Project Leadership

What is project leadership? Project Managers manage project and people. This role requires management and leadership skills where the emphasize lies on managing the project data and leading the project team.

Couple days ago, I attended the Project Management Symposium in Philippines and I listened to a very interesting presentation about Project Leadership by Dr. Shaligram Pokharel and I learned many valuable things from him. He said that as a leader, you have to create the value and as a PM, you have to create a group leader. To be a great leader you should have respect, trust and commitment. Leaders should set themselves by example and you need to show your team that you can do it. Yes, that is right. It’s a leader not a boss.

Remember the difference between a boss and a leader; a boss says GO! and the leader says LET’S GO! –E.M. Kelly-

As a leader, in order your team follow your direction, you have to show to them that you already did the right things. You also have to be a visionary and help people to reach their goal. You cannot only direct them to do their task, but you have to support and facilitate them. Shaligram also said that leaders have to prepare, do hard work and learn from failure. I am not saying that I am good leader, but when I was assigned as a project leader, I did harder than my team, I also learned from the previous leader failures of similar project. Because the previous leader did not set her self as an example, she was lucky enough that most of her team is creative, responsible and hard working that did not need to be supervised. She failed to lead us her team member, she even had a light conflict with her team. So, what I learned from this failure, I was trying to make sure my team members work together in different side. I was not worry about the fail but I prevented that it won’t happen again.

 

That’s only a story about one of my experience. Now let’s talk about common leadership styles. Management and leadership style can vary. Some of them are:

Charismatic: Charismatic Leaders posses a very persuasive personality that attracts followers through charm. These leaders show great confidence in their followers and create a group image that is far superior to all others.

Participative: Participative Leaders seek to involve other people in the decision process, possibly including subordinates, peers, superiors and other stakeholders.

Situational: Situational Leaders do not just have a single preferred leadership style. Factors that affect situational decisions include motivation and capability of followers.

Transactional: Transactional leaders create clear structures that make clear what is required of their subordinates. These leaders reward subordinates who following orders. When things go wrong, then the subordinates are considered to be personally at fault, and are punished for their failure.

Transformational: Transformational leaders have a vision for the future that will excite and convert potential followers. These leaders try to convince others of their vision. They are always visible and act as role model. They also make continued efforts to motivate and rally their followers, constantly doing the rounds, listening, soothing and enthusing.

Autocratic: Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting with others or considering any other view.

Democratic: Democratic leaders involve all people in the decision-making, although the process for the final decision may vary from the leader having the final say to them facilitating consensus in the group.

Laissez Faire: Leaders with a Laissez Faire leadership style minimize their involvement in decision-making, and hence allowing people to make their own decisions, although they may still be responsible for the outcome.

Leaders can adapt to different styles but need to make sure to stay their true self. So which one are you? Kippenberger states “how we lead is a reflection of our own character, personally and experience.” Leaders need to understand who they are in order to be able to adapt to different leadership styles. Projects with their unpredictable nature require leaders that are able to adapt to different leadership styles.

Project management is a team-based approach. Hence the project scope and project plan cannot be defined and developed in isolation. Autocratic leaders would come up with a plan for the team without consulting the team members. Leaders with a laissez faire leadership style would let the team figure out how to respond to the challenges of a project without providing any guidelines. Although leadership styles like the autocratic or laissez faire leadership behaviour can be observed in some organization they are not well suited for leading projects and project team members.

Democratic leaders go through an elaborate decision finding process that involves several stakeholders of different organizational background and levels. As a result democratic leadership behaviour often leads to extreme delays in large projects, because all team members get involved in every decision process of a project. The more people are part of a project team the longer it takes until a decision is made.

Charismatic leadership works often well at the beginning of a project when it is important to get support from the overall organization. Charismatic leaders are driven by their believe that their vision is correct. Hence Charismatic leadership works as long as the leader’s vision is aligned with the project and organizational goals.

Participative, situational, transactional and transformational leadership styles seem to work most effective when managing projects and leading people. Participative leaders typically seek other people views and opinions in order to form their own opinion about a situation and then make their decision. Project sponsors, for example, often make their decision after listening to multiple people in the organization. Blanchard describes the situational leadership model which includes four different leadership behaviours that are dependent on the maturity and knowledge of the employee. These are telling, coaching, supporting, and delegating. Project teams include members of different backgrounds and experiences requiring different management styles. Situational leadership seems to fit the changing nature of a project very well. Burns differentiates between transactional and transformational leadership behaviours. Transactional leaders communicate clear goals to their subordinates. This leadership style relies on organizational structures and processes to help resolve problems. Well organized projects have a structure in place that allows the project teams to solve problems. Transactional leadership works well for some aspects of a project such as e.g.: managing changes through a change management committee. Transformational leadership style empowers people to do their work. Transformational leaders facilitate the process of people to learn and to seek change and improvement [6]. In general this leadership style is most applicable for organizations that manage projects through self-managed teams.

References:

1.    InterGlobe Consulting contact: info@interglobeconsulting.com

2. KOPPENSTEINER S., Leadership concepts in software project management, proceedings of IDIMT 2008, Czech Republic.

3.    CHANGINGMINDS.ORG, website http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/leadership_styles.htm, 2008.

4.    GOLEMAN, website http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_goleman_leadership_styles.html , 2008.

5.    KIPPENBERGER T., Leadership Styles, Capstone Publishing, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2002.

6.    BLANCHARD K., Management of Organizational Behavior: Leading Human Resources, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, USA, 2000.

7.    MACGREGOR BURNS J., Leadership, Harpercollins, New York, USA, 1979.

8.    BYHAM W.C., ZAPP The lightening of Empowerment, Ballantine Publishing Group, Toronto, Canada, 1998.