The Contribution of Project Managers’ Soft Skills to their Project Success

The purpose of this paper is to identify key soft skills required by project managers and its impact to their project success. The authors have performed a Comprehensive Literature Review (metaframework) as an evidence to support the argument that project managers could increase the chances of projects being successful by applying their soft skills to manage project team and its performance. The findings of this review demonstrates that the identified soft skills are active listening, communication, conceptual skills, conflict management, human resource management, team management, human skills, leadership skills, motivation skills, negotiation skills, people skills , political and cultural awareness, professionalism and ethics. These skills are critical towards project success, however, it is also identified that soft skills and hard skills, both work in conjunction with each other to attain success. This review provides a significant contribution by establishing the need of developing soft skills in project managers in order to manage teams effectively and efficiently, thereby increasing their performance and the chances of project being successful.