Here is my version of the good, the bad, and the ugly. A good project manager (PM) has good organization skills and good listening skills, sure, but here are a few things that I think can make or break a PM. The clincher? You can BUY all of these things so it should never be an excuse to stand in your way of going from good to great.

1. The Obvious: Calendar
• Every PM needs a good piece of software to do their job and the more people and schedules involved, our jobs become exponentially more complex. (N * (N-1) / 2 in fact). You must have a good calendar that you can move one dependency and shifts or warnings pop up. You must manage holidays and vacation days of your team members too. Pay for the good stuff and you will never regret it.
2. The Great: Bad Jokes
• PMs are the ice breakers whether they like it or not. PMs are the bearer of bad news, whether they like it or not. They always find themselves in awkward situations, which is why maybe they are so quirky. So having a back pocket story and funny helps avoid the small talk and anticipating killer silence. And go buy a joke book if you aren't a comedian yourself.
3. The Annoying: Headset
• We are people persons and we have to stay well connected. Send email, create videos, write documentation and presentations, call stakeholders. You have to be easy to contact and easy to hear so having a high quality headset is key to being able to refill your coffee or block out the neighbor-cube calls while on the phone.

We've all dealt with a micromanager in our lives so I know I don't need to preach to the choir on that one! But what I learned the past week is that the opposite of a bad micromanager as a boss is a good micromanager as a new hire. I have spent the last few weeks training a new team member and she has been doing a great job learning our software. People say you "drink from the fire house" but really the first few weeks is all you need to determine whether you have yourself a good new hire or a tough one. The more they take the initative the better and so the more they micromanaging their learning the better. Here are three things that can help you be classified as "great" too.

1. Ask "What does this do?"
• The fact that she doesn't ask me general questions of "What do I do next?" is great! She likes to learn by trying things and practicing hands-on which means she finds things and then asks specific questions about why a feature acts that way, how something gets to a next step in the process, or what this button does. They are specific questions!
2. Check in every hour
• I know, training webinars are the worse and waiting for access to every server is a pain. So don't just sit around! When you check in every time you get bored, it means you hate being useless. It sends a good message that you don't like to waste anyone's time, yours or the company's. Even if it is just shadowing something irrelevant, you can learn way more than waiting for permission to work.
3. Make changes that extend your timeline
• Oh, micromanagers love to change the font, move a button a quarter of an inch to the right, or name a file differently. But for a new hire? They have to learn somehow! Sure it will take them 3x longer than you to do something, but if they are offering to help than you should be gracious for it. Let them help and learn at the same time even if it isn't exactly the way you'd do it (aka, don't micromanage back if you can help it).

Being a micromanager of your tasks at a new job and trying to learn all the minuscule details of how the senior team members do it so well is a good thing, don't you agree?