5: Leadership Skills for Project Managers
- Page ID
- 124173
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\(\newcommand{\avec}{\mathbf a}\) \(\newcommand{\bvec}{\mathbf b}\) \(\newcommand{\cvec}{\mathbf c}\) \(\newcommand{\dvec}{\mathbf d}\) \(\newcommand{\dtil}{\widetilde{\mathbf d}}\) \(\newcommand{\evec}{\mathbf e}\) \(\newcommand{\fvec}{\mathbf f}\) \(\newcommand{\nvec}{\mathbf n}\) \(\newcommand{\pvec}{\mathbf p}\) \(\newcommand{\qvec}{\mathbf q}\) \(\newcommand{\svec}{\mathbf s}\) \(\newcommand{\tvec}{\mathbf t}\) \(\newcommand{\uvec}{\mathbf u}\) \(\newcommand{\vvec}{\mathbf v}\) \(\newcommand{\wvec}{\mathbf w}\) \(\newcommand{\xvec}{\mathbf x}\) \(\newcommand{\yvec}{\mathbf y}\) \(\newcommand{\zvec}{\mathbf z}\) \(\newcommand{\rvec}{\mathbf r}\) \(\newcommand{\mvec}{\mathbf m}\) \(\newcommand{\zerovec}{\mathbf 0}\) \(\newcommand{\onevec}{\mathbf 1}\) \(\newcommand{\real}{\mathbb R}\) \(\newcommand{\twovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\ctwovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\threevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cthreevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\mattwo}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{rr}#1 \amp #2 \\ #3 \amp #4 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\laspan}[1]{\text{Span}\{#1\}}\) \(\newcommand{\bcal}{\cal B}\) \(\newcommand{\ccal}{\cal C}\) \(\newcommand{\scal}{\cal S}\) \(\newcommand{\wcal}{\cal W}\) \(\newcommand{\ecal}{\cal E}\) \(\newcommand{\coords}[2]{\left\{#1\right\}_{#2}}\) \(\newcommand{\gray}[1]{\color{gray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\lgray}[1]{\color{lightgray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\rank}{\operatorname{rank}}\) \(\newcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\col}{\text{Col}}\) \(\renewcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\nul}{\text{Nul}}\) \(\newcommand{\var}{\text{Var}}\) \(\newcommand{\corr}{\text{corr}}\) \(\newcommand{\len}[1]{\left|#1\right|}\) \(\newcommand{\bbar}{\overline{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bhat}{\widehat{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bperp}{\bvec^\perp}\) \(\newcommand{\xhat}{\widehat{\xvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\vhat}{\widehat{\vvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\uhat}{\widehat{\uvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\what}{\widehat{\wvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\Sighat}{\widehat{\Sigma}}\) \(\newcommand{\lt}{<}\) \(\newcommand{\gt}{>}\) \(\newcommand{\amp}{&}\) \(\definecolor{fillinmathshade}{gray}{0.9}\)Project Management Leadership - An Overview
Leadership is the ability to guide, motivate, and direct a team toward achieving project success criteria.
A project manager leads the project team during a project life cycle just like a music conductor. As conductors of their projects, they spend 90% of their time enabling, empowering, and communicating with team members and stakeholders. PMBOK Guide 6th Edition spells out three categories of skill sets project managers must possess. They are technical project management, leadership, and strategic and business management.
Technical project management skills, contrary to the name, does not include technical product or industry expertise. It refers to the skills needed for application of project management knowledge to deliver the desired outcomes for the project. This includes the ability to define critical success factors for the project, create plans for all the knowledge areas (i.e., integration, scope, schedule, cost, quality, resource, communications, risk, procurement, stakeholders), conduct all project management processes, monitor and control all the project work, close out the project, and disband the team.
Strategic and business management skills include developing and applying pertinent product and industry expertise. It requires the ability to see the big picture of the organization in the context of the industry and be able to negotiate and implement decisions and actions that support strategic alignment.
Leadership skills Leadership is a social (interpersonal) influence relationship between two or more persons, and involves the ability to guide, motivate, and direct a team.
Projects have become increasingly more complicated as more businesses execute their strategies through projects. Project management is more than just working with numbers, templates, charts, graphs, and computing systems. They are measurable and offer a predictable set of output for every input set. People are the common denominator in all projects, and they often create the unpredictability factor. A large part of the project manager’s role involves dealing with people. Hence, project managers should study people’s behaviors and motivations. Project managers must earn credibility from the project team and stakeholders. They need to detect and clarify the ambiguities effectively to remove obstacles. On projects, the environment changes frequently, and the project manager must apply the appropriate leadership approach for each situation. They must have good communication skills. Lack of communication skills, team-building, and organizational skills would cause problems in a project and even leading to failure.
