Shifting Competencies in Project Mangers
The field of project management is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the modern workplace. Tools, techniques, and competencies that were prioritized when hiring or leading a project have shifted, especially in the past 20 years. When studying the shift in competencies that work best for managers, the rise of information technology has been a key factor in the change. As we’ve seen a rise in communication technologies, including project management software solutions, workers have access to many tools and techniques that used to be reserved only for project managers. While project managers are still vital to a project’s success, should they now emphasize soft skills, or “the human side” of project management, over more technical competencies?
A study by Nika Gruden and Aljaž Stare, published in the Project Management Journal, reviewed 15 behavioral competencies and their subdimensions (Table 1) to determine “Do behavioral competencies importantly influence efficient project performance, and what is their actual impact?” To answer this question, they looked at the impact of on-time delivery, costs, and hours worked.
1. Which behavioral competencies were the most important?
When reviewing behavioral competencies and their impact on delays in project realization, the shortening of projects is reliably influenced by a manager’s level of assertiveness. Of the competencies studied, a third positively impacted delivery time. A project manager with the right soft skills can help reduce project delay by up to 30%.
Excess in work hours is also reliably reduced by a third of the competencies. The most important competency appeared to be consultation between the manager and team members. Other contributing competencies include engagement and motivation, assertiveness, relaxation, and efficiency.
However, if we are to measure project success by cost, three behavioral competencies can cause cost increase on project realization. The correlation in relaxation is the only competency that can be claimed with certainty that it reduces project costs. Though significantly less than delivery and work hours, soft skills do have some influence on planned costs but with much less reliability.
2. Do managers consider as important those behavioral competencies proven to be most important for project performance?
When managers were asked to name the top five most important, leadership was identified as the most important. This may seem intuitive, but by reviewing the data that was collected when answering the first question, this may not be the case.
The most important attribute for project realization was assertiveness with leadership ranking 5th. Cost management values relaxation while leadership appears to not influence costs at all. Finally, consultation was most critical to make sure work hours were reduced with leadership having a negative impact, potentially increasing work hours.
This does not mean that leadership skills are not important though. In additional reviews, it was found that there was a strong correlation between leadership and other behavioral competencies. It is also important to note that one of the reasons answers may vary during surveys is the different perceptions of leadership and how it is defined.
† The Pearson correlation, also known as the correlation coefficient, measures the linear correlation between two sets of data having a value between -1 and 1. The closer to 1 the number is, the stronger the positive correlation. The closer a number is to -1, the stronger the negative correlation.
3. Are project managers aware of the importance of behavioral competencies and do they wish to improve them?
To evaluate what project managers thought about different behavioral competencies, respondents were asked to rate their level of competency on the skills (evaluation level) as well as their perceived level of importance on a scale of 1 – 5, with the assumption the score of 3 or above showed awareness of importance in competency. The study then assumes that 1 point higher in importance than the evaluation level would indicate the project managers interest in improving their skillset. Overall, nearly none of the competencies were considered a 3 or above in evaluation and even lower on importance. Therefore, based off this sample set, we can claim that project managers are not aware of the importance of soft skills, do not intend to improve their competencies, and are more focused on technical solutions.
Though this study is in no way comprehensive of all project managers in a myriad of fields, it certainly provides an alternative perspective on how we view project management skills. A shift in perception when hiring a new project manager or starting a new project may be the push that your company needs to be more successful.
Source: Gruden, Nika, and Aljaž Stare. “The Influence of Behavioral Competencies on Project Performance.” Project Management Journal, vol. 49, no. 3, 2018, pp. 98–109., https://doi.org/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/8756972818770841#.
