Being a Good Project Manager Isn’t About the Title

There seems to be a fixation in the project management community on the title “Project Manager.”

And to some extent, I can understand that.

Achieving the title “Project Manager” often results in higher pay and more opportunities for advancement.

But I would like to point something out here. It’s not all in the title.

In fact, one of the best project managers I have ever worked with did not have a PM title.

She was an “administrative assistant” who could run circles around most project managers.

A few things she did that stood out to me:

✅ Took very good notes - the kind that summarized all the key information, nothing more and nothing less.

✅ Highly conscious of time.

✅ Highly conscious of budget.

✅ Had a keen understanding of all the moving pieces and how they fit together to create the big picture.

✅ At any point you could ask her about the status of XYZ thing and she would be able to tell you who was working on it, the ETA, and how it would impact other areas of the project.

Personally, I learned a lot from her about how to lead projects well.

What have you learned from non-project managers?

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