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Communication Skills
You may not see too many direct questions on this on the PMP exam, but you will definitely have to use this in your project management career. Communication is the exchange of information, whether intended or involuntary. Sometimes we’re communicating something and we’re actually not aware that we’re communicating it. It might not be verbal, it might just be body language or that sort of thing. The information is exchanged and it can be in the form of ideas, instructions or even emotions. 80% of a project managers time is spent communicating in some form or another, trying to get support for your project, trying to elicit ideas or gathering the requirements, checking how everything is going, meeting with the team members.
Factors that Affect Communication
There is so much going on in a project that we really need to be really good at communicating. Here are the skills and the techniques that we might use as we go along through our project. First of all, factors that can affect the choice of communication might include the urgency or the need for the information – so do we need to meet straight away, or can it just be an email? Can it be an SMS or can it be a slack message? This will change during the different phases of a project as well. The availability and reliability of technology – is email actually reliable, or should we send a letter? Can we pick up the phone, or can we use other forms of technology?
The ease of use for that particular technology – what’s going to be easiest for everyone to get the message in your project, not just one person but everyone that you need. It a SharePoint page, or is it a Confluence page, or is it a web page or is it a teleconference communication method. What’s the easiest way for everyone to get the message?
And of course the project environment – whether the team will meet and operate on a face-to-face basis or in a virtual environment, whether they’ll be located in one place, or multiple time zones with multiple languages.
And whether there are any other project environmental factors involved, so the sensitivity and confidentiality of the information – can we actually shout it from the rooftops, or should we have to meet and discuss it in private. This might also involve the social media policies for employees to ensure appropriate behavior so that we’re not telling the project details on social media, when it’s a secret project or something that we don’t want everyone to know about, it might be proprietary information.
Types of Communication Skills You Can Use
Communication skills include communication competence in general – this is a combination of tailored communication skills and it involves things like clarity of purpose, effective relationships with the people that you’re sharing the message with, and leadership behaviors. Really starting with “why”, or why are we doing things, making sure everyone is really clear and getting the message across.
Feedback is also one of the skills that we need. Feedback is information about the reactions to those communications, so how did they receive it? Was it received well, or received badly? Sometimes we need to ask for that feedback and we need to take it on board, even when it’s bad. That’s part of being a project manager. Feedback supports interactive communication between the project managers, the team and all other stakeholders.
Other communication skills you’ll see are nonverbal communication skills. Appropriate body language to transmit meaning through gestures. If we’re all closed up but we’re trying to get people pumped up for a particular project, maybe that’s not going to work. Our tone of voice needs to be appropriate, our facial expressions need to be appropriate, mirroring the people that we’re talking to and eye contact are also important techniques in communication skills.
You’ll definitely find yourself presenting during your project management career or the projects that you’re working on at the moment. Presenting as a formal delivery of information and/or documentation such as progress reports, background information for decision-making for the stakeholders in your project, and information aimed at increasing the support for your project with all of the stakeholders as well.
Taking the audience type into consideration. Is it a group of executives, do you need to be more formal under those scenarios? Or is it your a few people that you’re delivering the project to? You need to be considerate that it might be affecting them and take that into consideration when you’re communicating.
Lastly, there are communication artifacts and methods that are really useful as you go along on your project. You’ve got noticeboards, and that could be your virtual notice board or a physical notice board, newsletters, staff letters, press releases, annual reports, emails and intranets. Accompanying web portals – can we display the information that we need in that particular place? We might have phone conversations, presentations, team briefings and group meetings, focus groups, face to face formal or informal meetings between various stakeholders, consultation groups or staff forums and social computing like slack for example, technology and media.
And those are the communication skills that you will come across in your project management career.
– David McLachlan