Power Skills Resource Hub
Pulse of the Profession® 2023:
Power Skills, Redefining Project Success
What are power skills?
Power skills are abilities and behaviors that facilitate working with others. These abilities enable project professionals to succeed in the workplace. They are also referred to as “soft skills” or “interpersonal skills” by some individuals and organizations.
About the Report
Power skills are being recognized by teams and organizations as critical for the workplace. They are at the heart of leading successful teams, engaging stakeholders and conquering challenges to the project plan. Read this report to learn:
- Which power skills are most critical to project success.
- Why project leaders should understand the value of power skills.
- How organizations develop power skills on teams.
- Where organizations struggle with assessing power skills.
Driving Project Value with Power Skills
Featured Content
Redefining Project Success:
Key Takeaways
Power skills play a leading role in project success, benefits realization and team agility. Organizations must prioritize these skills through their hiring, training and assessment efforts.
Top Four Power Skills Every Project Professional Needs
Project leaders and professionals surveyed in the Annual PMI Global Survey on Project Management agree that these power skills are critical for project success.
Power Up Your Power Skills Self-Assessment
Use this template to assess your daily habits in four of the most important power skills: collaborative leadership, communication, problem-solving and strategic thinking.
When I first started my career, I wanted to understand how to deliver a project on time, within scope and on budget. The more that I learned about project management and the more I developed my skills, the more I realized that the impact you can have when you combine both those technical and business skills with power skills is much broader.
Karen Dove
PMIEF Board of Directors
Ottawa, Canada
The important thing is people skills: engagement, seeing the bigger picture, understanding strategy and aligning with all of that. They are the things that really matter.
Paul Jones
Europe P&PM Community Lead, Fujitsu
London, United Kingdom
Frequently Asked Questions
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According to the Pulse of the Profession® 2023 report, collaborative leadership, communication, problem-solving and strategic thinking are the four highest-ranked power skills. This is the case regardless of region, industry, years of experience, project management leadership level or Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification status.
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Organizations that prioritize power skills tend to perform better on multiple key drivers of success such as benefits realization management (BRM) maturity, organizational agility and project management maturity.
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Power skills is one of the three skill categories of the PMI Talent Triangle. We encourage professionals to develop power skills so they can maintain influence with a variety of stakeholders — a critical component for making change happen. Mastering these various skills helps to differentiate stakeholders and empower them to become influential at any organizational level.
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Additional power skills project professionals should hone include relationship building, adaptability, innovative mindset, accountability, empathy, discipline, for-purpose orientation, future-focused orientation and leadership.
Level up your performance. Learn about Power Skills, Redefining Project Success.
Explore More Power Skills Content
Mastering Collaboration Within a Team
Collaboration is more than an attitude; it’s a skill that you and your teams can foster and develop to deliver more successful projects. But what specifically can you do to become a master collaborator?
The Top 10 Project Management Skills You Need in Your Toolbelt
PMI CEO Pierre Le Manh discusses how the project management landscape is changing and what skills will be most in demand in the future.
A Journey to Solutions
Having the right information at the right time can make or break a project’s success. But it’s a mistake for project managers to assume they must have all the answers. Instead, they should be ready to help their teams as questions arise.
Why Project Leaders Need Power Skills
It’s time to lean into the power skills that help project professionals drive success. Projectified guests discuss why power skills are so essential, how they’ve used them to deliver more value and improve their teams’ results and ways to further develop these skills.
PMI Talent Triangle®
The PMI Talent Triangle® represents the ideal skill sets project professionals must develop to be successful and work smarter in today’s evolving world of project management.
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