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What does a Project Manager Need to Know about Soft Skills?

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Jinzhao Tian
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Abstract

In the face of ever-increasing globalisation, the question of how to manage project teams efficiently andsuccessfully was never likely to be settled easily. It has been shown that 92% of project team members believe that softskiils are needed in their teamwork, 60% think that soft skill impacts project management, and 83% hold the view thatsoft skill is relevant to the performance of project teams. The research aims to help overseas project managers to obtaingreater insight into the impact of soft skill on project teams and so manage them more effectively. The introduction contextpresents the general concepts of soft skills and project management. Through a wide range of cases and examples ofproject teams, the impact of those skills on project teams will be explored.
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Modern Economics & Management Forum 32 | Jinzhao Tian
What does a Project Manager Need to Know about Soft Skills?
Jinzhao Tian
The University of Manchester M13 9PL, Oxford Road, Manchester, United Kingdom
Email: tianjinzhaoricky@163.com
Abstract: In the face of ever-increasing globalisation, the question of how to manage project teams efficiently and
successfully was never likely to be settled easily. It has been shown that 92% of project team members believe that soft
skiils are needed in their teamwork, 60% think that soft skill impacts project management, and 83% hold the view that
soft skill is relevant to the performance of project teams. The research aims to help overseas project managers to obtain
greater insight into the impact of soft skill on project teams and so manage them more effectively. The introduction context
presents the general concepts of soft skills and project management. Through a wide range of cases and examples of
project teams, the impact of those skills on project teams will be explored.
Keywords: soft skills, project management, work competence
1. Introduction
The rising trend of project management academic maturation indicates that modern project managers need to acquire
a large amount of solid soft skills. This report demonstrates the meaning of ‘professional competencies’ as a high level
educated or special trained ability and one of the umbrella term’s branch , so-called soft skills as abilities to collaborate co-
workers. This essay collects the published data as well as literature from academic journals and specialist books. Although
different occupations may have different soft skills importance ranking even in an opposite way, there are still many
commonalities among the top few skills. It argues that to be a successful project manager, competence must be acquired
the knowledge of the denition of soft skills, the importance of soft skills and the development of a specic soft skill. As
such, section two focuses on the meaning of relevant terms, section three concentrates on the three aspects reasons of its
importance, and section four shows methods to develop interpersonal skills.
2. Denitions
Human resource and recruitment departments are implementing the requirements of their applicants for the company
and corporation that the candidates not only have solid academic knowledge or hard skills, but also have good soft skills
and comprehensive quality [1]. During the recruiting process, whether the hard skills or soft skills are tested. They all
contained in professional competencies.
2.1 Professional competencies
In the early 1970s, an evaluation result of competency was used as a replacement for IQ as well as an evidence of
one’s working capacity. Competency was dened as ‘an underlying characteristic of a person including motives, traits,
skills, aspects of one’s self-image or social role, or a body of knowledge which he or she uses.’ [4]. ‘Competency is
knowledge, skill, ability, or characteristic associated with high performance on a job, such as problem solving, analytical
thinking, or leadership’. [5] The researchers above may ignore the professional competencies can be trained purposefully.
Therefore, the professional competencies is a high level educated or special trained ability of addressing multiform
working issues appropriately and completing the working task with a convincing consequence.
2.2 Soft skills
As a complement of Professional competencies, soft skills are harder to dene and evaluate than hard skills. It is said
that hard skills are the ability that an individual can acquire a job, while soft skills are the ability that he or she can keep
it and promote to a high level. Rainsbury [9] found that the soft skills of a great project manager can be seen as adapting
the company’s spirit, animated, and partners, guidance, addressing work-related issues and organizing, innovation and
reliability. For the purpose of this essay, soft skills are individuals’ abilities to collaborate and get along well with each
other such as team work building and communications.
Volume 1 Issue 1|2020| 33 Modern Economics & Management Forum
3. The importance of soft skills
3.1 Why soft skills are so important
The rst reason can be seen in the job market. Soft skills can be related to how much contribution of a staff make.
Consequently, company executives prefer to encourage their candidates having more strong soft skills. [10] The modern job
market is showing that hard skills are not enough to help people to keep their jobs especially during the right-sizing and
cutting positions time in a company. The second causes are involved in the workplace. There is a research disclosed that
three quarters of long-range work success rely on soft skills, while only one quarter is attributed to hard skills. Apart from
this, there is also a study that uncovered that the proportion of hard skills contribution of a person’s achievement is 15%,
whereas that of soft skills is 85%. [10] As a result, human resources and recruitment departments are continuously searching
for candidates who are steady and tactful, they rank soft skills as priority in recruiting process. [10] Similarly, Barlow [2]
illustrated that ‘often projects fail because of a project manager’s inability to communicate effectively, work within the
organization’s culture, motivate the project the project team and make clear and knowledgeable decisions.’
