Top 3 Qualities of a Successful Project Manager

Although there are many qualities that a good project managers should have, it has occurred to me from recent observations that there are really 3 key ones. If nothing else, a project manager needs to be:

• Organized
• Assertive (not to be confused with aggressive)
• Empathetic

They need to be organized in order to keep up with all the events and details going on during the project; including issues, schedule monitoring, communications, status reports, risk monitoring, and a whole host of other things.

They need to be assertive when dealing with resistant stakeholders, overbearing managers, and lackadaisical team members.

And they need to be empathetic to the needs of customers, stakeholders, team members and all sorts of constituents. To be overly assertive or too soft is equally ineffective, so both are needed in balance.

The rest, as they say, is details