Leadership and the

Project Manager

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 Leadership and its Styles

• Leadership is old as organized activity

• Organization is loaded with degree of effectiveness called leaders
• Leadership lies in political, social, military, legal, and economic
technological environment
• Today its important to analyze the leaders and followers.
• Mgt has positive role in achieving goals
• Highest level(generic ideas concerning project mgt are deconstructed
in three elements)
Continued….

• Management: technical discipline of applying and administrating

authority over others which is given through formalized structure
and arrangement of organization.(dynamic, self motivated, life
giving element, role of manager, utilizes resources.

• Leadership: the quality of obtaining results from other personal

influence

• Individual skills and attitude: projects manager

process.(personality, experience, skills and attitude, improve
constantly, change yourself, lack of time mgt)
See Fig: 7.1
 Leadership
“The ability to inspire confidence and support
among the people who are needed to achieve
organizational goals.”

Project management is leader intensive!

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Continued……….

• Leaders in project: leads a team, during project life,

accomplish project objectives within time line.

• Project leadership is presence and process carried out

within organization role that assumes responsibility for
the needs and rights of the people who choose to follow
the leader in accomplishing project results.
 • Most leaders are quick to reject the idea that they
were, by themselves, responsible for the successes
attained or the important changes undertaken within
their organizations.

• For them, leadership involves an awareness of a

partnership, an active collaboration between the
leader and the team.

• In project management, successful team leaders are

often those who were best able to create the
partnership attitude between themselves and their
teams.
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 Continued………………..
• As Peter Block 5 notes, the idea of leadership as
partnership is critical to project management because
it highlights the important manner in which all
leaders are ultimately dependent on their teams to
achieve project goals.

• Four things are necessary to promote the partnership

idea between the project manager and the team:

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 Exchange of purpose: Partnerships require that every
worker be responsible for defining the project’s vision
and goals. A steady dialogue between the project
manager and team members can create a consistent and
widely shared vision.

A right to say no: It is critical that all members of the

project team feel they have the ability to disagree and to
offer contrary positions. Supporting people’s right to
voice their disagreements is a cornerstone of a
partnership.

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 Continued……………………………
Joint accountability: In a partnership, each member of
the project team is responsible for the project’s
outcomes and the current situation, whether it is positive
or shows evidence of problems.
The project is shared among multiple participants and
the results of the project are also shared.
Absolute honesty: Partnerships demand authenticity.
An authentic atmosphere promotes straightforwardness
and honesty among all participants. Because we respect
each team member’s role on the project, we make an
implicit pact that all information, both good and bad,

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 Leaders Vs. Managers
Managers have official titles in an organization
The word manager
Leaders focus on interpersonal relationships rather
than administration

Important differences exist between the two on:

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 Managers
• administer
• demand respect
• maintain the status quo
• focus on systems
• strive for control
• short-term view
• focused on the bottom line
• imitate
• do things right
• state their position
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 Leaders
• innovate
• command respect
• develop new processes
• focus on people
• inspire trust
• have long-term goal
• focused on potential
• originate
• do the right thing
• earn their position
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 How the Project Manager Leads
Project managers function as mini-CEOs and
manage both “hard” technical details and “soft”
people issues.

Project managers:
 acquire project resources
 motivate and build teams
 have a vision and fight fires
 communicate
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 Acquiring Resources
Project can be under funded for a variety of
reasons:
vague goals
no sponsor
requirements understated
insufficient funds
distrust between managers

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 Motivating and Building teams
• The process of molding a diverse group of functional experts
into a cohesive and collaborative team is not a challenge to be
undertaken lightly.
• Team building and motivation present enormously complex
hurdles, and dealing comfortably with human processes is not
part of every manager’s background.
• For example, it is very common within technical jobs for
successful employees to be promoted to project manager. They
typically become quickly adept at dealing with the technical
challenges of project management but have a difficult time
understanding and mastering the human challenges.
• Their background, training, education, and experiences have
prepared them well for technical problems but have neglected
the equally critical behavioral elements in successful project
management.
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 Continued……………………………
• In considering how to motivate individuals on our
project teams, it is important to recognize that
motivation ultimately comes from within each of us;
it cannot be stimulated solely by an external presence.
Each of us decides, based on the characteristics of our
job, our work environment, opportunities for
advancement, coworkers, and so forth, whether we
will become motivated to do the work we have been
assigned.

