Appendix F: Project Leadership
ISBN: 978-1-78714-830-7, eISBN: 978-1-78714-829-1
Publication date: 10 October 2017
Citation
Mikkelsen, H. and Riis, J.O. (2017), "Appendix F: Project Leadership", Project Management, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 643-668. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78714-829-120171022
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited
F.1. Tool Sheet: Project Leader Role
What
This tool sheet describes the project leader role seen as personal tasks and as personal behavior.
Use – Where and When
The project leader role is relevant in all project phases and should be adapted to the project type and conditions.
Method
General Role Descriptions
Mintzberg (1973) presented a general description of a leader’s role and tasks that is also relevant for a project manager – formulated as ten roles of a leader. In addition to the roles, is it important to note that many project managers participate as technical leaders in some of the technical project work. The project manager should use the roles in view of her/his own situation.
Inspired by Mintzberg and developing the five management areas in Figure F1, we have formulated our version of the general roles of a project leader/manager – see Figure F2. It is a checklist for prioritizing own effort and for analyzing the personal effort.
Issues to Consider When Selecting a Project Leader
The project leader/manager may be recruited by evaluating qualifications (knowledge and experience) in the management areas in Figure F1:
The user area – Insight into user’s/customer’s world, insight into disciplines and technology, degree of customer orientation.
The product technology area – Plan and manage product development and implementation, create and manage technical communication, judgment related to problems, and choice of solutions and quality.
The change area – Arrange the approach to and manage the change process. Communicate with interested parties.
The political area – Understand conflicts of interest and establish interaction between interested parties. Ability to maneuver in political environment.
The personal area outwards – Create understanding and acceptance of the project and of solutions.
The personal area inwards – Project team and participants, natural leadership competency and authority. Ability to establish teamwork, to coordinate and to create good working conditions.
The personal area inwards – The individual team member, natural leadership competency and authority, motivation, good working conditions, and performance development. Ability to lead specialists.
The administrative and economy area – Planning and control.
The resource area – Identify the need for competencies and effort and ability to provide them.
There may be different role profiles – predominantly ‘inwards’ leader or ‘outwards’ leader or ‘technical content’ leader. This picture may be related to the project processes and their importance and challenges. It is useful to pay attention to the ability to manage the system/product process versus the anchoring/change process.
Figure F3 shows a checklist with requirements for the project leader. The list may be used as basis for a specific list, aimed at an actual project leader job. Select relevant abilities from the list. It is probably not complete, but may direct the requirements to clusters. Use also a two to four-step scale to mark the importance of requirements and the candidate’s capability.
The requirements are defined by the individual project and its challenges. Use pictures: the project portrait, project challenges, and environmental challenges.
Behavior
It is a challenge to lead the project team and the individual participants, as the project leader is often a colleague and a peer to them. The role will be accepted as long as the leader is perceived as taking care of useful tasks. But tensions may arise, if the project leader feels obliged to exert more personally oriented leadership functions. Figure F4 illustrates some of these tensions.
Another phenomenon is delegation of tasks to participants. The project manager is often recruited with emphasis on the technical content of the project, and may be inclined to do some tasks himself and to supervise the participants. Figure F5 shows some basic principles for delegation.
A third phenomenon is related to the handling of political conditions. Figure F6 offers some advice on such situations, inspired by Morton (1983).
Project Manager’s Contract
Responsibilities and authorities may be defined and described for each of the five elements in the five-by-five model:
The project task – Scope, goal, selection of solutions, quality level, operations/user economy, implementation
The environment – Analysis and clarification of connections and interfaces
The resources – Allocation of people and facilities, cost spending, contracts, and agreements
The interested parties – Contact and communication, commitments, and agreements
The approach – Work methods and approach, work organization, project control
Conditions and authority should be related to the task. Figure F7 shows a checklist of conditions to be cleared with the project responsible manager/owner.
Measuring the Project Manager’s Performance
The project manager’s personal performance and his/her results should be evaluated separately, rather than in combination with measuring project results and the project team/organization performance. Traditional methods for measuring manager’s performance may be applied, adapted to the special circumstances.
Another way of measuring is the competency profile described in tool sheet F.2.
References
Dobson, M. S. (2001). Project Management for the Technical Professional. Project Management Institute.
