Project Management and Leadership - Research Paper Example

Project Management and Leadership Prepared by Author Date Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Executive Summary 3 Part 1: Summaries of Articles 4 Part2: Research Report 8 Project Management 8 Project Management and Leadership 9 Why Leadership is Important? 11 References 13 Executive Summary Project management is a complete discipline that is adopted by organizations to manage a wide variety of projects. Project management encompasses a wide variety of activities that need to be executed in an appropriate way in order to achieve the usefulness of this discipline. However, one most important aspect of project management is the resource management where a project manager has to deal with a wide variety of resources especially the project team. In this scenario, it is essential for a project manager that they possess leadership qualities in order to properly lead the project. These leadership qualities play significant role all the way through the project life cycle. These leadership qualities do not only help project managers to manage human resources but also how to deal with other humans that are part of the project activities. The basic objective of this report is to discuss different aspects of project management and how leadership can play a role in the process of project management. This report is based on reviewing the literature from different sources. Part 1: Summaries of Articles Gillard, S., 2009. Soft Skills and Technical Expertise of Effective Project Managers. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 6(1), pp. 723-729. The purpose of the research is to discuss about the importance of project managers’ leadership skills for project’s success. The research question is that either the project manager’s technical skills are sufficient or soft skills are also essential. The research has relied over the previous empirical studies and practical experiences, thus using the qualitative research methodology. A great pool of literature has discussed the issue of technical and soft skills. A project manager is having double leadership role due to the emergence of matrix organizational structure, where they are managing both a permanent project team and a task-based group combined for the time being. Some argue that there is more importance of technical skills as a project manager has to perform a project within time and cost limits, which can be achieved by systematic approaches. But on the other hand, the soft skills, such as interpersonal, supportive, collaborative, and effective communication skills are the essential skills for project management in today’s environment. Such skills are found to be present in strong leadership, where it is argued that without strong leadership skills, a project cannot be the successful one. The research has also highlighted the balance between the soft and technical skills. The key findings of the research is that leadership skills are crucial for team and the leadership style affects the project result. Murugesan, R., 2012. Attributes of leadership for success in project management. International Journal of Engineering and Management Sciences, 3(3), pp. 326-335. The study aimed at finding out the best attributes of the leadership which can lead towards success in such highly competitive and ever-changing environment. With emergence of new technologies and mounting competition, there is need to have a different leadership approach that can help any organization to survive in such situation. The research question is that what leadership attributes of a project manager can gear the organizations towards success. The research has reviewed the management theories from the classical theories to contemporary theories, and project management aspects to find a fitting set of leadership attributes, thus using a qualitative methodology. The study has argued that nowadays the leadership roles are much mature and are required to deliver the organizational success, rather than relying on just achieving projects’ deadlines. The research has found some important attributes of leaders, such as shared vision, good communication, integrity, enthusiasm, empathy, trust, problem-solving, calmness, and competence. Such attributes let the leader to create and demonstrate a successful culture of any organization with help of their devotion and influences. The key findings of the research is that the organizations’ success in todays’ environment is highly contingent upon the human factor, rather than the technical side. Lang, R. D., 2007. Project Leadership Key Elements and Critical Success Factors for IT Project Managers. Journal of Healthcare Information Management, 21(1), pp. 2-4. The article has discussed the aspect of “project Leadership”, and the key elements and critical success factors for the information technology project managers. Through qualitative study, a review of literature and some important aspects of project leadership needed to be identified for the purpose of research are presented. The research has argued that many of the project managers has failed, not due to any other issue than the lack of leadership. Though, management and leadership has many differences in conceptual terms, but they are very much linked to each other. For a project’s success, the first requirement is to develop a full commitment with the organization by making the projects in accordance with its goals and objectives. The leadership skills of the project managers are important than having only technical expertise, where they must understand how their organization view success. Furthermore, the article has discussed some other issues which leads towards the project failures and are critical success factors. Among these, the political side of the project manager, where they need to develop a political plan for all the stakeholders and guarantors of the project. Additionally, a political technique can be used known as “pre-partnering” where the project manager has to develop proper planning before executing the project, and this planning must consider the strong relationship management. The key findings of the research are that the cautious project alignment with the long-term orientation and proper pre-planning are the main success factors. Müller, R., Geraldi, J. G. & Turner, J. R., 2009. Linking Complexity and Leadership Competences of