PMcrunch

We heard it said many times that people skills are very important. However, we do see a great emphasis, whether it is in project management frameworks, or MBA programs, or Six Sigma, or any other approaches that there is a noticeable lack of people skill development embedded in the program.

The late Dale Carnegie stated that the vast majority of success is due to people skills, whereas only a small percentage is due to technical skills. Jack Welsh, former chairman of GE, has studied many many business schools and has observed that people skills are relatively low in emphasis on these schools, but are very high on a list of what enables someone to succeed in practice.

Indeed, most of these types of programs emphasize techniques and concepts that are excellent for doing analysis, but have limited utility in helping people day to day in working on people problems.

Let’s take a look at what people can do to continue to learn and build their arsenal of management techniques; but, at the same time, build more people skills.

Number one, volunteer in your community. When you volunteer in your community, you will automatically see yourself getting engaged with a number of people with whom you otherwise never would have met. It will be a collection of people that will enable you to interact and practice your people skills in different ways and with different pressures that you will experience in your work environment.

Number two is get involved with a professional organization of your choosing, such as a PMI chapter. This will put you in touch with others in your profession and you will, in one sense, be able to observe how they handle people issues — and you will get to practice some of this yourself. In addition, by the very nature of your involvement, you will be looked upon to some extent as a leader within that organization.

At work, don’t worry about which techniques you are using. Apply the best that you can; but, above all else, seize the moment to build strong and open personal relationships with those that you engage with.

We need to put a new emphasis - number one priority – on people skills. We need to acknowledge the fact that these are the most important, and practice what we believe.

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John Reiling, PMP
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