Mintzberg, H. (1973). The Nature of Managerial Work. Harper & Row.
Morton, G. H. A. (1983). Become a Project Champion. International Journal of Project Management 1(4), 197–203.
F.2. Tool Sheet: Project Leader’s Competency
What
Besides technical qualifications, the project manager’s competencies can be divided into three areas. One is the experience acquired from management of previous projects. Another area is management and control competences – called method competencies – and the third area is behavioral competencies.
Competency includes the use of skills and knowledge and the ability to deliver results. Some project managers have good theoretical knowledge about methods and tools, but are not able to use the methods. At the other end of the spectrum, some project managers exert reasonable management, using methods, but are not able to explain the theoretical background of the methods.
Competency may be based on routine, e.g., that a project manager can lead a certain type of projects and use a set of methods and tools again and again. Competency may also be rooted in a proficiency to find and select methods and tools adapted to a specific project or the actual management situation. Competency is the ability to reflect and learn from leadership situations – being able to lead different types of projects.
Knowledge and skills are connected as illustrated in Kolb’s learning cycle. There are four cooperating elements: to decide, to act, to reflect, and to systematize. The first two support the practical experience. The last two represent reflection, acquiring new knowledge and creating new models.
Competency development is often described as a four-phase process. At first, you are unconsciously incompetent; then, you are aware of the need for learning more (consciously incompetent); a training effort makes you consciously competent, but you are not really competent, until you can use what you have learned unconsciously (unconsciously competent).
Use – Where and When
The picture of the project manager’s competency is used for developing knowledge and skills and for recruiting project managers.
Method
Experience Competency
Experience competency is typically described in the personal CV – a list of previous projects and assignments. It should contain the following information:
Projects – what, when
Project challenges, results, degree of success
Role in the project
Lessons learned from each project
Management and Control Competency
Competency in project management and control disciplines and related methods and tools may be described in a structure based on the five-by-five model. Describe the level of theoretical knowledge and of practical experience. The scale may be: minimal, some, good, satisfying. Evaluation is based on the CV.
The Danish Project Management Association has developed ‘competencies in project management’ used for certifying project managers. It is also useful for evaluating and planning own competency development. The elements of method competencies are shown in Figure F8. It distinguishes between overall project management and ongoing project management – a distinction not used in this book, because we find it casual and irrelevant. The model focuses on planning project management. It acknowledges differences in the management of different project phases as well. Also the Europe-based association, IPMA has developed a competence baseline, cf. www.ipma.ch.
The US-based association Project Management Institute has a similar model called project management body of knowledge (PMBOK). It has a different structure, but basically the same management functions, including:
PM knowledge competencies. The project manager’s knowledge about project management, and understanding of project management.
PM performance competencies. The project manager’s ability to lead a project with success.
Personal competencies and behavior.
PMBOK is rather didactic, prescribing certain methods and tools called “best practice.” We find this rather doubtful in view of the broad spectrum of projects in society. But the list of management functions is useful. See www.pmi.org.
Behavioral Competency
Developing managers and leaders, in general, may be supported by many personal development methods. We recommend them for developing project managers as well, because they build on a comprehensive experience basis and well-thought-out methods.
The above-mentioned competencies in project management include a set of leadership behavioral competencies – simple and relevant (see Figure F9). But it seems difficult to define a general behavior profile for project managers due to the variety of projects and project milieus. A differentiated and situation-oriented evaluation is necessary – plus inspiration from other characterizations.
The company Bell Labs has conducted a study in search of characteristics of ‘star performers’ (Kelley & Caplan, 1993). The result was a set of behavioral elements, such as taking initiative, technical competence, self-management, teamwork effectiveness, networking, leadership, and organizational understanding. The analysis showed that competency lies in the real and active display of behavior, not in the person being conscious about the element, but not showing it. The result of the analysis has inspired us to present a procedure for developing a competency profile, tailored to the individual company – possibly for a specific type of projects (see Figure F10). The advantage is a tailored profile – not a consultant’s standard profile. The development process strengthens the participant’s understanding of good project management. Figure F11 shows a form for indicating a project manager’s competence profile.
Some General Behavioral Models
The following models for describing behavior may inspire to be used as a tool for evaluating own and other persons’ behavior. Each model accentuates certain facets. There is no general model.
