Transcription
This video is sponsored by my other YouTube channel, Management Courses, which offers free courses through YouTube on many of the topics that project managers need to learn about, and many other topics as well. So, in this video, we're going to talk about what I think of as the top 15 topics that are not project management, but that project managers need to know.
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So, what are the most important non-project management topics that project managers need to study? The first is teams and team leadership. Management Courses already has a program, a playlist, on teams, and I'll be creating a leadership course in 2023. But I don't think it needs any explanation as to why this is so important for project managers. We get our work done through teams, and we inspire them, motivate them, support them, and guide them through our leadership.
Second is facilitation and managing meetings, and indeed participating in meetings. And again, Management Courses already has a full course on meetings with some useful information about facilitation in there as well. Although I do intend to create a new course on facilitation, but in the meantime, there is a facilitation video on this channel.
Next, if you are working with teams and if you are facilitating people, another key topic to understand is giving and receiving feedback. Management Courses already has a course on that, and all project managers need to be able to give and receive feedback. Give feedback usually to team members, receive feedback most often from your stakeholders, your sponsor, and from your client.
Fourth is the crucial topic of briefing and presenting information. Because as project managers, we need to inform our stakeholders, we need to present to our boards, we need to update people on what our project is going to do and on its status. Once again, there's already considerable content on the Management Courses site about meetings and the presentation aspects of those. But again, I intend to do a full course on presentation skills. Once again, however, there is a video on this channel about the basics of presenting complicated information in an easy-to-understand way.
Next is influencing and persuading. And this is particularly important because most project managers need to influence and they need to persuade because they have to get things done without formal authority. Therefore, if you don't have that formal authority, the only way you can get people to comply with your wishes, to support you, to help you, to work for you and for your project, is through your influence and by persuasion. Therefore, that's an important course, and Management Courses is growing that course as I speak now. It's rolling out through Quarter Two and Quarter Three of 2022.
Next is conflict management. When we're working with stakeholders, and sometimes when we're working within teams, there is the potential for conflict. And therefore, as project managers, we need to be able to de-escalate that conflict and manage the situation. And although Management Courses doesn't yet have a program on conflict management, there is a course that you can buy from the online PM Courses website.
Seventh is negotiation. And you can look at negotiation as conflict conducted through a regular, systematic process. It's conflict without the pain. Negotiation is how we get agreements made. The obvious situation, of course, is with suppliers or contractors, of course, when we want to do a deal with any stakeholders to find the right compromise or the right collaborative agreement, we use negotiation. Management Courses already has a full course on negotiating topics.
Eight and nine kind of go together. Topic eight is problem-solving, and topic nine is decision-making. And they go together because often, when we solve a problem, we come up with one or more options, and we need to make a decision as to whether to implement the option, or which option to implement. I consider problem-solving and decision-making to be two core skills of project managers because we're doing it all the time. It's what, for me, makes project management so engaging, so fun, constantly having to solve new problems and making decisions. Unfortunately, don't yet have courses at Management Courses on either problem-solving or decision-making. So, for the time being, take a look at the online PM Courses website for some big articles giving you all the information you need about structured problem-solving, about decision-making, and about implementing rapid decision-making processes.
Number 10 is everybody's favorite, financial skills. Now, I know that most project managers don't find dealing with accounting and costs and cost management to be the most appealing part of our job, but it is a necessary one. Don't yet have any courses for you, but I will put plenty of links in the description to help you hone your budgeting, business case, and cost management skills. And of course, alongside that, and straddling the divide from topic 10 to topic 11, are things like earned value analysis and discounted cash flow analysis. The kind of tools that allow us to be highly quantitative in a financial way about the case for our project, and the case of discounted cash flow analysis, and the status of our project in the case of earned value analysis.
So, as I suggested, the 11th topic is strategic skills. Understanding how your project fits into the wider business strategy, understanding how business strategies are formed, and what goes into them. This is a key part of the skill set of a senior project manager, one that you will need to learn about if you want to progress beyond delivering small, operational tier projects.
At number 12 is personal time management. Because you have a lot to do as a project manager. You have to lead the project, you have to engage with stakeholders, with sponsors, with clients, and bosses, and you have to lead the team. There's a lot to do, and you need to be able to model good personal productivity and personal time management habits. This is a topic that particularly interests me and fascinates me because if you think about it, it is at the interaction of the two things I think are most important for project managers to be skilled at: project management itself and psychology. Consequently, not only have I written a number of books on time management and made a number of courses, but of course, Management Courses has its own productivity and time management course available to you at no cost.
Personal time management is a personal effectiveness skill, and so is making a powerful, positive impact on the people around you. This includes things like charisma and gravitas. It's the ability to walk into a room and to have people mentally turn towards you. It's the ability to be listened to when you speak. For that reason, I made it one of my priorities when building the Management Courses program, and it was one of the first courses that I created.
And number 14 is motivation. And this is also a course that I developed and created early in the Management Courses program. It's one of the most popular courses on the Management Courses YouTube channel. Its playlist is widely viewed, and some of the most widely viewed videos on my YouTube channel are about motivation. And this is crucial because I do have to lead teams, which you have to motivate them, and you have to motivate your stakeholders and your users.
Motivation is such an important topic, and the roots of motivation are in my 15th and final topic that all project managers need to study, and that is psychology. We get projects done through people, and we deliver projects to benefit people. So, 80%, 90%, arguably 100% of our work is working with people, and psychology is the study of people and what makes them tick. And whilst I don't have plans for a psychology course on Management Courses because it's not a management subject, many, many, many of the courses that I am developing, and many of the courses that I have developed, lean heavily on my understanding of psychology, and they will continue to do so.
So, there you have 15 topics that every project manager should know about, should make a study of through our careers. And most of them are already available as courses on Management Courses because when I developed that YouTube channel, I knew that I wanted it to support you, my project management community.
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Please do give this video a thumbs up if you found it helpful. I'll be creating loads more great project management content for you, not all of it sponsored, in the near future. There are two videos every week, so please do subscribe to the channel and hit the notification bell so you don't miss any of them. And I look forward to seeing you in the next one.