Project managers consider experience to be the best teacher. After all, a lesson well learnt prevents you from committing the same mistakes twice. And there’s no better domain than project management to prove this right.
From surveying team efforts and winning buy-in from stakeholders to prioritizing and scheduling tasks, no two days are alike in a project manager’s work week. This qualifies them to deeply empathize with the pressure their worldwide counterparts undergo from time to time.
Given that the role itself influences both your career future and project outcomes, it’s no surprise why you’d want to become a project manager yourself. With challenges differing from industry to industry, there’s not a project manager out there who hasn’t thought about what the future holds for him/her and the project teams as a whole. As teams are abuzz with project-centric activity, it’s down to you to ensure that they play to their strengths.
The surest way to do so is to introspect your leadership style which is responsible for fair and transparent governance. While fortune-telling via palmistry won’t give you all the answers, there lies a connection between those lines etched on your palm and subtle nuances of your personality.
The dominant hand tells you what you evolve into while the passive hand gives insight into what you were born with. Using these you can recognize the kind of project manager you’d make and in turn hone your abilities as a strategist.
Read on to discover both your personality type and flair for project management!
3 Project Management Personalities And Their Hidden Meaning
There’s no denying that the right type of leadership electrifies the project environment. Not only does it inspire stellar performances from your most prized asset; i.e. the resource pool but also lets your projects pick up momentum after it commences.
Here are the typical personality types abounding in the project management space, irrespective of the number of years you’ve been at this game!
1. The Perfectionist
Perfectionists are hailed as ultimate problem-solvers due to their ability to rid project imperfections on the spot. It is also similar to a Type A personality. Being one means that you’re both enterprising and driven.
Here are the telltale signs if you’re the type to strive for perfection:
Having a Keen eye for Detail: You leave no stone unturned when analyzing previous project documentation. Subjecting projects to intense scrutiny lets you determine similarities and differences, more so if the type of projects tends to repeat.
You can then recheck the root cause behind ongoing projects going amiss. This involves looking at skill matches and efforts invested which consequently lets you rope in the best minds ahead of time.
Redoubling Your Efforts: You continually monitor your own efforts and input, adjusting commitment levels based on the urgency of pending tasks. You’re inclined to involve yourself closely on several tasks to diffuse any conflicts, often leading to extra work for yourself.
Order, Order: Every place has a thing and everything has its place for the perfectionist. Your organizational skills let you remain notified of task reassignments to ensure that actions aren’t repeated by different members of the project team.
Following this, you’d be busy informing qualified personnel and signing off on their schedules such that everyone is optimally occupied.
This style of leadership ensures time gaps if any, are instantly identified and allocated work so as to not have tasks piling up atop one another in later phases.
Your Palmistry Predictions: A lifeline is the longest and closest line to the thumb. If your dominant hand contains one with several breaks in it, you’re a textbook workaholic primed to give your all to multiple projects! While sincerity and passion are admirable traits, it’s worth remembering that pushing yourself too hard can cause a burnout sooner or later.
What’s more, you end up riding your resources on high expectations which leads to your teams feeling the brunt of overwork. So before signing off on those project deliverables…slow down!
When you get unconditional visibility into current and future workloads, you not only know how potential can be tapped into later but will also appreciate your team’s’ effort better.
Plus, you’ll be able to repurpose tasks and delegate them to other staff such that your own workload is considerably lightened!
2. The Balance-Beam
As a well-balanced project manager, you’re the type to recognize that rightful delegations lead to increased efficiency, while also taking care of your career trajectory. Rather than covering every aspect of projects with a fine-toothed comb yourself, you appoint qualified staff and reserve your energies for the most important tasks.
These are the signs that your class act is on the balance beam:
The Prioritization Master: You use your experiential judgment to separate mission-critical tasks from the rest. This lets you allocate niche skills to high-profile projects such that they have the right knowledge upgrades at all times no matter how experienced your staff is.
The SWOT Analyzer: Your risk register captures your firm’s risk appetite, allowing you to collate feasible projects based on your team’s ability to fulfill project delivery.
Your Palmistry Predictions: If you have a short and barely discernible lifeline, you believe in creating a balance between your personal and professional commitments. Allocating your teams optimal workloads enables them to maintain healthy utilization rates all year long.
Not to mention a drastic reduction in the dreaded bench-time clunk! No one knows better than you that a project with optimal doses of productivity not only fulfills your clients’ expectations but also adheres to the triple constraint of time, scope and budget.
3. The Sanguine Savior
You’re the project manager who knows when to step in and resolve conflicts. Every problem has a solution, thanks to the powerhouse of knowledge and formidable negotiation skills this personality type possesses.
Armed with advisory prowess, here are the signs telling you you’re a member of the project saviour club:
High Confidence: You know how to minimize decision trade-offs by winning unanimous consensus from your stakeholders, clients and project teams. You make use of facts, figures and supporting statements to soothe valid concerns brought up during project bids.
Decisive: You recognize the importance of having a Plan B to mitigate risks that occur despite your best efforts to prevent them. Consequently, you can rely on project management trends and measure the benchmarks based on whether the revenue generated greatly exceeds personal investments.
Skills Distribution: You motivate your staff to support each other by diversifying their secondary skills. Not only does this move enable your teams to collaborate without overriding important decisions but also lets them decide the course of their professional development as more high-end projects fall down the chute.
Your Palmistry Predictions: If either or both of your palms have a parallel line to your existing lifeline, you’re blessed with ample confidence! While the line appearing on the same side points to support from internal sources such as family, a line on the opposite side points to you having a wide circle of support externally.
Confidence while hard to acquire but easier to sustain, can cause you to overlook important information from ideas that come from different sources. It’s worth remembering that all roads lead to Rome!
Simply put, remember to factor in the feedback your teams, senior management and clients put in at each stage of the project progress so that you have a constant reminder of the big picture.
As you look down at your hands, do the lines seem to have a life of their own? That’s why they’re called lifelines! Now that you’ve glimpsed different personality traits, you’ll truly sit at the epicentre of project management, from getting to know your teams better to making informed decisions that wholly align with your enterprise’s objectives.
Did this article help you unearth your true project manager? Then tell us what personality type best describes you!