Project Managers, Siegen: University of Siegen. The purpose of the research is to assess the leadership competencies with respect to the different types of the projects having varying levels of complexity. The research has developed the hypothesis from the theoretical framework, as “Different project manager leadership profiles are related to successful projects of different types of complexity”. It is tested with the help of the primary data collected through questionnaires filled by fifty-nine respondents, who were the project managers from the successful IT projects. The quantitative methodology is used for the purpose of carrying out a research. The results from this study (for IT projects) are contrasted with the previous studies conducted on plant engineering projects to get different leadership profiles. The key findings of the research are that there is high sensitivity for interpersonal skills in the projects related to complexity of faith. With the complex projects based on ‘interactions’, the success oriented and disregarding the vision are significant leadership styles. Further, the findings pointed out that the project success lies in the project manger’s understanding of the project from different point of views, and also the involvement of all the stakeholders in the planning and execution of the project. There are some cultural issues and political aspects which if not present in project, the success rate becomes greater. Turner, J. R. & Muller, R., 2005. The Project Management Leadership Styles as a success factor in Project Management. Project Management Journal, 36(1), pp. 49-61. The purpose of the research is to present a literature review on the project managers’ leadership style as a project success factor. The research is conducted by Project Management Institute with the research question of whether the project manager’s leadership style is the key success element in the project management or not, and whether it poses different results in different kinds of projects. The research has relied on the previous study for that purpose, thus using the qualitative methodology and has reviewed a vast pool of literature. The research findings are surprising and are quite opposite to the existing literature where it is argued that the leadership style is the most important success factor in the project management. This study has found in contrast that the success factor is the project manager itself, with its better emotional intelligences abilities and competencies. They have argued that every time, there is a unique project being undertaken, which means that leadership styles has no or less effect over the project success, rather it is the project manager who has direct effect on performance that have been ignored mostly in previous researches. Part2: Research Report Project Management When we talk about the principles and techniques of the project management we frequently relate them with the management of people (i.e. workers, staff). However, the management of people comprises the tasks such as, establishing the objectives that business unit will achieve, planning the number and type of personnel who will work to accomplish these objectives, managing the personnel, inspecting their performance of the roles and jobs assigned them, and lastly bringing a close to their efforts. But, these methods and principles also apply to the projects. In addition, the project management is a process and a collection of methods based on the accepted principles of management employed for estimating, planning, and controlling work activities for accomplishing desired objectives in due course, according to specification, as well as within the available resources (Gillard, 2009; Turner & Muller, 2005). The objective of effective project management is to implement four fundamental procedures of project management. The initial is about the effective planning that is about making a decision in advance what a project will achieve and also well as deciding the accurate steps to achieve it, and recognizing the when to start and finish every project step. Then we move for systematizing the utilization of the resources effectively and efficiently as executing the project plan. In the next step we determine and control how effectively our project plan is started and implemented. At this stage we lead in project management scenario for encouraging personnel for achieving the project objectives (Gillard, 2009; Turner & Muller, 2005). Project Management and Leadership In view of the fact that the project is a team activity in which people from different domains and areas work together to achieve a common goal hence project stakeholders should play their role in order to make a project a success. In this scenario, project sponsor and leader can play a significant role in the success and failure of project. A project sponsor is the person who is responsible for providing funding for the project so they should be cooperative enough to handle various kinds of situations. However, the main responsibility remains on the shoulders of project managers throughout the project management life-cycle. A project management should have effective leadership skills so that he could handle varying situations throughout project development. The project manager should be capable of dealing with conflicts. He should also motivate his team members whenever a situation of stress occurs (Lang, 2008; Murugesan, 2012). In a large number of researches and books, there have been much debate over the issue that do organizations need managers or leaders or both. In today’s dynamic environment organizations need strong leadership and management to achieve optimal effectiveness. Leadership is a function of management so a manager is needed to be able to lead. Mostly Leaders are thought to play inspirational and visionary role for organizational members but managers are stuck to their routine operations. In this paper, the objective is to discuss the differences between the leadership and management, roles and responsibilities of leaders in creating the healthy organizational culture and recommendations to create healthy organizational culture (Murugesan, 2012). Most often the terms “management” and “leadership” are used interchangeably but in reality there is a crucial difference between these two and the roles they both play. Main difference is that managers are the people