Project leader

Project leader
See also
Conditions of strategy implementation Organizational culture and project management Management by values Strategic human resource management Strategizing Strategic hrm Strategic issues Skills and competencies Chief innovation officer

Project leader "has a multitude of responsibilities to the project team, the sponsor and key stakeholders, to their organization and the client. Project leaders usually manage specialists in areas other than their own, who have to be brought together to produce effective results. As a integrator ensures all the activities of the project are pulled together and that any links missing or broken are identified." (Coleman S., MacNicol D. 2016) Considering another aspect, K. Pandya defines poject leader as "the architect of the project success. Project leadership competencies largely influence the project success. Research has shown that the project leader is one of the most important success factors of the projects" (Pandya K. 2014, s. 3)

The Roles of the Project Leader

The key among the project leader's roles are listed below :

1. Evolving Planning
2. Responsive Agility
3. Proactive Resilience
4. Collaborative Teamwork

"The first three roles-planning, agility, and resilience-focus on coping with changes, with each role ralating to a diffrent kind of change. These three roles, which complement each other, can be implemanted effectively only when they are supported by the fourth role, collaboration."(A. Laufer, T. Little, J. Russell, B. Mass, 2018, s. 6-7) In other words "project leaders are not only responsible for managing the day-to-day technical, engineering and standard works or achieving short-term goals of the project such as conforming to the basic triangle of time, budget and acceptable quality, but also have for aligning with the rapid change in the business environment, so as to achieve long-term project objectives and Return on Investment (ROI). They also need to manage change, scarcity of competent resources, deal with various behavioral issues with internal and external stakeholders and build high relationship."(Pandya K. 2014, s. 3)

Areas of concentration

"Every project leader should have a degree of leadership ability." (Coleman, D. MacNicol 2016)

Leadership focuses on :

• Vision
• Selling what and way
• Longer range
• People
• Democracy
• Developing
• Challenging
• Innovating
• Inspiring trust
• Policy
• Flexibility

Competencies of a successful project leader

There is not one single concept the field of project management research agrees upon.There are a wealth of competencies found to be of importance for project leaders that group around the three main areas of emotional, managerial and intellectual competences. The skill set includes :

• conflict management
• stakeholder influence
• technical project management tools
• team motivation
• communication
• disciplined
• attitude towards the end-customer and users
• human resources management

References

• Coleman S., MacNicol D., (2016), Project Leadership, Routledge, New York
• Laufer A. Little T. Russell J. Mass B. (2018), Becoming a Project Leader: Blending Planning, Agility, Resilience, and Collaboration to Deliver Successful Projects, Palgrave Macmillan, s. 6-7
• Meyer A. (2014), What are the competencies of a successful project leader, International Journal of Management Cases, 16(1), s. 29-30
• Pandya K (2014),The key competencies of project leader beyond the essential technical capabilities, IUP Journal of Knowledge Management, 12(4), 39, s. 3
• Verma K., and R. Max Wideman (1994), Project manager to project leader?, s.2-3

Author: Katarzyna Kraj