The importance of interpersonal skills training for future project managers

The importance of interpersonal skills is of growing emphasis in the field of project management as supported by the view of authors and scholars in this paper. The focus has been on technical skills but a balance is now needed as the project manager has to facilitate his team members in a complex, dynamic project environment. The project manager needs knowledge regarding interpersonal skills, and to train his skills according to the growing emphasis in the project management area. In this context different views are discussed, for example the vitality of the proper knowledge of oneself and the lacking of training opportunities. This study concerns the usefulness of 32 hours interpersonal-competence-training, at the Project teams and group dynamics course at the MPM-program at Reykjavík University. The results show behavioural changes four months after the course. There seems to be a trend in others (360° evaluation) noticing behavioural changes rather than the student himself. This needs to be studied further