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Project Management and Project Leadership

October 17, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Leadership, People Issues, Project Management Best Practices, Project Management Musings

Project Management and Project Leadership
By Craig Brown

Project management is typically not an activity carried out at the strategic apex of an organisation. More commonly it’s an activity that happens in middle to lower management, and it’s usually tactical, even though strategic management skills are often needed.

Project management is about the development and execution of a plan, and that plan is in response to a business problem or opportunity that an executive sponsor or other manager has prioritised to the top of the queue.

Project managers and project team members are experts in execution and these days it’s a very important skill.

There is a lot of focus in the PM press at the moment on the importance of soft skills; managing teams, stakeholders, suppliers and sponsors. And a common discussion in management classes – both for project managers and for MBAs is a discussion about the difference between management and leadership. The tendency is for people to think leadership is more important than management, but that’s not true. The real answer is that it depends on the context and environment.

And for the project environment where there are a number of specialists coming together to collaborate as a team there’s even less need to put one person forward as a leader. Everyone should take their turn at leadership, when their skills are called upon, and where they see a gap in the team’s performance as a group. And everyone in the team should step out of the way when someone else has the ball, and let them work to their best within their area of expertise.

What does this mean for project managers? It means that project managers should manage first and lead only when it’s their turn. Let the team members take leadership roles when it’s their time. Project managers should be experts in leading from the rear.

Craig Brown has worked as a project manager and business analyst mainly in the Australian ITC and the banking industries. He has also worked in the law, education and welfare industries, including starting a law firm. Craig now has a Master’s degree in project management from RMIT university, and is currently working with a Melbourne based IT consulting firm called OptimiseIT. Craig’s personal blog can be found at http://betterprojects.blogspot.com.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 and is filed under Leadership, People Issues, Project Management Best Practices, Project Management Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 people have left comments

I agree 100% that management teams are primarily there to manage and that should be their prime function. Too many have lost sight of that. However, basic group dynamics dictate that that roles, paricularly leadership roles will be emergent within any such group and I am not convinced that consensus management is appropriate when the goals are challenging.
Bruce Tuckman’s 1965 model of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing, underklined the importance of the ’storming’ phase. Too many diplomats (or too much democracy) can prevent the team reaching its full potential.
I toally agree that leadership is not more important than management and basic operation. But management without leadership is like a ship without a captain - it may be packed with skilled seamen, each with a defined role, but the ship is going nowhere.

Digitalian wrote on October 17, 2008 - 5:24 am | Visit Link

Digitalian,

Thanks for the comment.

I take your point that there has to be vision and leadership setting goals and framing the day to ay work with a big picture.

However, there are plenty of opportunities for the project leader to step back and give the wheel to others for a while.

One of the benefits is immediate - an empowered team who will be more proacive and take more ownership of the problems at hand.

One of the other benefits is more long term - career building for the team members and talent building for the employer.

Thanks again for reading.

Craig Brown wrote on October 17, 2008 - 8:27 am | Visit Link

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