Soft Skills for Project Managers

1. Communication
Scenario: In a project meeting with executive (CTO or maybe CEO at a small company), the C-
level executive pressures the Project Manager to commit to delivering project work faster.
Suggested idea for the role play is for the PM to defer decision until after talking with the team,
and for the C-level exec to keep pressuring the PM.

2. Influence
Scenario: A PM/PMO resource has begun working with an application development team to
adopt a strategic tool or technology (e.g. cloud / containers / source code repository / release
management, CI / CD, etc.). A kickoff meeting is held to discuss the purpose, timelines and
business benefits. The development team pushes back citing regulatory commitments, lack of
available resources and bandwidth to perform the work. (Soft skills in scope: Influencing,
emotional intelligence and listening).

3. Internal Negotiation
Scenario: You have been working for the firm for 6 months as part of a team and enjoy the
work, but you feel you’ve not been given the same opportunities others with different managers
have had. There always seem to be excuses from your manager. Others have had regular
performance reviews, action plan, projects to work on, extra responsibility and have been
forwarded for training. You have a meeting coming up with your manager and want to resolve
this. You want to persuade your manager to give you the opportunities and have a confirmed
action plan. You want monthly reviews, action plan, work on project x, and have time to shadow
others.

4. Consulting
Scenario: You are a consultant who has been tasked with building relations with a client and
finding out why their business is failing. Your objective is to identify the root cause of problems
that the business is experiencing without offending the client and bring this back to the firm to
discuss.

5. Difficult stakeholders
Scenario: You are a project manager on a software development project and after UAT you
discover there are excessive defects which would delay the production go-live by 3 months. You
have to break the news to them and explain the reasons for delay. Your objective is to manage
the stakeholders and help them realize their options (proceed with go-live but with less features,
delay production by 3 months, etc)