it. Making details available and responding to questions appropriately increases confidence in the project and the project manager. So, keep widely distributed artifacts at a high level, but include links to the details that stakeholders can review.
  • Manage communication project-wide. Effective communication management is needed to ensure that perceptions of the project are accurate and up to date. This involves coordinating who communicates with whom and ensuring that the sources of data are consistent and diligently controlled. Beyond that, experienced project managers focus on pairing the best project team members to suit key stakeholders. For example, if a stakeholder is very detail-oriented, they should be paired with a similarly detail-focused project team member. If a stakeholder has a specific business focus, such as sales or finance, the project team member designated to communicate with them should possess similar business capabilities.
  • Document everything! We’ve all made this mistake at some point: not having written documentation from a meeting, the logic for a project decision, or a stakeholder’s viewpoint. People don’t always remember the opinions they share because business circumstances can change rapidly, and their thinking follows suit. With the AI tools readily available in today’s world, capturing, editing, and sharing documentation from meetings, phone calls, and other discussions is easy and efficient.  Utilize these tools and create a filing system for project documentation that enables easy retrieval of documentation when needed. It can save time and frustration as the project progresses.
  • Be an active listener. Communication is a two-way street. Successful project managers focus on accurately receiving information with the same intensity they distribute it. Pay attention. When stakeholders talk, don’t try to multitask. Give full attention whenever people are talking. Make notes when discussions are finished so their opinions and viewpoints are not forgotten. (In a future edition, we will discuss active listening.)

 

For more about effective communication of all types, check out Communication Foundations with Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey Hughes.

 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 97,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

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