Basic PM Skill - is communication enough?

Good day,

Communication. This is the topic that will never be adequately discussed when we talk about project management. I'm sure that you are aware that communication is the most important skill a project manager must have. According to the theory, a project manager spends 90% of her time communicating.

When I deliver a project management training, I always use below sample. Suppose that you are leading a three months project. Entering the second month, you are made aware that your project will run late by two-weeks due to external factor. As a project manager, will you communicate this immediately? Will the project be perceived to be late right away? My answer is, should you communicate this immediately to your sponsors and all relevant stakeholders, in most cases, they will accept the reason and agree for schedule re-baseline. Nevertheless, should you choose to wait and communicate only two weeks before the target date, it is almost definite that your project will be considered late.

What is the lesson learnt here? Yes, communication is very important. The timing, the message, the audience, the media, how you deliver (verbal and non-verbal), play very instrumental role on how other people accept the message.

In today's discussion, I would like to cover beyond delivering a message. What about negotiation, influencing others, obtaining consensus, building motivation, etc? Again, the basic of all of those is communication. You need to master communication skill in order to master the other skills I mentioned before. Remember, you need to take into consideration the audience, timing, content, media, and non-verbal messages (your body language, tone, intonation, etc).

Depending on the situation you might need to adjust your tone, emphasis a certain part of the message, and so on. Also, bear in mind that negotiation and influencing are not to achieve a win-loose situation, whereby you win the discussion and leave the other party suffer. This will not be sustainable should you like to have a longer relationship with your counterparty.

Anyway, I know that there are a lot of good books on this topic. For me particularly, I always like the books authored by Stephen Covey (both the father and the son), John C. Maxwell and Jack Welch. I'm sure that you will be enriched once you read one of those books.

Edwin