The Importance of Soft Skills and it Project Managers’ Personality Type

Abstract

Information technology (IT) is a strategic element in business as it is fundamental to create value to organizations. To be efficient, project managers need to develop other competencies besides their technical skills (“hard skills”). This paper aims to show the importance of soft skills in the development of IT project managers’ competencies by answering the following questions (1) “which is the impact of “soft skills” on IT projects management?” and (2) “the personality type of the project manager can influence the development of his/her soft skills?”. To answer these questions, we conducted an exploratory and qualitative research. To collect data, we interviewed IT project managers and applied the MBTI test to identify their personality type. As we crossed the results of MBTI tests and content of the interviews, we noticed that some professionals have a personality type that might hinder them from developing some soft skills. Another important finding is that leadership and communication are the most important soft skills in project management according to IT project managers. This research contributes to the academia as it indicates opportunities for further studies on the relationship of personality type and competence development. A managerial implication of research results is that managers and leaders can use personality tests such as MBTI to prevent relationship conflicts in teams as well as to design training programs that best suit their subordinates’ personality traits.