Adizes (1985) has defined four roles characterizing good management as a whole:
The producer (P). The leader must create results. He is the driver and he must know the project, the milieu, and the technology.
The administrator (A). The leader must guide his organization to deliver results. He must plan, coordinate, formulate norms and rules, create procedures, and monitor.
The entrepreneur (E). The leader must be capable of independent action, able to see possibilities for action, plan and act, and live with uncertainty and risk.
The integrator (I). The leader must organize the team and motivate the members and create cooperation.
Adizes calls it unsatisfactory management, if the project manager masters none or only one of these abilities. The manager should master all four roles, although not necessarily perfectly. It will often be better to compose a leader team with persons supplementing each other, e.g., PaeI + pAeI + paEI, (the size of the letters indicates the degree of mastering). Adizes has the following model for a group leading a project:
paeI, the integrator creating cooperation.
PaEi, the member ensuring results on time and implemented.
pAEi, the administrator handling practical administrative elements.
paEI, the reviewer and process observer.
pAEi, the reporter outwards and upwards.
paEi, resource persons in the group.
A simple model is to distinguish between democratic and authoritarian management. It describes how the manager involves team members in decisions. The following scale is used:
Hard-boiled authoritarian
Attentive authoritarian (patriarchal)
Laissez-faire
Consulting democratic
Involving democratic
Behavior also includes the way he relates to other people. Examples include:
Reserved versus open
Warm versus hard
Formal versus informal
Proactive versus hesitant
Sure versus searching
The Myers–Briggs type indicators (2014) describe four dimensions of the attitude to tasks. The first dimension describes the general attitude. The extrovert person gets energy from the environment, whereas the introvert gets energy from the inner (own) world. The second dimension describes the way of understanding and perceiving the situation – either by sensing via working with known facts, or by intuitively looking for opportunities and connections. The third dimension describes how the person evaluates propositions and solutions – either based on objective analysis and logic, or based on personal values. The fourth dimension is a general way of life – either a planned, arranged lifestyle, or a flexible, spontaneous lifestyle.
Blake and Mouton (1962) created ‘the managerial grid’ characterizing leaders by the degree of production (performance) orientation and the degree of people orientation. It is a matrix with different styles – see Figure F12. The following four styles are of special interest:
(1.1) The leader shows minimal initiative in all areas. Does not take on more responsibility than prescribed. Passes on orders from superior managers without taking a stand – acts as a messenger. Arguments for decisions are prescribed rules, precedence or orders from superior managers. The leader is rather passive and participates only in meetings as required. The primary effort aims to stay in the organization.
(1.9) The leader cares about her/his employees. Focus is on well-being and good working climate, and social life in the team. She/he does not push for results, because she/he thinks this conflicts with good working climate. She/he is hearty and pleasant and avoids conflicts and decisions involving tensions.
(9.1) The leader focuses on maximum production results. She/he requires full work effort, and has little confidence in employees’ feeling of responsibility and interest in doing their best. She/he exerts tight control and suppresses their independent decisions and personal needs, because she/he thinks that this conflicts with maximum production result. Planning is separated from doing, and effort is controlled by positive and negative sanctions.
(5.5) The leader is compromising – trying to be fair. She/he reduces requirements to production, because she/he wants to consider personal needs and vice versa. She/he thinks that there are always conflicting interests – it is necessary to meet midway.
These four styles build on the assumption that consideration of people conflicts with consideration of production. The difference is in the prevailing orientation.
(9.9) The optimizing leader sees it otherwise. Her/his behavior builds on the assumption that there is no conflict between consideration of production and consideration of people. Under the right circumstances, people will feel responsibility and be engaged in their work. They will develop independence and creativity and feel pleasure and personal satisfaction through results. The leader counteracts alienation from work by not separating planning and doing. Planning is done by the persons doing the work – in teamwork. The culture is characterized by personal engagement. Communication is open and direct. Conflicts are not suppressed, but discussed. 4Human needs and feelings are seen as drivers in the project.
