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What is the importance of project management
What is the importance of project management
Essay on project leadership case study
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Project leadership is essential in every organisation. Leaders help their clients achieve business results not by just managing projects, but instead, by leading them. The art of leadership with the science of project management is combined in order to achieve success.
‘Project leadership’ is not only down to one person. The skills associated with Project Leadership apply to the individual project manager, the portfolio manager, the head of the PMO and every other member of the organisation to a degree. People at all levels in an organisation must ‘lead’ in order to achieve results.
I will review and discuss findings and opinions from the academic journal ‘Matching the
Project Manager’s Leadership Style to Project Type’ by Ralf Muller & J.
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However, it recognises that “what differentiates leaders is not their intelligence but their emotional response to situations”.
I personally couldn’t agree more with this statement. From previous experience working in the hotel industry I found that the different methods of approaching staff by the manager and assistant manager were very evident during my time there. The manager had a very short temper and addressed people in an awful manner when things weren’t running smoothly, leaving staff members paranoid and unsettled. When the manager wasn’t present, the assistant manager came up with solutions to issues in a calm and professional manner which made staff members feel calm and appreciated. Both managers in this case had high levels of intelligence but their emotional response to situations differed completely.
Goleman et al. identified nineteen leadership competencies grouped into four dimensions:
1. Personal competencies
Self-awareness (mainly Confucius’s moderation)
Self-management (mainly Confucius’s values)
2. Social competencies
Social awareness (mainly Confucius’s values)
Relationship management (mainly Confucius’s
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Research Model
Muller and Turner formulated the following hypotheses in order to prove that different project management techniques are better suited on different types of projects, and this would suggest that different leadership styles are also appropriate.
Hypothesis 1: The project manager’s competency, which includes his or her leadership style, is positively correlated to project success.
Hypothesis 2: Different combinations of project leadership competency are correlated with success on different types of project.
Dulewicz and Higgs’ 15 leadership competency table was used for research to test the above hypothesis’.
The dependent variable that was found is project success while the moderating found was the project type.
To test the validity of the research, fourteen people were interviewed from seven companies from eight different countries, ranging in different industries. Company sizes ranged from 50 to 35,000 employees while projects ranged $50,000–$500
However, it’s that ambiguity that allows different types of personalities to thrive as leaders. From soft-spoken to loud and booming, from conceptual thinkers to detailed planners, leaders have varied greatly in character and leadership styles.3 Today our Air Force has the most educated and skilled Airmen that its ever had. Technologically-advanced Millennials make up more of the Air Force today than any other generation and they are industrious, free-thinking, and keenly perceptive. It is essential that leaders be sincere with their subordinates as people can easily distinguish between genuine concern and manufactured emotion. As stated by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner who surveyed thousands of people on what they want in their leaders, the results were
Though the project manager may not have the authority as functional managers, his or her leadership skills should be sharp. Part of a project manager’s responsibility includes project governance which includes decision-making (PMBOK, 2014, p.34). In his article, “Everything goes through me-The Project Manager’s Words to Live By”, author Bill Dow shared how the “everything goes through me” confidence displayed by the pharmacist at a local pharmacy could be beneficial for project managers (2013). Dow believed if project managers “possessed that same kind of confidence and showed those same leadership skills, the project management industry as a whole could be much more efficient…” (2014). Moreover, Dow identified similar characteristics as shared in Beach’s article. Jumping to the wrong conclusion or making impulsive decisions can have a negative impact on the project team as well as project success. In jumping to conclusions, we interpret reality and facts, based upon our beliefs or existing assumptions without obtaining sufficient information to draw conclusions. We then take actions which seem right because they are based upon our beliefs. This is also referred to as delusional reasoning (Manktelow et al.,
Gray, C., Larson, E. (2008). Project Management: The managerial Process. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.
Leadership has been written about millions of times in the past, and heading in the future, it will be the topic of many debates, books and newspaper articles asking, and in some cases answering the question, “What is leadership?” According to Peter Drucker: “leadership is lifting a person’s vision, raising his performance and building personality”.
A brief analysis of “Intelligence and Leadership: A Quantitative Review and Test of Theoretical Propositions”
Frame, J.D., Managing Projects in Organizations: How to Make the Best use of Time, Techniques and People, third ed., San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,112-117, 2003.
This opens the floodgates to leadership development, as opposed to simple psychometric assessment that sorts those with leadership potential from those who will never have the chance.” This theory does not seek inborn traits or capabilities; rather they look at what leaders actually do.(Changing minds). Behavioural theory suggests that leadership requires a strong personality with a well-developed positive ego; self-confidence is essential.(Boundless,
There is an importance of leaders to first analyze the impact of their emotional manifestation. Leaders should own emotional intelligence. Those leaders that don’t possess emotional int...
Crawford (2000) suggests that project leadership is the highest ranking category among project management competence factors. Project management leadership style affects overall project performance. Recent research supports the idea that successful projects are led by individuals who possess not only a blend of technical and management knowledge, but also leadership skills that are internally compatible with the motivation of the project team (Slevin and Pinto, 1988; Turner et al., 1998). Zimmerer and Yasin (1998) found that positive leadership contributed almost 76% to the success of projects. Negative or poor leadership contributed 67% to the failure of projects. Project leaders need both, relationships and task oriented leadership styles, to cope with the challenges within different phases of project (Slevin and Pinto, 1991). In projects, project leaders must lead their teams towards completing defined goals with in a fixed time scale. Verma (1997) states “Achieving the goal or final aim is the ultimate test of leadership”. Goals and tasks are achieved through people thus making people an important resource for
The leadership skills questionnaire has been used to identify the strength and weaknesses. The outcome measured the strength in interpersonal skills and weakness in administrative skills. This is being a challenging time but rewarding at the same time. Routinely, characteristics of a good leader were applied for example showing commitment in delegating, responsibility, being courageous, communicating effectively and always available to help. (Maxwell, 1999).
In the globalized economy, Successful project managers are in much demand across many industries. Organizations strongly need experienced project managers to lead their staff to accomplish their business goals and deliver successful projects. In an increasingly complex environment, project managers need to turn into many roles and have all kinds of responsibilities at each level of management within an organization. Good project managers are not born. They need to be trained. They develop their skills through study, practise and experience. They become better project managers after they finish a successful project each time. They learn new techniques and apply them on their projects. They learn their lessons from failed projects and then improve to be better project managers in the future.
Project managers have to improve their skills every day to deal with the organizational change and especially the world’s Megatrends. However, it can be a challenge for a project manager to comprehend what skills they should be improved, what sections of project management knowledge that should be tried to perceive, and how to measure and enhance their performance.
Over the course of my professional life, I have become increasingly involved in project management roles. Doing so has made me aware of the many varied challenges that can face projects and the project managers who are charged with bringing them through to completion. The success or failure of projects, in whatever economic, political or social field, rests not just on the quality of the project’s goals, but also on the abilities of those involved in the project – and above all those who are managing it – to bring it to successful completion. To do this, project managers need to be equipped with a very wide range of skills, many of which are unrelated to the type of project itself. So, for example, a project manager of an engineering project must not only have engineering
When planning a new project, how the project will be managed is one of the most important factors. The importance of a managers will determine the success of the project. The success of the project will be determined by how well it is managed. Project management is referred to as the discipline that entails the processes of carefully planning, organizing, controlling, and motivating the organization resources so as to foster and facilitate the achievement of specific established and desired goals and meet the specific criteria of success required in the organization (Larson, 2014). Over the course of this paper I will be discussing and analyzing the importance of project management.