Shelby Cortez

April 4, 2019
OGL 320
Project Manager Skills Essay

Project managers use many different tactics in order to have their projects be
successful. Some of these tactics include planning, communication, and bouncing back from a
difficult situation. There are many different approaches to these tactics, and some of them
include recognizing the different mindset that you are in such as a fixed mindset or a growth
mindset. Another approach is having a good grasp on your emotional intelligence, and finally,
being able to use critical thinking in all that we do. My personal favorite is planning, which is
such a crucial component of project management, and it is also where I will begin.

A project manager uses planning in almost everything that they do. Typically, when a
person thinks of planning, they envision making a list of some tasks that need to be completed
and begin writing their list. This style of planning is not sufficient for a project manager,
however. A project manager needs quite a bit more details in their plans, which is why critical
thinking is required here. “Critical thinking is a cognitive activity, associated with using the
mind. Learning to think in critically analytical and evaluative ways means using mental
processes such as attention, categorisation, selection, and judgement” (Cottrell, 2011). When a
project manager critically thinks about planning, they are taking everything into account that will
affect their projects, including biases and contingencies. I am actively working on my project
plan, and as I use critical thinking in my planning, I have to take into account my contingencies
involving not only myself, but my husband and daughter as well. Everything that they both do,
indirectly affects my project in some way or another, and I have to plan for these contingencies’
week after week. I have to have a planned start and end date for my tasks and subtasks, but then I
also need to have backup dates for these as well, as things are likely to come up that will change
them. If I don’t account for these contingencies early on, then I won’t be efficient with my
project, and I won’t be as successful as I would like to be. In other words, I have to take into
account the things that I know that I can plan for, and the things that may or may not happen, in
order to stay on track with my project. Planning is vital to all project managers, and effective
planning on my project plan has led me to where I am now, which is on the way to success.

When I think of things that are important in project management, one of the top tasks is
communication. The reason that communication is so vital in project management is because
things will come up, or there will be times where you’re unsure of something, and you will have
to reach out and communicate to either the client, or to a team member. Whenever there is a time
where you are communicating with other people, it is important to have a high emotional
intelligence, which involves empathy, self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, and social
skills. Regardless if you’re communicating with a client, or communicating with a coworker, it is
still important to have some level of emotional intelligence so that you know how to properly
communicate to be effective. In the example of my project plan, I had to reach out my client,
which is Dr. Chandler. I got feedback on my project that was a little hard for me to accept, but I
had to have self-awareness of the fact that I am the one that created my project, and I have to
own that. From there, I was able to go on to have a successful follow-up call with my client
regarding the plan for my project, and I was able to walk away from it more knowledgeable than
I was coming into the call. I’ll go into the details of the outcome in the next chapter, but the
importance here is that I needed to have some level of emotional intelligence in order to come in
open-minded with my client, so that my project could be successful. Emotional intelligence and
communication go hand-in-hand in all areas of life, but this is especially true in project
management.

Everybody messes up at times, and sometimes it can be very challenging to get back on
track. My motto has always been to take a minute to regroup and then ask myself, “OK, now
what?”. This mindset has gotten me through many challenging times in my life, and it hasn’t
failed me yet. In regard to my project plan that I am currently creating, I mentioned earlier that I
had to reach out to Dr. Chandler after receiving some feedback that I was less than thrilled about.
When I initially got the feedback, I was frustrated and I was definitely exhibiting the eccentric
bias, which wasn’t helping my cause. I didn’t want to reach out for a follow-up call because I
just figured I would do whatever she wanted and get through the course. This was not the
appropriate action to take because I ended up wasting hours of time creating the wrong thing,
and it was all because I was upset and didn’t want to reach out. I entered into the course with
another bias, which was the hot hand fallacy, meaning that I thought that this course would be
easy because my other courses had been easy thus far. Boy was I wrong. This fixed mindset that
I had coming into the course was setting me up for failure. I learned a big lesson by learning
about biases, and what they are and what they mean. I had to learn that I entered this course with
more biases than I realized, and I needed to begin to have a growth mindset moving forward. It
was at this moment that I reached out to schedule a follow-up call with my client, to see exactly
what I was doing wrong so that I could correct it. It took a while, but I eventually figured out my
errors and realized that I was the only person holding myself back. This was a big lesson for me
about having fixed mindsets and changing to have growth mindsets. I am happy to report that I
am well on my way to correcting all of my mistakes and moving in the direction of having a
successful project again.

In conclusion, project management has many components to it that are important for the
success of the project. Critical thinking fixed and growth mindsets, and emotional intelligence all
play a vital role in project management. I entered in my project plan with a fixed mindset but
learned that I need to have a growth mindset in order to be successful at my project. In addition, I
have to utilize critical thinking skills in order to get to the root of what my project plan is going
to be, and then I had to use my emotional intelligence to have a call with my client regarding the
mistakes that I made on my project plan. None of these steps could have been accomplished
without the planning that I do on my project on a daily basis. Fortunately, I plan for
contingencies, so I allot myself enough time to still be successful on my project, even when
revisions and extra communication is required. I will continue to stumble in projects, and in life,
but it’s important to recognize the biases that I have early on, so that I can do my best to remove
them from my mindset, so that I can move forward and be successful. Project managers have the
difficult role of seeing a project from start to finish, and handling all of the components that
come along with that. From planning, to communicating, to picking yourself back up when the
project has knocked you down, these are all necessities of every project manager.
References:

Cottrell, Stella. (2011). Critical Thinking Palgrave. Retrieved from

https://asu.instructure.com/courses/16197/files/2803918?module_item_id=843691