Leadership differentes a great project manager from the rest.
Sub-Skills of Leadership
Apart from EQ, negotiation, conflict management, and decisiveness are the key sub-skills of leadership for project management. Just as in relationship management, conflict management is a key skill for project management leadership.
Negotiation
When dealing with conflicts, good negotiation skills are critical assets. When multiple people are involved in an endeavor, differences in opinions occur about desired outcomes. Negotiation is a process of resolving conflicts and developing a mutually acceptable plan of progress. A project manager will often negotiate on different aspects of a project (e.g., scope, schedule, budget, quality, purchases, conflicts with stakeholders) with the client, team members, vendors, and project stakeholders. Negotiation is an important skill in developing support for the project and preventing frustration among all parties involved, which could otherwise delay or cause the project to fail. Negotiation is used to achieve an agreement that supports the execution of a project or its outcomes and resolves conflicts within a team or with stakeholders.
There are four steps or principles involved in negotiations. They are:
- Separate people from the problem and focus on the outcome:
- Framing the discussions in terms of desired outcomes and not people, takes the emotions out of the way, and enables negotiations to focus on finding new outcomes.
- Leverage common interests:
- By focusing on common interests rather than differences, allows both parties to be more open-minded to find acceptable solutions.
- Generate options that advance shared interests:
- With project success as the primary shared interest and the reason for each party in achieving it is clearly understood, both parties can objectively focus on exploring and achieving solutions that serve the common interests.
- Develop results based on project success criteria:
- With the solutions identified, the parties can focus on achieving the results that meet the success criterion of the project.
For project managers to successfully negotiate issues on a project, they must first seek to understand the position of the other party. Next, focusing on the team members or stakeholders with whom they will negotiate, figure out their business and personal drivers and their concerns and expectations. Also, seek to understand and establish the outcomes that are desirable to the project. Without knowing what outcomes are acceptable, it is difficult to find a solution that will produce that outcome.
Conflict Management
Conflicts in a project are to be expected due to reasons such as the level of stress, lack of information during the early phases of the project, personal differences, and role conflicts. Conflict management from a leadership perspective is managing the trade-off between cooperativeness and assertiveness.
One of the well-known conflict management models is the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) which assesses an individual’s behavior in conflict situations when the concerns of two people appear to be incompatible (2008). This model is based on two dimensions of a person’s behavior.
- Assertiveness: The extent to which the individual attempts to satisfy his or her own concerns.
- Cooperativeness: The extent to which the individual attempts to satisfy the other person’s concerns.
In other words, conflict management is a trade-off between cooperativeness and assertiveness.
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. (CC BY-NC-SA;
Project Management Fundamentals by J Scott Christianson)
The model shows five methods of dealing with a conflict across those two dimensions (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)).
Competing (forcing) is assertive and uncooperative. An individual pursues his or her own concerns at the other person’s expense, using whatever power seems appropriate to win his or her position. It is power-driven and typically results in a win-lose outcome.
Collaborating is both assertive and cooperative. An individual attempts to work with the other person to find a solution that fully satisfies the concerns of both. It involves digging into an issue to identify the underlying concerns of the two individuals and to find an alternative that meets both sets of concerns. Typically, it results in a win-win outcome.
Compromising is intermediate in both assertiveness and cooperativeness. The objective is to find an expedient, mutually acceptable solution that partially satisfies both parties. Compromising might mean splitting the difference, exchanging concessions, or seeking a quick middle-ground position. Both parties stand to lose something in the process.
Avoiding is unassertive and uncooperative. When avoiding, an individual neither pursues his or her own concerns, nor those of the other person. He or she does not address the conflict. Avoiding might take the form of diplomatically sidestepping an issue, postponing an issue until a better time, or simply withdrawing from a threatening situation. Results with no solution.
Accommodating is unassertive and cooperative, which is the opposite of competing. An individual neglects his or her own concerns to satisfy the concerns of the other person. Therefore, there is an element of self-sacrifice, which could stem from a variety of reasons including timing, some lack of self-esteem, and more.
The situation on hand and the capabilities of a project manager determine the method that will be used to resolve conflicts. Here is an example of a real-life project situation illustrating the application of a conflict resolution method.
Resolving an Office Space Conflict
In this example (Watt), two senior managers both want an office with the window, when only one such office exists. The project manager intercedes with little discussion and assigns the window office to the manager with the most seniority. The situation was a low-level conflict with no long-range consequences for the project and a solution all parties could accept. Therefore, the project manager applied the competing (forcing) method.