The managerial grid assumes an ideal and best behavior. Other authors believe that behavior should be adapted to the individual situation. Hersey, Blanchard, and Johnson (2013) present a model called situational leadership, in which the leader’s behavior is described in two dimensions. One is task-oriented behavior indicating to which degree the leader explains the team/team member what to do, when, where, and how. The other dimension is social-oriented behavior. It indicates to which degree the leader is in dialog with the team/team member and offers consultative support, encourages, and facilitates. The behavior should also be adapted to the work maturity of the team/team member.
Match Between Project Manager’s Competency and Style and the Type of Project
Studies of project management indicate that the managerial style influences the project’s success, and that the type of project and the individual project phases require certain competencies. A general factor guiding the style is whether the project is a delivery project with a well-defined goal and plan, or a change project where the user’s situation, performance and understanding will change.
In the following, we describe a competency model for project managers, developed by Dulewicz and Higgs (2003). The model has 15 competencies connected to successful project management. The competencies are developed from studies of behavioral models, published and used in the last 80 years. The relevance for project managers is confirmed through several analyses, done by Dulewicz and Higgs and by other researchers. Some of these analyses (among others Müller & Turner, 2010) relate the importance of the competence elements to project complexity, degree of change, strategic importance, technological type, and type of contract. The elements are listed in Figure F13, with comments on their importance for different types of projects (based on Müller & Turner).
You can remove the descriptions of importance and use the form as a tool for evaluation and prioritization of competencies in individual projects. We recommend a situational prioritization of the importance, based on project type, complexity, and type of contract.
References
Adizes, I. (1985). How to Solve the Mismanagement Crisis. Adizes Institute.
Blake, R. R., & Mouton, J. (1962). The Managerial Grid. Scientific Methods, Austin, Texas.
Competencies in Project Management – National Competence Baseline for Scandinavian (2008). Version 3.0. The Danish Project Management Association.
Dulewicz, V., & Higgs, M. J. (2003). Design of a new instrument to assess leadership dimensions and styles. Henley Management College.
Hersey, P., Blanchard, K. H. & Johnson, D. H. (2013). Management of organizational behavior: Leading human resources (10th Ed.). Pearson.
Kelley, R., & Caplan, J. (1993). How Bell Labs creates star performers. Harvard Business Review, July-August, 128–139.
Kolb, D. (1984). Experimental Learning. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
MBTI Basics (2014). Myers & Briggs Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.myersbriggs.org
Müller, R., & Turner, R. (2010). Leadership competency profiles of successful project managers. International Journal of Project Management, 28(5).
F.3. Tool Sheet: Project Leader’s Plan
What
The leader’s plan deals with elements that require managerial effort as well as related methods. It is not necessarily a written plan, but a way of consciously work with the management task.
Use – Where and When
The plan is relevant throughout the project.
Method
The leader’s plan encompasses the project manager’s activities in the project plan, and the manager’s general management and control actions. It includes the handling of issues and points of special attention. They are related to the milestones, and are therefore important for the manager. Figure F14 shows typical elements of the plan.
The project manager should decide his/her style, how to handle conflicts, the decision process etc. We recommend a planning rhythm – time reserved weekly for reflection and planning:
New points of attention.
Points of attention in the coming two weeks.
Walk through the activity plan for the next two to three weeks. Note preparations necessary for ‘healthy’ activities in these weeks.
Personal action plan for next week.
A broad set of tools and methods is necessary in a large project. The leader will use a smaller set in a smaller project – some of them are quite simple tools. A guide to selecting tools is difficult to present, but Figure F15 may be of help. Figure F16 shows key elements of a plan for own work. It is important to update the plan every day. Figure F17 shows a form for a personal weekly plan.
Week Plan
Activities to-do per week. May contain all personal activities in more projects and in other assignments.
Work Plan
Activities related to this project.
Project Logbook
Chronological diary for the project.
- Prelims
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Forming and Defining the Project
- 3 Planning the Course of Action
- 4 Organizing
- 5 Cooperation in the Project Organization
- 6 Project Leadership
- 7 Project Control
- 8 Management of Several Projects
- 9 Trends and Challenges for Future Projects
- Appendix A: Project Characteristics
- Appendix B: Forming and Defining the Project
- Appendix C: Planning the Course of Action
- Appendix D: Organizing
- Appendix E: Cooperation in the Project Organization
- Appendix F: Project Leadership
- Appendix G: Project Control
- References
- About the Authors
- Index