Project Managers are in high demand at the moment, meaning many women are choosing to retrain in order to reenter the workforce after a break to have children. In fact, Project Managers and mothers have more in common than you might think, and you might find yourself drawing on your parenting skills when managing a project. Here are some of the best skills that PMs can learn from busy Mums.
Nurturing People
If you’re going to get your PMP certification, then you’re going to need to be good with people. As a mother, you’ll be practised at nurturing your child, helping through good and bad times, and guiding them through both. As a PM, your role within a team is similar. You need to view your team as more than resources. People don’t need managers, they need leaders who they can learn from. As a PM, you will need to take ownership of the project, as well as supporting your team with skill development and progression.
Juggling Multiple Commitments
All Mums are busy people. Mums juggle their roles as wife, mother and career woman, and have to get used to juggling a lot of demands on their time without dropping the ball on any of them. In project management, you need to prioritise your task load and responsibilities in the most efficient way possible. PMs, much like Mums, need to be experts in planning, task and budget management, and team management. Project Management roles can often lead to leadership positions, so these skills will be very important.
Staying On Top Of Things
Mums sometimes feel like they have a sixth sense for their children. You can tell when there’s a problem with your children or when one of them is upset. Mums are intuitive and observant. Project Managers need to be equally observant in their work surroundings. You need to be tuned in your team, and other stakeholders. You will have to be observant, pay attention, and be able to understand behaviours, process and data, and convert that information into insights to allow you to make better decisions. If you’re going to make an impact in the modern workplace than you need to focus on outcomes and do so in a mindful manner.
Having Vision
Parents always have dreams and visions for their kids. Mums have a vision for their child’s well-being, growth, and future success. As a PM, you will need to have a vision for the project you’re working on and for your team. Your vision will become the guide for your team to follow and it will determine the quality of contribution. Vision is a mindset, which stems from the willingness to take ownership of the outcomes.
Balancing Leadership
Mothers play a major role in shaping the lives of their children. Most Mums are also comfortable in making a tough stand when they need to. They know that the key to shaping the best character is a balance between freedom and discipline. Project Managers work with an intersection of people, process, and technology. PMs who are going to succeed need to be skilled in balanced leadership. Their leadership should encourage collaboration, innovation, process and quality excellence, and technology enablement.
Owning A Budget
Children are expensive to look after. They always need new school uniform, lunches for school, new sports equipment, or a gift to take to a friend’s birthday party. In most households, the budget for all these things is usually handled by Mum, meaning you’ve got pretty good practise at managing money. A PM will also need a clear understanding of the budget, in order to keep a project running without overspending.
Delegating and Managing Resources
The school years are a demanding time for parents, and most mums need to delegate or recruit help sometimes to get everyone where they need to be. This is often logistics based, such organising pick-ups from school trips, or after school clubs, or managing changes of location. For parents, this means organising with other parents to exchange lifts and other duties or delegating to grandparents and older children. As a PM, this can mean delegating to other members of your team, taking advice from more senior or experienced colleagues, and finding solutions to better manage the resources of your team.
How Can You Become A Project Manager?
Project Management is a job role that exists in many different industries, with slightly different roles in each one. Project Management is a catch-all term for someone who oversees a project and is a role most commonly found in construction, tech, healthcare, science, advertising, and finance.
Typically a PM leads a team and monitors its progress day-to-day. A PM will create a strategy for how the team will accomplish its goal. They will guide the team members who are working on the project, oversee the budget, and find solutions for any hurdles that arise during the project.
Education Requirements
Project Manager is a broad term, so it is difficult to pinpoint what credentials you will need to get a position as a PM. For example, a construction company will most likely be seeking a PM with a Bachelor’s degree in a field related to construction, as well as extensive construction experience. To work as a Project Manager in IT, you will need a bachelor’s degree in a tech-related field and may need a master’s degree as well. At a minimum, most PM jobs will require you to have a bachelor’s degree in a related subject to the industry you want to work in.
Motherhood and Project Management are both demanding roles that require a person to be adaptable, flexible, hard-working and committed. There are more skills that overlap than you might think. If you’re considering a return to work after a break, and are wondering where your skills might be best used, then consider retraining as a Project Manager for a career with solid future prospects, decent salaries and a rewarding future career that you can balance with motherhood.