The Role of the Project Manager and Leadership Types
Part of managing a project and being a project manager is having the skills and qualities of a leader. The reason for this is because we have to lead people and influence people and help people and smooth over situations, or help go through situations or assist in situations to get the desired result. And all of that comes down to being a leader.
The qualities and skills of a leader according to the PMBOK guide (The project management body of knowledge) for project management is communication. Often what is quoted is nearly 90% of the time a project manager will be communicating with others, helping all those different bits and pieces come together, getting information into the right areas and making sure that communication is taking place.
We also need to be giving feedback constructively and accepting feedback graciously, and managing expectations in the right way. Being a leader also means being respectful, kind, being honest, being loyal and being ethical in the way that we do business. It means giving credit to others where credit is due.
Usually as a leader myself I would prefer to give credit to my team and if something goes wrong then I would take the blame for that, and help improve the process and help coach and improve team members. Taking the blame myself as the leader for anything that goes wrong, while giving praise to everyone when a team effort or even an individual effort goes right.
Being a leader also means being a lifelong learner. Continuing to learn and continuous improvement, being able to sift through massive amounts of information to get to the important information. Wow is that a good one! You’ll see this in the project management tools and techniques for each process as you go through the PMBOK guide – you will see expert judgment and data analysis are actually the top two tools and techniques, along with meetings.
Long story short, if you don’t like meeting with people and sifting through amounts of information and data and communicating a lot then those are the skills that you will need to work on to help do this in the best way possible.
You’ll need critical thinking, and to be service oriented for the people who you’re delivering that business value to.
The Six Types of Leadership
There are many different leadership styles as well.
- There is the laissez-faire leader, which is a hands-off approach allowing the team to make their own decisions.
- There is the transactional leader, where we’re focusing on achievements, and “I’ll do this for you if you do this for me,” where we’re transacting instead of maybe doing other management or leadership things.
- The servant leader will focus on others’ growth and their learning, it’ll be a coaching role but also someone who coaches. They carry food and water for the team (metaphorically) and they will really get in and get their hands dirty. They will facilitate all that communication as opposed to just directing things all the time.
- There is a transformational leader, a visionary leader, and they’re inspiring and they’re motivational.
- The charismatic leader is high energy, they’re self-confident and they hold strong convictions. Usually people are drawn to these charismatic leaders because they are naturally people who draw other people to them. That can help them get things done in an organization – which is really great.
- There is an interactional leadership style, which is a combination of a few – the transactional, transformational and charismatic leadership styles.
The Difference between Leadership and Management
Leadership and management are not the same thing. You have probably heard this before but project managers will need both to pull off the work that they do. For example “management” – even though being a boss instead of a leader could be seen as being a bad thing – sometimes you do need to work on your management skills to manage things and get them done.
Whereas leadership and guiding and coaching and being more visionary, that is also important from a strategic perspective. Seeing the bigger picture for example. Through leadership you’ll be guiding and influencing and collaborating with people, you’ll be focusing on the systems, the broader systems and the structure of things instead of the nitty-gritty.
You’ll be looking at the long term vision, inspiring trust with your people, and looking at the “why”. “Start with why”is that famous book by Simon Sinek. They start with the broader “why” behind things and then work on how and what we’re doing.
Management on the other hand is that smaller day to day nitty-gritty stuff. It’s your near term goals, really getting things done, relying on control such as the direct control you have over your team, and then focusing on the how and when things are getting done instead of just the why. It’s the bottom line, managing that cost and that’s still important. You do need both and you need it in a balance to be a good project manager.
– David McLachlan