Chad Prinkey is CEO of Well Built Construction Consulting, a Baltimore-based firm that provides strategic consulting, facilitation services and peer-to-peer panel discussions for construction executives. The opinions are the author’s own.
I have been confused by the inadequacy of my own vocabulary, and perhaps the English language, to articulate different types of “management”.
Managing a project requires strong planning, organizational, communication and problem-solving skills. You can entrust your projects to someone with these attributes if they also have the technical aptitude for the projects, because a problem cannot be solved if they do not know how to recognize it or have solutions ready to solve it.
This is where experience and education come into play. If we want strong people to manage our projects, which for the sake of this article includes roles such as project manager, supervisor, and foreman, then planning, organization, problem solving, and communication are the attributes we need. hire and train for success.
Defined people management
On the other hand, people managers require a deeper and more specialized set of communication attributes compared to their project manager counterparts.
Chad Prinkey
Permission granted by Well Built Construction Consulting
Every strong manager must be able to express ideas clearly, listen to understand and select the appropriate mode of communication (phone vs email, for example) to suit the situation. This is Communication 101, and without these skills, a project manager will be ineffective, regardless of their qualifications on paper for the role.
401 communication is necessary for great people managers. This is rooted in emotional intelligence, which is essentially the ability to understand and work effectively with feelings. This starts with awareness of one’s feelings and the ability to master those emotions so they don’t negatively affect outcomes.
For example, a strong people manager won’t let their bad day cause them to treat their team badly. They understand the mission and can control their emotions.
Once a people manager becomes the master of his own emotions, he must learn to recognize the emotional state of others and be strategic in intentionally eliciting the ideal emotions in others.
For example, we all want our people to be happy and motivated, right? A great people manager knows how to create an emotional environment for their team that is more likely to bring out those feelings.
They will adjust their body language and tone as they choose their words and actions wisely. They understand that while they cannot control how other people feel, they can create conditions that make those feelings likely.
Born or made?
Great people managers are somewhat rare. I’ve had many discussions with people smarter than me about whether these people are born or made. This is an important thing to keep in mind, because if they are born, we just have to learn to find them and keep them.
However, if great people managers can be trained and developed, we can transform our project managers into people managers and unlock considerably faster growth.
Here’s my take: People management attributes come more naturally to some than others. Those for whom it is easy may have been born (or raised) with high emotional intelligence, while others were not.
With a deep desire to become a people manager, I have seen people who were not born with these gifts develop them to extremely high levels.
In short, you can become a manager of people, but you have to want to and be willing to change your habits, learn new skills, and adopt completely new ways of thinking. It is not easy, but it is possible with concentrated effort.
