The project manager is the core of a project, but that does not necessarily mean that you are the project’s most important player.
As with all leadership, project management is about supporting other people, that is, you help other project participants to help themselves. You must be humble in that it is only together that you can achieve your goals and complete the project.
How you, together with all the participants in the project, are to achieve your goals and sub-goals obviously needs to be clarified in a project plan. But what happens when there are changes in the plan and how do you handle the fact that you have received another request from the project client?
Whether it is a lack of, or an abundance of, resources that you and the project group need to relate to, it is undoubtedly that all new conditions must be communicated to all participants. How you choose to do this is one of your most important commitments as a project manager. Communicating vaguely can sometimes be worse than not communicating at all.
As a project manager, you also need to be able to both give and receive feedback. How you handle feedback is also an important part of communication. Feel free to twist and turn the criticism that comes, try to turn it into something positive that makes the project better, and try not to take the criticism personally. Part of the responsibility as a project manager is to be able to handle criticism, even if it is not necessarily your fault.
In this post, we dive into an infographic containing 10 Steps to a Kickass Project Kickoff. See this as a Checklist for Project Managers that can be helpful for your next project kickoff.
Infographic brought to you by Wrike IT project manager responsibilities