who do things right but leaders are those who do right thing. Management involves different kind of processes like planning, budgeting, structuring roles, recruiting, and measuring performance. Management helps in process of manufacturing and delivering the product or service as promised. But Leadership is entirely different. Leadership is about forecasting and exploiting the opportunities to excel in competitive market. It’s about the vision, empowerment of the people and behaviors rather than focusing on attribute (Kotter, 2013). Managers accept the status quo and they set hierarchies. They have their subordinates created by their circles of power while leaders have followers created by their circles of influence. Managers try to manage their work by controlling a group of entities to achieve organizational goals but leaders try to influence, motivate and enable others to take part in the organizational success. Managers tend to limit their focus on the day to day duties and a part of organization while leaders have their focus on the horizon and bring real changes. Managers tend to administer people, focus on systems, ask how and when type of questions about tasks but on the other side leaders tend to innovates, focus on people, and ask what and why type of questions about the tasks (Muller, et al., 2007; Turner & Muller, 2005). Each Organization has its own culture that could be constructive or destructive. Leaders play a great role in making it constructive. Foremost, leaders have to play their inspirational role to motivate employees towards the vision of organization that could lead to success. Secondly, leaders must promote channels that create open communication among the organizational members to create a positive open culture. Thirdly, leaders must create a positive authority sense and create the sense of responsibility. Fourthly, Leaders must empower the employees to innovate, experiment through taking risks. Leaders must focus on developing people through coaching and democratic role to teamwork harmony among members (Turner & Muller, 2005). Why Leadership is Important? Leadership plays a vital role in project management and is considered as the backbone of any developmental or upgrading process. Leaders unite individuals from different background on a single platform and present unity of purpose. Moreover leaders establish a particular direction for their followers which allow them in managing the internal environment of the organization. Once the adherents follow guidance provided by their leader efficiently they can ultimately achieve their targeted goals, aims and objectives in an organized manner. Hence it is clearly evident that project success can easily be achieved with good leadership on any stage or medium as it is the excellence of leaders who are able to set objectives efficiently and assist their followers in implementing those objectives within specified time limits (Gillard, 2009; Lang, 2008). Considering the role of leaders in big organization it is found that leaders are proactive and lead their employees through providing example. The employees follow such instances after being inspired by the charismatic leadership of their leader rather than having a sense of dictatorship. A good leader is one who leads in a manner which is depicted through implementation and then leading through actions as opposed to simply dictating their rules and actions without exemplifying any real instances. Leaders recognize and act in response to the variation of the external environment and completely understand the ups and downs of the changing external environment. They are then able to communicate the right direction to their followers for attaining quality in work. The role of leadership in a big organization is to comprehend the requirements of every stakeholder such as clients, owners, suppliers, working staff, general public and any other concerned associate of the business. Every stakeholder formulates the significant part of the quality management process hence they all combine to have an effect on organization’s success. It is the quality of good leadership to induce ethical values throughout their organization which can be achieved through organization’s mission statement or they can themselves become role models for inspiring their employees for becoming a strategic part of quality management initiative (Turner & Muller, 2005; Muller, et al., 2007). True leadership has the ability to equip their employees with the essential resources and struggle to fulfil their duty with sincerity and accountability. The entire organization can be motivated by true leaders for fulfilling their duties and get everyone involved in the process of quality management. It is essential at this stage that leaders must inspire and recognize the contributions and efforts made by employees at all levels which will further instigate a sense of accountability amongst employees and will inspire them in attaining more results and they will voluntarily involve more in quality management procedures. This entire process is dependent on the inputs from both sides whether it is the leader or it is the company’s workforce (Muller, et al., 2007; Lang, 2008). Thus, it is concluded that leaders and managers are two different notions, managers can be made through organizational hierarchy but leaders can come from any side. Much of the literature shows that leaders can bring about a winning corporate culture through their motivational, inspirational and visionary roles. References Gillard, S., 2009. Soft Skills and Technical Expertise of Effective Project Managers. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 6(2009), pp. 723-729. Lang, R. D., 2008. Project Leadership: Key Elements and Critical Success Factors for IT Project Managers. Journal of Healthcare Information Management, 21(1), pp. 1-4. Muller, R., Geraldi, J. G. & Turner, J. R., 2007. Linking Complexity and Leadership Competences of Project Managers. Brighton, UK, IRNOP VIII Conference (International Research Network for Organizing by Projects. Murugesan, R., 2012. Attributes of Leadership for Success in Project Management. International Journal of Engineering and Management Sciences, 3(3), pp. 326-335. Turner, J. R. & Muller, R., 2005. The Project Manager's Leadership Style as a Success Factor on Projects: A Literature Review. Project Management Journal, 36(1), pp. 49-61. Read More