PMO Study Closes: What the Soft-Skills Report Will Tell Us

Last updated: October 13, 2026

A major piece of research into the people skills of PMO practitioners has shut its doors to new participants, and the report is now being written. According to pmoflashmob.org, the PMO Flashmob community, working with Adaptimist Insights, ran a study built around the Multidimensional Inventory for Personal Intelligence (MIPI) to map the non-cognitive competencies that PMOs bring to their day jobs.

The pitch was simple. Every participant who completed the short assessment received a complimentary 13-page feedback report summarising their personal strengths and blind spots. Those individual responses are now being pooled and anonymised so the researchers can publish a formal report and research paper describing the average PMO professional's profile.

What the study actually measured

The MIPI tool groups non-cognitive competencies into three clusters: emotional, social and motivational. The PMO study looked at how practitioners score across those clusters, which ones appear strongest in the PMO community overall, and which correlate with effectiveness in a PMO environment.

The researchers framed it bluntly: the PMO role is "ultimately about supporting people in the workplace," and the soft skills side of that gets less attention than the tools, techniques and processes. The study is an attempt to put numbers under that side.

Why this matters

PMO work is, at heart, a relationship job. You juggle executives, project managers, sponsors, vendors and team members, often in the same morning. Most PMO job descriptions still lean hard on frameworks, governance and reporting. Research like this quietly shifts the conversation toward the competencies that determine whether anyone actually wants to work with you.

A blameless, retrospective-style reading would say: if the eventual report shows that PMOs consistently score high on social competencies but lower on motivational ones, that would line up with what many practitioners already feel – the energy to push for change often runs out before the change lands. The free individual feedback reports are the real lever here, because each participant walks away with a personalised action plan they can compare against the group.

A worked example

Say you are a PMO analyst who has just received your 13-page feedback. Your report suggests you score high on emotional awareness but low on motivational drive. The pooled results, once published, might show that 70% of your peers report the same pattern. Your read of that is honest, not anxious: motivation is the muscle the role asks you to flex most, so that is where a development plan should focus – not a weakness to be ashamed of, but a known feature of the work.

What to watch next

Watch for the formal report and research paper, expected from PMO Flashmob and Adaptimist Insights once analysis is complete. The most useful output for practitioners will not be the headline profile; it will be the recommendations attached to it, and whether the individual feedback reports, used at scale, turn into a credible benchmark for hiring and developing PMO talent.

Key takeaways

• The emotional and personal intelligence competencies a PMO brings are now being measured against a peer benchmark, not just personal opinion.
• Individual 13-page feedback reports turn a research exercise into a practical development tool.
• Watch the release of the formal report for cluster-level insights and concrete recommendations.