Decisiveness
Decisiveness is the ability to analyze data and make decisions quickly and effectively. As a project manager, you will be making multiple decisions on a daily basis. The key is to make them quickly and effectively. In addition to the basic emotional intelligence skills, this calls for clarity of thought, communication, self-confidence, and courage.
- Clarity of Thought: Know your project goals, success criteria, how they fit into the client's product, or program.
- Self-Confidence: Believing in your knowledge and having ability to evaluate options quickly and effectively.
- Courage: Finally, the courage to make and communicate decisions on a timely basis is the skill that brings out your leadership.
- Communication: The ability to communicate your decision in a convincing manner.
Leadership Styles
Leadership is a function of both the personal characteristics of a leader and the environment in which the leadership must occur.
PMBOK Guide 6th Edition provides a list of leadership styles as below:
- Laissez-faire: Leaders allow the team to make their own decisions and establish their own goals. It is also referred to as taking a hands-off style.
- Transactional: Leaders focus on goals, feedback, and accomplishment to determine rewards.
- Servant: Leaders demonstrate a commitment to serve and put other people first. They focus on other people’s growth, learning, development, autonomy, and well-being. They concentrate on relationships, community, and collaboration.
- Transformational: Leaders empower followers through idealized attributes and behaviors, inspirational motivation, encouragement for innovation and creativity, and individual consideration.
- Charismatic: Leaders are able to inspire with high energy. They are enthusiastic and self-confident and hold strong convictions.
- Interactional: This leadership style is a combination of transactional, transformational, and charismatic leadership styles.
Among them, the “Agile Practice Guide” accompanying PMBOK Guide Sixth Edition highlights the servant leadership style in particular for the agile project management approach. Although servant leadership isn’t unique to agile, project managers and organizations can observe and experience that this leadership style integrates into the agile mindset value. As the name refers, servant leaders serve those on the team by promoting self-awareness, listening, facilitating coordination, removing obstacles and organizational impediments, helping team members and stakeholders improve themselves, coaching rather than controlling. They promote safety, respect, and trust, and the energy and intelligence of others (2017).
No single leadership approach could be stated as the best for project management. Each project is a unique endeavor. The leadership approach and the management skills required to be successful vary depending on the complexity profile of the project. The Project Management Institute studied project management leadership skills and published research concluding that project managers needed good communication skills, harmonious relationship-building and motivating others (2006). Beyond this broad set of leadership skills, the successful leadership approach will depend on the profile of the project.
A transactional project manager with a strong command and control leadership approach may be very successful on a small software development project or a construction project, where tasks are clear, roles are well understood, and the project environment is cohesive. This same project manager is less likely to be successful on a larger, more complex project with a diverse project team and complicated work processes.
Each project phase may require a different leadership approach. During the start-up phase of a project, when new team members are first assigned to the project, the command and control leadership approach might be effective. Later, as the project moves into the conceptual development phase, creativity becomes important, calling for a transformational type of leadership. The experienced project managers can adjust their leadership approach to the needs of the project phase. Occasionally, on very large, complex projects, some companies will change project managers after the conceptual phase of the project to bring in a different project leadership approach or change project managers to manage the closeout of a project. The rationale is that this brings the right level of experience and the appropriate leadership approach, but is also disruptive to the project. Senior management must balance the benefit of matching the right leadership approach with the cost of disrupting the project.
Review Questions
- What are the specific leadership skill sets that the 6th Edition of the PMBOK Guide suggests for modern project managers?
- What are the four core principles of negotiation?
- What are the two core behavioral dimensions that the Thomas-Kilmann conflict model uses to evaluate a person's response to friction?
- What are the four underlying skills required to remain highly decisive under stress?
- What two factors drive the selection of an appropriate leadership style for a project?
References
- Retrieved from the OER titled “Project Management” by Adrienne Watt on https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/chapter/chapter-11-resource-planning-project-management/↵
- Thomas, K. W. (2008). Thomas-Kilman conflict mode. TKI Profile and Interpretive Report, 1-11. ↵
- Feltman, C. (2011). The thin book of trust: An essential primer for building trust at work. Thin Book Publishing.
- Project Management Institute, & Agile Alliance. (2017). Agile practice guide. ↵
- Shi, Q., & Chen, J. (2006). The Human Side of Project Management: Leadership Skills. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, Inc. ↵
Attributions
Project Management Fundamentals (NWTC) by Terri Brown from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.