Is Project Management your cup of tea?

I got into the Project Management position accidentally and was kinda doing the job even before realizing it. I know not many get into it this way and at some point before wanting to become or wanting to try this position, you may wonder what it is and what it is not. A lot of people want to become a Project Manager for the glamour of the title or with other pre-conceived notions associated with that career path. Depending on your personality, strengths and weaknesses some people are very well suited for this role and others not only not fit in but, can be miserable in this position and can bring other people down with them as well. In this post, I would like to list out some of the aspects in the day in the life of a PM that can help you evaluate and self-reflect if "PMship is your cup of tea' or not:

 Do you enjoy multi-tasking? This is key for a successful PM. At any single time, you will always have more than one priority to juggle. In addition, it is also important that you never lose sight of all these priorities and keep a clear head regarding the top ones for the moment and not get bogged down in one direction or the other.
 Do you enjoy working with people? As a PM, most of your time will be spent in working/coordinating tasks with others and very little time spent in doing your ‘own work’. In most organizations, the teams that the PM manages don’t necessarily have any reporting relationship with the PM and so the job of the PM to get people motivated and all aligned to work towards the same project goal becomes lot more tricky. Inherently, you need to enjoy working with people and to take it a step further, a good PM should thrive in team/matrixed environments and should be very much a people person who can bring the best out of each and every team member.
 Can you handle unpredictability in your daily schedule? A day in the life of a PM can get very unpredictable and you will have to spend most of your time in not just basking in the glory of things going well, but putting out fires and shielding the team from random events and external 'noise' that can distract the project. In other words, your life is very event driven.
 How organized are you? I am not trying to be judgmental here, but some people are just more organized in their presentation and communication and some others are very abstract and thrive on some amount of chaos and abstractness. As a PM, if not for you, you will need some amount of organization skills to be able to gather/collect disparate sets of data/information from disparate sets of people and distill all that into something that is relevant and easy to understand in the context of the project at hand. For this, you will need to have some core organizational skills and tendencies within you
 Taking responsibility: As a PM (or maybe true with any leadership position), you are responsible for your team’s work. How comfortable are you in taking on this responsibility and shouldering the stress involved in representing a team that is most often not chosen by you.
 Acting with an edge: I realize nobody voluntarily likes to handle difficult people or difficult situations. But, the difference is some people can easily accept that these situations are part of life and can take them in their stride and handle them calmly while others stress over them, lose sleep and health and just cannot get a grip over them. As a PM, you will have to deal with such situations regularly. You will be the one who has to handle any people or project related conflicts and communicate the tough message either to the team/individual members or even communicate bad news to the people up and down the chain.
 How well can you handle stress? Just like difficult situations, I know nobody voluntarily wants to get into stressful situations to enjoy them, but some people seem more prepared to handle them than others. An experienced PM is always prepared for the worst and hopes for the best and more importantly during those stressful/crunch times, he doesn’t lose his cool and can work with the team in a productive manner to get to solutions.

All in all, it takes a special kind of person to enjoy being a PM and excel as one. I am sure I must have missed few other traits or aspects... please comment or email me if you think of those.