Soft Skills for Project Managers: 12 Key Behaviours

Soft skills for project managers decide delivery success: these behaviours are undoubtedly needed by every Project Manager. Across the Project Management profession there is debate about what these skills are and how they should be measured.

Generally speaking soft skills are the skills an individual has in relation to their Emotional Intelligence Quotient, their ‘EQ’. These cover a breadth of skills including communications, interpersonal skills and how an individual builds and maintains relationships with others. In a project environment getting others to work with you towards a common goal is a foundation stone to delivering a project.

Soft Skills for Project Managers: The 12 Essentials

The 12 essential behaviours for project managers are:
* Communication and Consultation
* Conflict and Crisis Management
* Flexibility and Creativity
* Leadership
* Learning and Development
* Negotiation
* Organisational Effectiveness
* Problem Solving and Decision Making
* Professionalism and Ethics
* Trustworthiness
* Self-control
* Teamwork

The importance and priority of the competencies will be influenced by a project’s or organisation’s culture and environment, however developing and improving these behaviours will help a project manager to deliver successful projects no matter where they are being applied.

Communication and Consultation: Interacting with people about ideas, thoughts, facts, emotions, challenges, successes, etc. alongside hard facts such as project progress. Having the ability to convey complex ideas easily; clearly articulate what must be accomplished; keep the team moving toward a common goal; and to foster an environment that allows team members to communicate openly and honestly.

Conflict and Crisis Management: Listening and responding to the needs and views of all team members to anticipate any potential areas of conflict. The ability to diffuse situations where conflict has risen maintains a healthy project environment.

Flexibility and Creativity: Thinking in original and imaginative ways to widen the scope of problem solving when issues arise. Encourage project teams to find the best solution and outcomes without slavishly following generic delivery methods or solutions. Adapting a project’s different components, templates, tools, and techniques.

Leadership: Understanding the vision and direction of the project and aligning the team to work towards it. Skills include delegating, coaching, motivating and leading by example.

Learning and Development: Continual improvement of both your own skills and those of your team. Assessment of skills and capabilities, encouraging participation in learning activities and evaluating how the learning is applied in the project environment.

Negotiation: Analysis of information, decision making, establishing the desired outcome and developing a strategy for the negotiation alongside understanding the optimal outcome from several options. Gaining agreement through consensus of positions from both parties.

Organisational Effectiveness: Understanding and applying people management processes and policies. Understanding the corporate culture, the organisational dynamics, and the individuals that work within it lead to getting the best from your team.

Problem Solving and Decision-Making: Resolving issues and solving problems that are a normal part of every project.

How to Assess These Behaviours

Rate yourself from one to five on each behaviour, then ask two colleagues to score you blind. Gaps larger than two points reveal priorities. Revisit the scores each quarter and track trends across the year.

Professionalism and ethics: Demonstrated through knowledge, skills and behaviour alongside appropriate conduct and moral principles for both the organisation’s and project’s environments.

Trustworthiness: Do what you say you’re going to do. Build trust with stakeholders involved and convey they can be trusted day-to-day to do what is right at the right time to keep the project successful and the Sponsor satisfied.

Self-control: Self-control and self-management to ensure day to day stresses are addressed and a work / life balance maintained.

Teamwork: Creating a team atmosphere where the team believes that ‘we are all in this together’ is a critical component to project success.

Soft Skills for Project Managers: 30-Day Action Plan

Week one targets communication: summarise every meeting in three written lines and confirm understanding before leaving the room. Week two tackles conflict: address one minor disagreement early instead of letting it fester. Log what changed.

Week three builds negotiation and decision habits. Prepare two options for every approval request, each with cost and risk stated plainly. Sponsors decide faster when trade-offs are explicit, and faster decisions keep delivery dates intact.

Week four cements learning: book one course, request one mentor session, and teach one technique to a junior colleague. Teaching exposes gaps in your own grasp while reinforcing the material for long-term retention. Close the month by re-scoring the twelve behaviours, comparing against the baseline, and setting next month priorities.

Verdict: technical plans fail when people skills lag, so treat soft skills for project managers as a trainable system rather than talent. Small weekly reps compound into sponsor trust and repeat delivery success.

Mistakes That Undermine Delivery

Broadcasting status without listening tops the list. Managers who report progress yet never ask about blockers discover risks too late. A five-minute daily check-in beats a polished weekly slide deck every single time.

Second, avoiding hard conversations with underperformers. Delay signals acceptance, and the rest of the team adjusts effort downward over the following sprints. Early candour preserves morale. Address gaps privately within forty-eight hours, agree on one corrective action, and follow up in writing.

Third, confusing activity with outcomes. Busy backlogs impress nobody when milestones slip. Tie every standup to the nearest deliverable date and prune tasks that serve no milestone. Review the milestone list together each Monday so priorities stay visible to everyone involved. Teams that protect focus ship calmer work, meet commitments reliably, and defend their weekends.

Related: IT professional skills that win clients and SETA skills development programs. For official standards, see Project Management Institute.