Delivering Results: Key Competencies for Project Leaders

You may be chosen to manage a project because you understand the industry, environment and technical details. But no project is ever a solo act. The knowledge required to achieve success is always distributed across your team — often across disciplines or agencies. 

Tip: Start your project by making a skills map: List what you know and what you need. Identify who on your team brings expertise in areas you’re less familiar with, and foster a culture where subject matter experts are heard early and often. 

Your job as project manager is not handling a personal to-do list; it’s enabling the coordinated efforts of multiple people, frequently without having formal authority over them. Projects thrive when managers can navigate differences, negotiate tradeoffs and keep the team focused — especially as the inevitable tension between priorities and deadlines arises. 

Practical Insight: Use visual timelines, routine check-ins and transparent goal-setting to keep everyone aligned, even as personalities or home departments tug in different directions. 

Clear communication, influence, leadership and grit keep projects moving forward. As a project manager, you are often competing for attention from both your team and the project sponsor. A critical challenge is ensuring your project doesn’t fade into the background as demands and distractions pile up. 

Action Step: Create regular, brief touchpoints with sponsors and team members — not just to review status but to reinforce the project’s value and highlight real progress. 

Early in my career, I learned a difficult lesson about the importance of managing project scope. As a technical analyst on a multi-agency project, I watched the business analyst attend user meetings and promise every feature requested. When it came time to deliver, several groups felt shortchanged and voiced frustration — they weren’t getting what they’d been promised. The result? Major conflict between my own agency and our partner group. 

The hard truth is this: Scope management matters more than you think. People naturally want to add features and functions, but every addition stretches your timeline and your resources. Understanding the need to define, defend and communicate scope isn’t just a technical skill — it’s the heart of delivering a successful project. 

Scope-Alignment Exercise: To expose hidden differences in expectations — and foster dialogue — try this activity early with your team:   

• Have each member write their understanding of the project’s goals on one card and its broader mission on another.   
• Collect the cards and read them out loud to the group.   
• Note similarities and especially differences; facilitate discussion around these points.   

This simple exercise surfaces misalignments before they become obstacles and sets a foundation for shared understanding. 

After a painful project setback, I decided to invest in formal project management training. Learning the project management life cycle and knowledge areas around scope, time, budget and stakeholder management transformed my approach. My advice to new project managers? Commit to professional development. Whether through workshops, mentoring or structured programs, formal training gives you the confidence and language to guide even the most complex endeavors. 

Successful project managers combine technical expertise, management acumen, interpersonal savvy and a commitment to continuous learning. As you step into new initiatives this year, lean into these competencies — and don’t hesitate to address scope and expectations head-on. 

If you’re interested in building these skills, join me for the upcoming MAPS workshops at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs or connect with me for consulting and coaching. Let’s make your next project your best yet. 

Jay Johnson leads large-scale and ad-hoc projects on university metrics, including economic impact studies, Board of Trustees scorecards, strategic planning metrics, college profiles and high-impact practices. 

Johnson has been a project manager in higher education and the public sector for over 25 years. He began his work in Ohio State’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning in 2009 as the project manager for the semester conversion. He coordinated reviews of over 70 academic departments with the Office of Academic Affairs and the colleges. He served as the interim associate vice president for the Office of Strategic and Competitive Intelligence from 2021 to 2022. 

Prior to joining Ohio State, Johnson was the director of the Higher Education Information System (HEI) at the Ohio Board of Regents, where he led a team of programmers, analysts and auditors to collect, verify and analyze data about the collegiate enterprise. He began his career at the Board of Regents as a graduate research analyst through Ohio State’s Higher Education and Student Affairs program. After completing his masters degree, he was brought on full time with the regents as a business analyst to design and implement the enrollment and academic program portions of the HEI System. He was also the state residency officer from 1998 to 2008, helping residency officers and students interpret the laws governing who qualifies for in-state tuition.