Overview of Project Leadership

Discuss about the Project Leadership in Project Management for Administrative Projects.

This report provides an overview on the significance of project leadership in the project management area. Project leadership is basically an act of leading the team towards successful or effective completion of the project (Ahmed et al., 2013). It is a kind of project organization in which its main competence is effective controlling of a project.  It is generally represented by a project leader who controls the whole project and may involve subproject managers in case of bigger projects. The main objective of project leadership is to achieve the target within the specified time by fulfilling all objectives. It is a highly complex procedure that is vital for success of project management. The project leaders play a vital role in managing and achieving success in project. The project leaders basically try to enhance development procedure in the business decision making. In the present century, project leadership not only helps to manage the project in effective way but also helps to cope up with several competitive challenges. Project leadership affects on enhancing project management practices for reducing complexity as well as uncertainty linked with the project pursuit (Martinelli & Milosevic, 2016).

Strategic project leadership is needed for dealing with administrative projects. Strong leadership along with weak management leads to ineffective outcome of the project.  Now- a- days, project leadership not only focuses on time as well as budget but also takes into account customers requirements, present market trends and the competitive advantage for managing project strategically. The essence in project leadership is to concentrate on empowering employees in order to create business environment for efficient performance.  This study focuses on the instrumental values that contributes to project leadership,  weakness that affects the ability to lead individuals and the leadership skills that contributes to project leadership practice (DuBois et al., 2013). The development plan for working towards the goals of project leadership capabilities is also outlined in this study.

Two instrumental values that contributes to project leadership

Instrumental values refer to the particular behavioral methods by which an individual achieves the target of a project.  Instrumental values based leadership basically implements their influence for making difference through alignment of actions as well as decisions with the chosen values (Packendorff, Crevani & Lindgren, 2014). Moreover, values often affect the perceptions of a leader regarding enterprise and societal success. There are several instrumental values that contribute to the success of a project. The two most instrumental values which contribute to my project leadership are integrity and innovativeness.

Key Instrumental Values for Project Leadership

Integrity means the adherence to ethical as well as moral principles and honesty of an individual. It is one of the important values that a leader is required to have for leading a project. .  It has been opined by Laufer (2012) that, the authenticity is one of the basic building blocks in the project leadership. Authentic project leaders are mainly the individuals who have extraordinary integrity and are willing to maintain their key values. Integrity contributes to my project leadership in huge way by facilitating the project leaders to focus on their actions during their work. Integrity helps to maintain consistency in behavior and attitude while having a conversation with the team members. However, proper behavior and dedication towards honesty with the team members also helps to build good relationship with them. Apart from this, it also connotes deep commitment for taking appropriate action regardless of any individuals influence and circumstances.  It also aids to establish good ethical policies and also implement these in the project processes.  Besides this, integrity values also facilitate to provide clear view about the client’s true requirements and work according to their preferences (Eweje, Turner & Müller, 2012). This in turn also seeks in empowering individuals in order to contribute to client’s vision. As a result, it helps to attain trust of their clients and acquire more projects in business.

Innovativeness value is another instrumental value that has huge contribution to my project leadership. An innovative approach is vital for my project leadership as it brings about new thinking as well as different actions for managing the project. Innovativeness value helps to think differently about the role and all the challenges occurring during the ongoing of the project. It also facilitates all the individuals who are involved in the particular project to think in creative way and works in different ways for mitigating issues and facing challenges from other competitors. In addition to this, it also contributes in project leadership by generating more insights through experimentation as well as exploration.  It also contributes in bringing about innovative culture in the workplace. Owing to this, the team members also make creative contributions in the project, which in turn helps to achieve success in the project. It has been opined by Fleming & Koppelman (2016) that, innovative value involves refining as well as revising ideas that is to be integrated in the project. This also contributes in enhancing flexibility in leadership , thereby providing ability to switch the leadership behaviors  when it is required. This instrumental value mainly encompasses various activities, behaviors and actions that interact for producing innovative outcome. But this innovative value also leads to involvement of new risks in the project. This in turn contributes to radical thinking and implementation of appropriate leadership style in order to mitigate this risk and issues occurring during the project (Fleming & Koppelman, 2016). Overall, these two instrumental values facilitates in completing my project in innovative way and gain competitive advantage against all the rivalries.