3.2 Whether some soft skills are more important than others
In 1991, the education department of The United Kingdom advocated seven common skills which are considered the
most important soft skills. They are self-management and self-development, interpersonal skills, communication, problem-
solving skills, numeracy, ‘applying technology’, design and innovation. Barlow [2] According to Marcel’s study, 10 soft
skills are considered as the most important. They are uprightness, interflow, manners, obligations, interpersonal skills,
optimistic, specialists, creativity, collaboration, and job ethic. All of results are based on the study. There was more than a
half human resource manager of the questionnaire sample believed that ‘integrity’ and ‘communication’ were extremely
vital. In excess of three quarters of the volunteers (84.2%) thought that ‘courtesy’ was a really signicant ability, and the
percentage of ‘responsibility’ and that of ‘interpersonal skills’ are 71.9% and 61.4% separately also demonstrated that
these two skills are extremely crucial [10]. Due to a development from a traditional economy to a networking and ofce
economy, ‘integrity’, ‘communication’, and ‘exibility’ are emphasized more than other soft skills. From IT executives’
points of view, the ability to interow with bosses, colleagues and subordinates, leadership and the ability to cope with
‘ambiguity’ and variety are ranked top three in the list of importance of soft skills. As for project management eld, the
most important soft skills are leadership, followed by communication skills and verbal skills. To sum up, although there are
many signicant differences between different occupations, it is clear to nd that communication skills, interpersonal skills
and creativity are often ranked top.
4. Ways to develop a specic soft skill for project managers
Although hard skills have irreplaceable status in evaluating an applicant, soft skills should be stressed more in the
college curriculum so that learners get a better understanding of the importance of soft skills in advance and pave the
way for their future careers [6]. There are many limitations to teach how to develop soft skills comprehensively. Therefore,
this section is going to talk about only one specic soft skill which is interpersonal skills and it can be divided into three
aspects and all the following methods can be used in company’s training lessons [7].
Firstly, the interpersonal skills are tremendously inuenced by the amount of operating time which employees have
to interow with others. At the beginning of the project, in order to build trust and respect, managers need to dene the
scope or vision of the project and communicate this vision to subordinates [8]. This method not only helps them to get on
board with the goals of the project but also establishes a good extra avenue of impact for project managers. Otherwise,
the senior project managers may complain that they lose formal authority and prestige. When a crisis emerging during the
process, project managers need to nd approaches to encourage team members, push them, and charge them so that the
program sees success [3]. Secondly, interpersonal conversational skills are highly needed in modern conference. It is crucial
for project managers to acquire the heart of a problem and then point out a relevant and useful implement, in that much
more short-circuited meetings emerging in the rush modern life. Aiming to avoid the ineffectiveness of the meeting, project
managers have to control the balance of problem-centered and solution-centered aspects of the conversation. Importantly,
project managers need to keep both stakeholders and team members happy via negotiation and make sure both sides satisfy
and having a win-win consequence is of necessity. Hence it is appropriate to show a good manner when project managers
meet somebody who is important. [6] Therefore, this skill requires executives sharing ideas at a right time with right people
and being able to distinguish right and wrong.
Modern Economics & Management Forum 34 | Jinzhao Tian
5. Conclusions
The aim of this essay was to help project managers to know about soft skills. Therefore, this report has demonstrated
the denition of professional competences as well as soft skills. Then a wide range of published data has been compared to
provide several reasons of the importance of soft skills and achieve an agreement that communication skills, interpersonal
skills and creativity are the most important soft skills, while acknowledging that the important soft skills ranking may vary
slightly in different elds. Apart from this, the training goals of how to develop interpersonal skills are offered in the fourth
part of this report. Though this essay has shown that there are three aspects to train interpersonal skills, it would appear that
other methods are still suitable to develop it. If these methods are adopted and project managers are made aware of them,
there will be a marked improvement in project manager soft skill training.
Reference
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Impact of Project Manager's Soft Leadership Skills on Project Success
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  • 27-46
  • M H Awan
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Awan, M.H., Ahmed, K., Zulqarnain, W. Impact of Project Manager's Soft Leadership Skills on Project Success. Journal of Poverty, Investment and Development. 2015; 8: 27-46.
Successful teamwork for undergraduates and taught postgraduates working on group projects
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  • P Levin
Levin, P. Successful teamwork for undergraduates and taught postgraduates working on group projects. Maidenhead: Open University Publishing; 2005.
Soft Skills": A Phrase in Search of Meaning. School of library and information science publishing
  • Jan 2016
  • 71-88
  • L M Miriam
  • L Anderson
  • C Boyden
Miriam, L.M., Anderson, L., Boyden, C. "Soft Skills": A Phrase in Search of Meaning. School of library and information science publishing. 2016; 16(1): 71-88.