From birth to death, we’re encouraged to accept forms of authority and follow their directions. When we’re kids, we grow up with our parents teaching us right from wrong and helping us get through the day without everything being a crisis. They teach us discipline, responsibility, and help us get past temper tantrums and the spats of childhood. When we’re older, we’re sent to school. School is the next step after that, and there we learn how to deal with our peers in the form of other kids studying there. Teachers make sure everyone gets their homework done and play nice with each other. When we graduate into high school, we’re dealing with the same environment, with more pressure and higher expectations. Many teenagers start their first job while still in high school, working part time in a fast food joint or a retail store. These experiences pave the way for people to become comfortable with dealing with authority and a chain of command. By the time business and IT students have graduated post-secondary education and enter the workforce, this programming may actually backfire on them. Many people, fresh out of university, lack the ability to lead. Leading isn’t an easy burden for many people to take on after a lifetime of being conditioned to follow. Very few people can naturally break out of their shell and take the reins on a project. There’s a way to reverse that paralyzing feeling you get at the idea of taking charge and turn you from a graduate into a leader. Project management certification is a great way to learn leadership chops without spending years in the trenches. If you want to harness leadership power and learn the fundamentals of being a manager, this is the first step you can take on that journey.

Shift Your Paradigms and Open New Possibilities

Part of leading is having the ability to see yourself as a leader and what that means relative to your team. There’s a lot of jokes about bad bosses, suspiciously absent team leads, and misanthropic, micromanaging managers. This is because being a manager isn’t so much a science as it is an art – you have to be familiar with your coworkers and colleagues, the project that they are working on, and so on. Just look at the popular television show “The Office”, about a socially awkward boss with no experience with either people or leading and those who have to deal with his shenanigans. The problem with the perception of bosses is that people look at them in the wrong light. A project management certification course helps you get past the wrong conceptions about management and gives you the tools to put your team on the right track.  Think of a sled pulled by huskies up north. Many people think that leaders should be the rider on back, urging the dogs on. In reality, the leader should be the dog in the front breaking a path. Project management is all about being the one to lead a path, no matter how hard the going in. This requires interpersonal skills, a strong understanding of your project, and how the two might combine or clash.

Less Efficiently by Utilizing SCRUM and Agile Techniques

The manager on the American version of “The Office” says “If I had to choose between being feared and loved, I’d choose to have people love me so much it’s scary.” In reality, leadership isn’t a binary between fear and love. You want to be able to lead efficiently and make tough decisions while still having your team respect you and understand your decision process. A project management certification course helps you understand realistic goals versus biting off more than you can choose, and it also helps you understand the steps that you can take to achieve your goals. This means you’ll likely become familiar with the SCRUM and Agile techniques, as well as interpersonal training tactics. These schools of thought are focused around breaking tasks down into easily managed and finished steps, so that an enormous task has many checkpoints along the way. Agile and SCRUM make intimidating tasks seem manageable, and your team will be better able to handle the workload.

SCRUM and Agile Turn Your Subordinates Into a Team

These two leadership schools of thought also centre around having team members take on roles that suit their strengths. These team mates can sometimes switch roles between projects to give them new perspectives, but generally, this style of management allows people to stick to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Part of being a leader is being able to notice strengths and weaknesses of colleagues and figure out what that means for the project. Very few people are ‘jack of all trades’, so the SCRUM system of using roles is useful at letting people do their best work without feeling the pressure of having to tackle things they aren’t comfortable or familiar with. Project management certification courses help you become familiar with the different roles, their responsibilities, and interpersonal management that you will do with assigning people to duties.

After graduating from post secondary education, you’re likely deeply entrenched in the role of being a follower. If you want to climb the corporate ladder and go for the most fulfilling kind of work you can do, it’s essential to shake that idea. This is where project management certification comes in. It is a forcible way to shake your training since childhood to follow and turn from a graduate to a leader. You’ll have an impressive bullet point on your resume, as well as ready made training that will serve you well in the workforce. If you’re worried that you won’t be able to transition from a graduate to a leader, this is the first step you can take. Don’t allow yourself to be intimidated or scared – take control, take a course, and be in charge.