Have you been wondering
if a project management career is right for you?
Well, look no further because I have three awesome reasons
why a project management career is going to be good for you
and three reasons why you may want to reconsider.
This is totally based on my 20-plus years
of experience doing project management.
And if you want to master your projects, I have a checklist
of cheat or cheat sheet, cheat sheet,
of top 10 things you need to know that I'm going to give
to you at the end of this video,
so definitely stick around for that.
It's worth it.
Hi. If you're new here, welcome.
My name is Adriana Girdler, and you landed
on the best practical project management channel
in YouTube world, in my personal opinion.
I'm excited to be sharing
with you these project manager career tips, advice,
three things you need to know,
three things you don't wanna know or do.
Well, you know what I mean. Let's get to it.
Let's tackle some of the pros
of being a project manager first.
It improves your softer skills.
Now, why is this even important?
It's actually extremely important
'cause these soft skills translate not only
to what you do as a project manager.
They translate into your career,
just generally speaking, 'cause it's about people,
and into your personal life.
So what are some of the things that really get called out
because you're a project manager
through the years of experience?
Well, communication.
It really becomes critical you learn how to communicate.
You really learn how to tune into people around you.
That's that emotional intelligence.
So you can read a room without communication.
You're actually feeling the energy in the room,
and you can see what people are doing,
and you can go beyond just what the words are saying
and look deeper into the emotion coming from it.
That's really important. Your presentation skills as well.
You're constantly presenting in front of people.
You're also negotiating.
Those are amazing skills that are just
going to help you, and project manager, as a project
manager, you're thrown into those scenarios constantly,
constantly, that these softer skills are just going to
really develop and set you apart from a lot of other people
because it's through practice that we get better.
Watching your plan come together.
Oh, if you like creating, if you have a creating mindset,
this is one thing I really like about project management.
You create a plan. Every plan is different.
It's depending upon what you're doing,
but you bring people together,
you're really trying to figure things out,
and particularly when everyone is finally settled
into your ways of working, it's all humming,
people are following the rules that you established,
and the plan is just coming together,
it's just a really cool thing to experience,
and it's really amazing because people enjoy working
with you, working on the project.
It's a real positive experience.
It's a personal high, a natural one that you get
to go through and experience just watching everything come
together and execute just well
'cause you have a synergistic team.
Why?
Because of all the great work you did as a project manager.
Now I am going to say and ask you
if you're liking the content so far,
give this video a like, subscribe.
It does tell YouTube we're doing a really good job,
allowing me to give you more great content.
Working with people from all different backgrounds.
This is what I really enjoy about project management
because in the roles and the projects I've done,
the roles I've been in, the companies I've worked with,
I've met people from different countries,
different cultures within a project
because the project is so big, it's on a global scale.
I love learning about the different cultures, ensuring,
"Okay, now I have to do something slightly different."
It just really opens my eyes
to other people's ways of working,
and I really like that 'cause I learn from that.
It's not just about me and my ways.
When I meet different people,
I learn from those different people.
It also ensures things are not boring.
I'm telling you because that's the last thing you want
is to be in a mundane job.
It's exciting, and meeting those different people
and getting to know their ways and integrating that
into your project, it's a true benefit and blessing
'cause it just translates into other things
that you're doing.
I want to say it's a cool thing,
but it really is a cool thing.
It is a cool thing.
So definitely meeting a whole bunch of different people,
different organizations, different cultures.
It's cool.
Okay, so those were the few of the pros
that I was talking to you about about project management.
Let's now move over to the con side
because with every positive, there's a negative.
With every sun, there's a moon.
There's an opposite, and I just want to share that
with you so you can really make an informed decision.
So one of the things that you need to be aware of
that's a con is dealing with uncertainty.
That is a given in project management.
Even though you plan, even though you know what's going on,
you are tight, your team is synergistic,
there's still a lot of uncertainty.
You have no idea what's going to happen.
One day, things can be revving well,
and all of a sudden out of the blue,
even though you did project management risk sessions,
you have a risk that pops up that you didn't plan for.
So there's just a lot of uncertainty.
You're building. You're developing.
You have a tight timeline.
So you have to be willing to really let go of trying
to control everything and go a little more with the flow
because of uncertainty 'cause there's just a lot
of things you don't have control over,
and you're going to have to learn how to deal with that.
Disagreements.
Okay, if you've been on projects, you know this already.
You don't even have to be on a project.
Think about working with people
in a team in your department.
There's disagreements.
Now when you're a project manager, there's disagreements,
and you're going to have to deal with it,
and if that's something that you're not good at,
you may want to really reconsider because you do not want
to not deal with the disagreements 'cause they just fester.
They grow. They snowball into other things.
So you're going to have to get good with nipping things
in the bud and addressing things
that make you feel uncomfortable
from a disagreement perspective because it's not fun.
Reprimand is the wrong word,
but how do you course correct someone with a disagreement?
Maybe they didn't do what they needed
to do or they have a different idea.
So there's a little bit of uncomfortableness, but again,
the more you do it, the better you get at it,
and it's just a skillset that's going to take you anywhere
in life because disagreements are everywhere.
But that is definitely a con.
There's always disagreements in projects.
Some people just don't agree with what you're doing,
and sometimes you gotta deal with that.
Okay, I am leaving the last con.
It's probably the one that's going to dissuade you the most,
and I don't want to dissuade you from project management
'cause it's an amazing feel.
Oh my God.
I would recommend it to anybody who's really good
with organization and people's skills and all that stuff,
but it's intense responsibility.
I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
You're the project manager. You're overseeing a team.
You gotta make sure the deliverables are met.
There's a lot riding on your shoulders.
Now yes, you have a team. Yes, they're delivering.
Yes, they're doing all that stuff,
and when things are successful,
it's the team that's successful.
But when things are not successful, guess what?
The fingers start pointing at you.
What didn't you do? Why didn't you do this?
So there is a lot of intense responsibility.
Now here's the good news.
The smaller the project, less is the intensity.
The higher up you go in regards to scope of project
and global projects and complexity of projects,
the intensity increases.
And it usually correlates with the visibility
of who's watching the project.
So smaller projects,
you tend to have very minimal people watching it.
Intensity, low.
High-profile projects, you got senior executives.
They're promising stuff. Now they're on you.
Just letting you know, the intensity is there.
However, if you feed off that stuff like me, oh I love it.
It's like a game sometimes,
and I practice a lot on how to mold it
so that we're all working together synergistically.
Then you're going to love it. (laughs)
Now that pros and cons of being a project manager,
you can decide whether or not you
want to be a project manager, but before you do that,
because I want you to be successful
'cause it's an awesome career,
I want you to go to the link below under this video.
Grab this.
This gives you some additional information about projects
and things you have to be aware of.
So on that note, I hope you grab it,
and I'll see you at the next video.
See you later.