Weaknesses Impacting One’s Ability to Lead

The weakness of an individual hinder ones abilities to lead people around them and hence are the flaws in ones personality. These weaknesses could generally complicate the relationships with all the people during the leadership practice. One of my greatest weaknesses that impacts on my ability to lead other people is arrogance. Arrogance means engaging in behaviors that is intended to embellish an individual superiority sense by disparaging other people.  Being very confident about my abilities, it is sometimes considered as egotism and arrogance. Arrogant behavior sometimes becomes a challenging problem while leading all the team members. This kind of behavior during work makes interpersonal interactions highly difficult, create uncomfortable as well as stressful workplace environment for all the people. This weakness has led to huge impact on my ability to lead other people and hence becomes detrimental to all the people involved in it. Some of the severe impacts are given below:

• Due to lack of appreciation for other people , it often leads to dysfunction. It is thereby hard to properly function when the targets are messed up by misplaced focus
• This weakness also breaks down connection with other people involved in the project. As a result, it creates lack of trust among all the people who are working in the project.
• Sometimes my arrogant behavior also creates tension among the people, which in turn leads to resistance. Hence, it leads to decline in productivity during completion of project.
• This weaknesses also blocks innovation during the work, which in turn impacts on the overall project.
• It also adversely affects the social exchange in the business and creates problems during completion of project.
• In some cases, it destroys the relationship with other people involved in the project. Moreover, it also creates difficulty in building good relationship with other members involved in the project.
• Due to this weakness, there occurs lack of listening skills and thus it causes conflict within the business operations.

As arrogance is generally typified by poor performance as well as low self –confidence, developmental interventions required for this is training intervention that is aimed for improving leadership skills. For instance, training usually aims at enhancing interpersonal awareness and also helps to understand how this behavior impacts other people. It has been opined by Yang, Huang & Hsu, (2014) that, this kind of weakness must be addressed in order to improve the performance of leadership and achieve success in completion of project. Moreover, weak learning orientation might cause t recognize others for blaming during setbacks or experience failure in the project.  Despite making revision on the performance strategies, strong orientation process has been adopted in order to uncover the reason behind these issues and overcome this kind of weakness. Thus, implementation of this orientation also outcomes in efficient professional development and increase my ability to lead other people in effective way. In addition to this, it also facilitates me to interact with other people in more effective way and increase productivity in the project operation. More the effective communication takes place, more impressive will be the performance of the leaders.  Hence, it has been suggested by Yukl (2012) that, proper orientation is necessary for those leaders who have this kind of weakness.

Two leadership skills that contribute to my present project leadership practice are- communication skills and self-awareness skills. All these skills help my ability to encourage or inspire the project team and develop all the team members in the way for achieving the target of project.

Leadership Skills Enhancing Project Leadership Practice

Communication skill is one of the important leadership skills that help a project leader to communicate efficiently (Yukl, 2012). This skill facilitates me to assure that the resources adopt effective strategy, decisions as well as values and thereby inevitably possess good communication skills. It also enhances my ability to effectively interact with the clients as well as other professionals. In addition to this, it also aids to build cooperative relationship with all the team members of project and ensure that good environment exists during their project work. It also helps me to properly identify the skills of participants before assigning the task to them (Schoemaker, Krupp & Howland 2013). However, proper assigning of task to the team members enhances their efficiency and aids to complete the project with specified time. Besides this, vertical, diagonal and horizontal communication facilitates me to manage the project in effective way. This skill also helps me to enable, create and foster proper understanding as well as trust to motivate other people in focusing on the project. Effective communication also helps me to practice leadership in efficient way. In addition to this, this skill also aids me to develop proper leadership style, which foster efficient as well as effective communication with the stakeholders of the project. This in turn helps to avoid conflicts within the workplace and make proper decision regarding completion of project. Overall, this communication skill helps to attain trust of my team members and achieve success in the project.

Another important skill that makes huge contribution in my present leadership practice is self- awareness skill (Laufer, 2012). Self-awareness refers to proper understanding of owns’ emotion, strengths, values, attitudes, limitations and motives. Self-awareness skill permits an individual to understand other people’s emotions in better way. it has been opined by Obradovic et al., (2013) that, self-awareness skill is one of the cornerstones in leadership development. This skill helps me to identify the gaps in leadership skill that promotes skill development. This skill increases awareness of my strength as well as limitations and understand other members personality traits as well as emotions. It facilitates me to find the situations that will be highly effective, improve stress management, assist with decision making and encourage all team members during the project operation. This leadership skill not only helps to reveal skill gap in the project, but also helps to work on it for reducing the gap. As in some situation it becomes difficult for me to make proper decision, this self-awareness skill helps me to develop intuitive decision making skills. Besides this, this leadership skills also enables me to self- regulate my thoughts, speech and action. It promotes my self- confidence by providing clear realization about the project. In addition to this, this self-awareness skill increases my ability to self-regulate, which in turn provides space that is required for knowing others motive and create trust among them. Being the leaders of the project, it is necessary to influence others in a team so that they can overcome all the challenges occurring during the project operation. In this situation, this skill helps me to show my team members strength and also encourage them to do the same. Hence, these skills contribute in improving my leadership practice and create open culture within the project. 

