Take a moment to contemplate your current employment or a profession that you find intriguing.
Even if you don’t perceive yourself as a project manager, numerous job roles nowadays necessitate project management abilities.
Examine the six areas where project managers need to cultivate their skills. Which ones do you believe are essential for your job? What areas do you need to improve upon?
- Communication
- Negotiation
- Time management
- Understanding the regulatory environment
- Ethics and adherence to standards
- Continual professional development
Ponder potential steps you might consider taking to bridge these skill gaps and contribute them to the discussion group.
Comment Below
© The Open University
As an Admin and HR Project Manager, I see these six skill areas not just as checkboxes, but as the framework for how I balance organizational needs with the human element. Here is how I evaluate these skills through the lens of my specific role:
Skills I Consider Essential In my daily work, I believe these three are the pillars of my effectiveness:
Communication: I am the bridge between leadership’s strategic goals and the employees’ reality. Whether I am drafting a company-wide policy or explaining a complex change in benefits, I must ensure the message is clear, empathetic, and transparent to maintain trust.
Ethics and Adherence to Standards: In HR, I am the guardian of confidentiality and fairness. Every project I manage—from a recruitment drive to a sensitive restructuring—must be rooted in integrity. If I lose my ethical standing, I lose my ability to lead.
Understanding the Regulatory Environment: I cannot manage a project in a vacuum. I must stay hyper-aware of labor laws, data protection (like GDPR or HIPAA), and compliance standards to ensure that my projects don’t just succeed, but are legally sound.
Areas I Need to Improve Upon
While I utilize these skills, I recognize there is significant room for me to grow as a more technical project leader:
Negotiation
My Assessment: I often focus on “compromise” to keep the peace, but I need to improve my ability to negotiate for resources.
The Goal: I want to get better at advocating for higher project budgets or more dedicated time from department heads who are already stretched thin.
Time Management
My Assessment: My day is frequently hijacked by “people emergencies”—the “walk-ins” and urgent employee relations issues.
The Goal: I need to cultivate better techniques, like time-blocking or using automated PM tools, to protect my deep-work hours so that long-term project milestones don’t slip because of short-term fires.
Continual Professional Development
My Assessment: I spend so much time developing others that I often put my own growth on the back burner.
The Goal: I need to stay ahead of the curve regarding AI in HR and modern project management methodologies (like Agile) to ensure my administrative processes stay efficient and competitive.
My Personal Reflection: I’ve realized that while my “soft skills” (Communication and Ethics) are strong, my “structural skills” (Negotiation and Time Management) are what will take my career from a functional manager to a strategic leader.
I’m an up and coming fashion brand owner, I already do a lot of negotiation, from haggling with fabric and embroidery wholesalers for better prices to informing a client that their #15,000 vision doesn’t fit a #1500 budget. Ethics and adherence to standards is a must for me. My brand lives or dies by the quality of my seams, and I’m not going to jeopardize the reputation of my brand by using unsustainable materials. Time management is everything, if the time for stitching a hem is miscalculated, the whole production schedule is in disarray.
Now, my areas for improvement would be understanding the regulatory environment, communication and continual professional development. If I’m ever going to transition from sewing from home to a brand owner, I have to treat every dress like a project cycle. I’ll have to work on technical communication, research on regulatory rules, adopting project management software and using other digital tools.
As Manager in a fueling station effective communication is crucial to both staffs and customers every day, failure to communicate will affect my daily reporting as a manager. Proper negotiating is important I identify my big customers that purchase larg quantities negotiating for discounts to win them and as well making profit is a nice one but not easy. Time management, tracking daily products sales helps forecast when product will be exhausted to enable early bookings for new products before the old gets exhausted. In terms regulatory environment due to the present state of governance makes regulation so cumbersome versatile expecially in the oil and gas industries but you have to acquire all necessary documents that permits you to work. Ethics and adherence to standard, every business or industry has it standard of operations I believe it’s crucial to adhere the them. My comment is based on my current role,
As a personal shopper, many of the key project management skills are not just “nice to have”, they’re essential for running my business successfully every day. Communication is critical because we constantly interact with customers, suppliers, and staff; clear, honest communication helps build trust and avoid misunderstandings. Effective negotiation also matters when we’re talking with suppliers about prices, discounts, or credit terms, and knowing some negotiation strategies can help you secure better deals and lasting partnerships. Time management is another skill we use all the time, since running a store means balancing stock ordering, serving customers, managing records, and planning promotions; prioritising tasks and organising our days well can help us meet goals and reduce stress. At the same time, understanding the regulatory environment, such as taxes, consumer protection, labour laws, and compliance requirements (which, because we are a growing brand, we have not yet reached), will help ensure my minimart operates legally and avoids penalties, especially in Nigeria’s complex and changing business landscape. Ethical conduct and adherence to standards are equally important because customers and partners respect honesty in pricing, quality, and fair treatment, which builds reputation and loyalty. Finally, continual professional development, such as learning new sales or inventory tools, staying up to date with market trends, or joining business networks, keeps us competitive and adaptable as customer needs evolve. By improving in areas like negotiation confidence, regulatory knowledge, and ongoing learning, we’ll be better equipped to grow Omooba Minimart in a way that’s both sustainable and professional.