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Terrell Silver
BUSI 680 LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
January 16, 2024
Project Management Profession: Power Skills
It’s in an organization's best interest to build and better their employees. In this week’s
readings, I had the opportunity to learn about a gymnastic enterprise and how it can help mold
employees to elevate their power skills. As described in Pulse of the Profession 2021 for North
America, gymnastic enterprises are more agile and out of the box when it comes to executing a
project. Traditional organizations would follow the process by the book, although as time
progressed and a global epidemic occurred, the traditional ways became more difficult to uphold.
So as one can piece together, post-pandemic conditions require more innovative
strategies. This encouraged the use of gymnastic organization trends in North America. Adopting
this more agile strategy, encouraged employees to turn into “business acumen” (PMI, 2021), or
employees who are more business savvy. As an outcome, the gymnastic enterprises birthed
individuals who are well-rounded professionals with power skills that were essential to the
growth of a business. These skills are grouped at the top of a list of talent development priorities
that are mainly recognized by gymnastic enterprises. Two of these skills are collaborative
leadership and adaptability, ranking the highest for good reasons.
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Collaborative Leadership
This skill is ranked at 53% of the talent development priority for gymnastic, and 42% for
traditional (PMI, 2021). Collaborative leadership is a concept that allows everyone in the group
to utilize leadership authority instead of appointing one individual leadership authority. It is most
effective in circumstances where the project can be very complex because they can share the
responsibility of problem-solving the issue collectively as a group (Keenan, 2022).
An organization can take advantage of this power skill by creating an environment of
employees who want to be involved. When there’s equal contribution between a group of people,
it makes the task less stressful while simultaneously building the confidence of those who have
ideas to share. Depending on the group of employees, this skill can also help build a healthy
teamwork relationship within the workplace which could decrease turnover rates.
As an individual, this power skill can help build my communication, leadership, and
empathy skills. Considering that teamwork is essential to collaborative leadership power skills, I
will need to know how to communicate important information to my colleagues, set a standard of
leadership, and build rapport with my team to minimize conflict (Power Skills are Human Skills,
2023).
Adaptability
This skill is ranked at 53% of the talent development priority for gymnastic, and 38% for
traditional (PMI, 2021). Adaptability is when the employee can respond positively to unexpected
changes. This may very well have been a crucial skill at the beginning of the pandemic. As
everything was set to a halt, organizations had to think of ways to keep their businesses growing.
What once was a valuable skill to have pre-pandemic is not as relevant post-pandemic. Esther
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Jackson explains in her book Adaptability in Talent Development, how certain companies that
operated mostly in large groups in close contact suffered because of a lack of adaptability
(Jackson, 2021).
An organization needs to have employees with this power skill because it directly
correlates with growth. “Adaptability holds importance for survival, profitability, and
competitiveness, as businesses embark on digitization and transformation” (Jackson, 2021). The
unexpected is inevitable, so an organization must have people who know how to take action
when the time presents itself. Adaptability can involve losing clients, profits, or employees
prompting the organization to have the versatility and flexibility to pivot the business into a new
direction.
Let’s take for example my wife, who has a side business of doing hair. If she started her
business pre-COVID, she wouldn’t have been able to take any appointments for a while.
Although, there are many other methods to earning money as a hairstylist such as selling
products and holding classes to teach other aspiring stylists. After doing research, she found that
online and in-person classes cost over $1200 per person for the style she specializes in. She could
have made more money in 1 month than she would have in 3 months had she taught classes.
That’s the definition of how a gymnastic enterprise works. You find new ways of working a
business from an out-of-the-box perspective.
As an individual, the adaptability power skill would help build other skills such as
selfmanagement as well as problem-solving skills. When it comes to adapting a new strategy, I
wouldn’t want to follow any traditional methods that the company has tried before. This will
force me to think for myself to find innovative ways to grow the organization beyond its initial
capacity. Khin mentions in an article, “Furthermore, by providing training in problem-solving
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activities, individuals can discover their hidden talents by using their knowledge and thoughts”
(Sin, 2022). Similar to the idea of jumping into the deep end of the water, the person may not be
fully prepared to adapt to the change, although they have the skill to do so and emerge successful
once they apply their knowledge.
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References
Jackson, E. (2021). Adaptability in talent development. Association for Talent Development,
2021.
Khin Khin Thant Sin. (2022). Adaptability and problem solving as survival skills. GiLE Journal
of Skills Development, 2(1), 61–70.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.52398/gjsd.2022.v2.i1.pp61-70
Keenan, M. (2022). Collaborative Leadership. Salem Press Encyclopedia.
Project Management Institute. (2021). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK® Guide) – Seventh Edition and The Standard for Project Management
(ENGLISH): Vol. Seventh edition. Project Management Institute.
Power Skills are Human Skills. (20 June, 2023).
https://www.pmi.org/learning/publications/pm-network/digital-exclusives/power-
skills-are-human-skills
