The Soft Stuff (ain't so soft in a crisis)

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In my opinion, they are critically important to a project leaders capability, especially when dealing the project 'crisis'!

Yet they aren't really taught by any of the methodologies. Most PMs (certainly the ones I had the privilege to witness and learn from) learnt from the 'school of hard knocks'.

Here's a non exhaustive list of things that I think one needs to be able to do

  • Being able to deliver bad news
  • Having the difficult conversations
  • Being solution focused and making others solution focused
  • Assessing options
  • Coping with confrontational situations: be ready for a fire fight
  • Making sure people collaborate for solutions
  • Being trusted to deal with the issues
  • Credibility with the stakeholders 
  • Being seen to control and lead a situation
  • Being calm in the storm
  • Dealing with the stress
  • Understand where your interests lie
What do you think? Anything I'm missing?

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