Development Plan for Improving Project Leadership Capabilities

Two personal goals that contributes to project leadership capabilities

It has been cited by Brion et al., (2012) that, project leaders becomes successful by enhancing on their personal goals. By setting the personal goals, it helps me to achieve the objectives of project that might outcome in betterment of the situation or themselves. The goal has been set through systematic procedure which involves effective determination as well as execution. The goals that have been set is usually generic for all kinds of project. The two personal goals that contributes to my project leadership capabilities are-

• Completion of project within specified time- The first goal that has been set for the project is to effectively manage the workload and complete the project within time (Hargie, 2016). This goal helps to improve the capabilities of my project leadership practice. Proper implementation of effective strategies facilitates in finishing the task in efficient as well as timely manner. This goal enhances my leadership capabilities to delegate task to all the team members effectively, set realistic deadlines and avoid distractions. It also facilitates in increasing sense of work satisfaction and produces the project with higher quality. Moreover, it also enhances my focus on the project and work according to the plan.
• Complete the project under budget and meet all the requirements- This personal goal mainly contributes in controlling the cost of project within approved budget as well as deliver expected goals of project. This goal also increases my capabilities to meet all the requirements of the project. Furthermore, this goal contributes my leadership capabilities in defining, executing, controlling and updating the whole project operation.

Reasons behind selecting these goals and its benefit to the professional development

The main reasons behind selecting these two goals are:

• Effectively delivering the task and attaining better outcome of project
• Organizing the work in effective way
• Attaining higher satisfaction from work
• For keeping less pressure during work and focusing on efficiency
• Effectively organizing all the team members work
• Avoiding risk and conflict during the operation of project
• Motivating all the team members to concentrate on work.

These two goals benefit my professional development by boosting confidence as well as sense of achievement and allow maintaining valuable resource. It helps to identify problems, evaluate data, reviewing and applying this information. It benefits to manage as well as develop my capabilities and make effective decisions. Moreover, it also assists me to set proper target for myself as well as avoid procrastination at any cost. Effective management of budget and time not only facilitates to enhance productivity but also attain less stressful way of doing operation. However, these two indispensable goals aids in managing both professional as well as personal balance program.

Outlining practicable plan that should be followed for working towards these goals

The practicable plan that I can follow for working towards achievement of these goals are explained below:

Step 1- Identifying personal as well as work related priorities

This is one of the vital steps in this whole process. The goals to be accomplished must be properly identified. Selection of the task to be done first based on the work priorities. However, this step will help to lower the stress level while carrying on the work.

Step 2- .Translation of specific priorities into proper target long with certain component activities

Each goal can be divided into component activities and then proper steps are to be adopted for achieving the goal of the project. The requirements as well as resources that are to be required for this project are translated into proper target (Kerzner, 2018). This facilitates to organize for attaining success and move forward for attainment of these goals.

Step3- Identifying intermediary time period relating to activities step and attainment of goals

In this step, deadlines or time frame for personal or work related target including report deadlines are to be identified properly. Moreover, proper scheduling that is to be done in this step aids top provide proper direction as well as affirms the commitment for carrying them in proper step.

Step 4- Keep the record for saving the time and budget of project

The schedule made for attaining these goals must be kept in time saving device. This can help in keeping track of my commitments done during work and assess the progress to accomplish target (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017).

Step 5- Identifying the barriers that occurs during project

Several barriers might occur during the operation of project, which might hamper the progress of project. However, identifying these barriers can help to avoid risks during the project. Furthermore, it can also help to take correct measures and achieve success (Müller, Geraldi & Turner, 2012).

Step 6- Striving the balance between doing and being

Implementation of effective strategies and striving balance between doing and being can help to be more productive, improve relationships with other team members and reduce anxiety during the project work.

Thus, proper implementation of this practicable plan can help me to successfully complete the project work within specified time frame.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that project management is vital as it brings in leadership as well as direction to the project. It also assures that goals of the project align with strategic business goals. Apart from this, it also ensures that there is proper plan to execute on the strategic goals. The project leaders however plays vital role in successfully completing the project within specified time limit. Moreover, implementation of proper practicable plan will facilitate to analyze as well as balance available resources within required timeline and thus develop realistic schedule. Thus, proper scheduling will help to meet all the requirements and achieve the goal of project. 

References

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Brion, S., Chauvet, V., Chollet, B., & Mothe, C. (2012). Project leaders as boundary spanners: Relational antecedents and performance outcomes. International Journal of project management, 30(6), 708-722.

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Müller, R., Geraldi, J., & Turner, J. R. (2012). Relationships between leadership and success in different types of project complexities. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 59(1), 77-90.

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