Communication in Project Management

Steve Neiderhauser posted some excellent commentary in a blog post titled “Persuasion Equation“.  In the post, Steve mentions a class he attended that helped with communication skills.  In the blog post he writes:

In the class I learned language patterns and that people have different thinking modalities: Auditory, Visual, Kinesthetic, Gustatory, Olfactory. The training leans toward the sales side, but the information can also be used by managers or change agents.

Fact is, the Project Management Institute tells us that management is 90% communication. And yet, the only thing I remember from my PMI training is that there’s a sender, a receiver, a message. I’m sure there’s more. Perhaps I dozed off during one of the key 44 processes.

Steve makes a great point. I’ve said for a long time that Project Management should focus more on leadership and communication skills over process.  That said, process and standards are important…but without the proper leadership and communication capabilities, a project will fail. We need to get Project Managers to spend more of their time leading projects and less time working through the 44 processes.

Now…I’ve got to go find out what “Gustatory” means 🙂