What does it take to make it: the function of a project leader

Before offering ideas and practices to improve our project leadership skills, I invite you to pause and examine assumptions about leadership we may rarely have had cause to question.

Imagine asking, “Do you know what leadership is?” For most project professionals we might anticipate a disdainful, if not disparaging look, and inevitable retort: “Yes of course I know what project leadership is!”

So unsurprisingly, when asked how I would assess project leadership, I too, instantly and instinctively assumed it an easy question to answer.

After all, from childhood we’re fed ‘parental’ images of leadership from across the world, and time to the beginning of recorded history, fed through myths, legends and media designed to hijack and own our attention.

So I expected to come up with a swift answer and yet, against all expectations, pondering what good leadership looks like I was swiftly faced with a wild diversity of leadership stereotypes ranging from the benign, to tyrannical and manifesting across all human endeavours throughout all human history.

I imagined men, women, young and old: political, religious, kings and queens: dictators, saints and sinners: projecting themselves as leaders. Imagine them and any you would willingly bestow the title of 'leader' upon, outside and within the realm of project delivery. Now ask, which of these forms of leadership, is fit-for-purpose in contemporary project delivery, and why?

This is the crucial question we need to be asking to develop project leadership skills. We must be totally clear and understand what ‘good’ looks like in the context of project leadership. Having considered those that come to mind as representing good leaders, we must also take into account the context in which that leadership is exercised and with what intent. Is it a traditional ‘battlefield’ leadership style, where the leader must command and control: top-down; subordinate and dominate? Or is it a community where the leader must earn the willing bestowal, rather than ‘command’ the title of leader?

So, the question of what good looks like, swiftly prompted yet another: that of context. For considering context, just as with ‘stereotypes’ of leadership, I realised contemporary project delivery ‘environments’ are fundamentally, if not tectonically more complex — making traditional stereotypes of leadership behaviours redundant, if not counter-productive. However, the very function of the project leader remains the same and that is to elicit collaboration between diverse stakeholders.

The above changes in the function of those leading project delivery means that to make it as a project leader we must develop the necessary awareness and skills to establish, secure and maintain successful engagement from diverse stakeholders. The project leader must, for example, ensure stakeholders from diverse disciplines consult with each other to avoid clashes. Project leaders must span such silos within the integrated project delivery team, and beyond, to foster effective stakeholder collaboration and communications.

The project leader with few, if any, direct reports within the client organisation must be adept in establishing mutual respect across stakeholders, often with diverse interests and agendas. They must be capable of identifying common ground that’s necessary to building rapport and trust; the project leader should establish a shared vision building on a unity of common interest. This is where we must start if we are to develop fit-for-purpose project delivery skills to make it as a project leader.