Whether or not you hold the official title of project manager, chances are you’ll be called upon to lead some sort of project at some time. From initiating a procedural change in your department to opening a branch office in a different city, projects come in all shapes and sizes. As the complexity of your projects increases, the number of details you have to monitor also increases. However, the fundamentals of managing a project from start to finish are usually very similar.

Important skills are:

1. Communication

Did you know that 90 percent of a project manager’s time is spent communicating? It’s essential that project managers can effectively convey vision, ideas, goals, and issues—as well as produce reports and presentations, among other skills.

Communication is a broad topic, so it’s difficult to approach it from an all-encompassing angle. A good place to start is by improving your presentation skills, which translates into everything from a kickoff meeting to a pitch to clients and stakeholders.

2. Leadership

Leadership is the current buzzword in the project management industry, and with good reason: If you can lead, you can deliver. But most importantly, leadership is often what is missing in the project manager’s arsenal of highly developed technical skills. If you’re a project manager, I can guarantee you have felt the need to improve yourself as a leader at some point.

3. Team management

Besides leading a team from a strategic perspective, project managers also need to manage from an operational point of view. An effective team manager excels at administering and coordinating groups of individuals by promoting teamwork, delegating tasks, resolving conflict, setting goals, and evaluating performance. Leadership is about inspiring others to walk with you; team management makes sure your team has the right shoes.

4. Negotiation

Going back to the communication skill—a lot of this communication has to do with negotiating the use of resources, budgets, schedules, scope creep, and a variety of other compromises that are unavoidable. Knowing how to negotiate well so that all parties are satisfied is a key skill for the successful project manager.

5. Personal organization

Have you ever heard that you cannot give what you do not have? How can you get things done and organize work for other people if your own personal life and projects are disorganized and going nowhere?  Get organized personally, and you will immediately improve as a project manager.

6. Risk management

If you can predict and create solutions to issues before they arise, you increase your chances of delivering projects successfully.  Risks by definition are not urgent; as a result, many project managers fail to consider risks as seriously as they should.

• Skilled in Project management apps, such as Todoist, OneNote, OneDrive, Outlook