One reality: “There are so many poor project managers out there, people with even marginal talents can stand out as good,” said Stephen Balzac, president of of 7 Steps Ahead, an organization-development consulting firm. “So many employees honestly feel they work in a Dilbert business.”

Ouch! But good project managers are an antidote to "Dilbertism" and, as for who they are, the one thing project manager experts agree on is talented PMs come to the gig with a definable set of uncommon skills. For example:

“The good ones welcome bad news, it doesn’t throw them at all,” said Michelle Wallace, a longtime project manager. That’s because the bad news that gets ignored is what undermines projects. Truly talented PMs know to confront the issues head on, before they turn a project into a certified death march. When faced with a real problem, “they know to solve the problem itself, not just the symptoms,” said Wallace.

“Good PMs are inspirational, they know how to communicate and push people to their limits,” said Didier Thizy, director of Project Management at Macadamian Technologies, a global software consultancy headquartered in Canada. And when a gifted PM is doing the push, team-members want to follow, they don’t need to be dragged along.

Top PMs “have an ability to yield power,” said Balzac. It’s not always about them, and it isn’t about them “being right,” either. They intuitively know to bow to better ideas from the team, without ego. That’s not an easy place to get to. Gifted PMs know “when to be patient and get out of the way, when to probe, and when to intervene with support,” said Ann Latham, president of Uncommon Clarity, a consulting firm with a focus on project manager development.

Good PMs know “how to communicate with team members so that they hear the message in a way that is meaningful to them,” said longtime project manager Linda Lopeke.

Rendering the Fat

Boil all those skills down and are there natural project managers? You bet, said Rob Heighington, senior practice leader with IT consulting firm Noble Bridge. “Having managed many teams, and watched many project managers, I can tell you there absolutely are natural project managers.”

There also are people, often with extraordinary talent, who simply will never make it as a project manager. Cases in point: workers with an inclination to finger point (“he messed it up!”); who like to claim personal victories (“we succeeded because of me!”); and who insist on a structured, orderly flow of work. These folks probably won’t make it as top-notch project managers, mainly because reprogramming their psychology would be very time-intensive and unproductive.

Don’t assume however that the natural born project managers―the ones who approach the assignment with all the right skills―wouldn’t benefit from training. In fact, they are exactly the people most likely to benefit from instruction. That’s because just about nobody, not even natural born project managers, come to the assignment with all their skills firing hot. “Yes, there are natural project managers, just as there are natural athletes or musicians,” said Balzac. “But if you want to be really good, it will take practice to develop your natural talents.”

Then, too, training―formalized study, usually coupled with on the job learning―can help even those with fewer natural talents at PM'ing get better. “Absolutely, some come to project management with more gifts,” adds Lopeke. “But many of the important skills can be learned.” Listening, for instance, is a key project manager skill. So is empathy and seeing the other person’s perspective. Ditto for setting one’s ego aside. None of these skills are easy to pick up, but with the right training, just about all of us can get better at the PM skills that matter, say the experts. And yet it’s a slow process. "Usually, it takes around five year for a naturally talented project manager to really reach his potential,” said Thizy.

As a busy freelance writer for more than 30 years, Rob McGarvey has written over 1500 articles for many of the nation's leading publications―from Reader's Digest to Playboy and from the NY Times to Harvard Business Review. McGarvey covers CEOs, business, high tech, human resources, real estate, and the energy sector. A particular specialty is advertorial sections for many top outlets including the New York Times, Crain's New York, and Fortune Magazine.