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 Having a Vision and Fighting Fires
• Successful project managers must operate on boundaries.
• The boundary dividing technical and behavioral problems is
one example, and project managers need to be comfortable
with both tasks.
• Project managers work with conceptual plans, develop the
project scope in line with organizational directives, and
understand how their project is expected to fit into the
company’s project portfolio.
• In addition, they are expected to keep their eyes firmly fixed
on the ultimate prize: the completed project. In short, project
managers must be able to think strategically and to consider
the “big picture” for their projects. At the same time, however,
crises and other project challenges that occur on a daily basis
usually require project managers to make immediate, tactical
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 Communication
It is critical for a project manager to maintain
strong contact with all stakeholders

Project meetings feature task oriented and

group maintenance behaviors and serve to:
• update all participants
• increase understanding & commitment
• make decisions
• provide visibility
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 Traits of Effective Project Leaders
• They sought leaders who say what they mean
and live up to their promises.
• In addition, they sought competence and
intelligence, vision, inspiration, fairness,
imagination, and dependability, to list a few of
the most important characteristics.
• These traits offer an important starting point for
better understanding how leaders operate and,
more importantly, how the other members of the
project team or organization expect them to
operate.

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 Traits of Effective Project Leaders
A number of studies on effective project
leadership reveal these common themes:
Good communication

Flexibility to deal with ambiguity

Work well with project team

Skilled at various influence tactics

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 Continued……….
The second study also identified five
characteristics closely associated with effective
project team leaders:
Credibility: Is the project manager trustworthy and
taken seriously by both the project team and the
parent organization?
Creative problem-solver: Is the project manager
skilled at problem analysis and identification?

Tolerance for ambiguity: Is the project manager

adversely affected by complex or ambiguous
(uncertain) situations?
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 Continued………………………
Flexible management style: Is the project
manager able to handle rapidly changing
situations?

Effective communication skills: Is the project

manager able to operate as the focal point for
communication from a variety of stakeholders?

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 Continued…………………………….
The researchers found seven essential project
manager abilities, including:
Organizing under conflict: Project managers
need the abilities to delegate, manage their time,
and handle conflict and criticism.
Experience: Having knowledge of project
management and other organizational procedures,
experience with technical challenges, and a
background as a leader are helpful.
Decision making: Project managers require
sound judgment, systematic analytical ability, and
decision-making skills.
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-23
 Continued…………
Cooperative leadership: This skill refers to the
project manager’s ability to motivate others, to
cooperate, and to express ideas clearly.

Integrative thinking: Project managers need to

be able to think analytically and to involve others in
the decision-making process.

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 Continued…….
Productive creativity: This ability refers to the
need for project managers to show creativity;
develop and implement innovative ideas; and
challenge the old, established order.

Organizing with cooperation: Project managers

must be willing to create a positive team
atmosphere, demonstrate a willingness to learn,
and engage in positive interpersonal contact.

Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-25

Leadership continued……

• Trait approach (born, not made)

• Group approach (leader does according to nature of group)
• Behavioral leaders (product oriented, people oriented)
• Leadership styles (way in which in which leadership is carried out)
• Contingency approach (situational):interaction b/w variables
involved in leadership situation and patterns of behavior. No single
style is appropriate.
• Transformational leadership: visionary, commitment, motivational,
creative, involving workers
Project Managers who are not Leaders

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 What are Project Champions?
„Champions are fanatics in the single-
minded pursuit of their pet ideas.”

Champions can be:

• creative originators
• entrepreneurs
• godfathers or sponsors
• project managers
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 Champion Roles
Traditional Duties
• technical understanding
• leadership Nontraditional Duties
• coordination & control • cheerleader
• obtaining resources • visionary
• administrative • politician
• risk taker
• ambassador

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 Creating Project Champions

 Identify and encourage their emergence

 Encourage and reward risk takers

 Remember the emotional connection

 Free champions from traditional management

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 The New Project Leadership
Four competencies determine a project
leader’s success:

1. Understanding and practicing the power of

appreciation
2. Reminding people what’s important
3. Generating and sustaining trust
4. Aligning with the led

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 Project Management Professionalism

o Project work is becoming the standard for

many organizations

o There is a critical need to upgrade the

skills of current project workers

o Project managers and support personnel

need dedicated career paths
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 Creating Project Managers

 Match personalities with project work

 Formalize commitment to project work with
training programs
 Develop a unique reward system

 Identify a distinct career path

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Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
 Leading & Time Orientation
• Time orientation refers to the temporal context or
space to which an individual is oriented.
Specifically researchers have long argued that
each of us has a natural tendency to focus on
one of three time orientations; Past, Present or
future.

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 Temporal Alignment and Temporal
Skills
Alignment
• timeline orientation
• future time perspective
• time span
• poly/monochronic
• time conception

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 • Time warping: Cognitively bringing the past &
future closer to the present
• creating future vision: Creating an image of a
project in the future
• chunking time: Creating units of future time to be
used for scheduling
• Predicting: Generating estimates of what will
occur in the future
• recapturing the past: Remembering & using
information from the past
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Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
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Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
 Optional homework for 5%
• Case study 4.3: Problems with John
from Text Book (Pinto)

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 Thank you for your attention!

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