LO 4.3 Understand the key behaviors in which project leaders engage to support their projects.
The wide range of duties that a project manager is expected to take on covers everything from direct supervision to indirect influence, from managing “hard” technical details to controlling “soft” people issues, from developing detailed project plans and budgets to adjudicating team member quarrels and smoothing stakeholder concerns. In short, the project manager’s job encapsulates, in many ways, the role of a mini-CEO: someone who is expected to manage holistically, focusing on the complete project management process from start to finish. In this section, we will examine a variety of the duties and roles that project managers must take on as they work to successfully manage their projects.
ACQUIRING PROJECT RESOURCES
Project resources refer to all personnel and material resources necessary to successfully accomplish project objectives. Many projects are underfunded in the concept stage. This lack of resource support can occur for several reasons, including:
The project’s goals are deliberately vague. Sometimes a project is kicked off with its overall goals still somewhat fluid. Perhaps the project is a pure research effort in a laboratory or an information technology project designed to explore new possibilities for chip design or computer speed. Under circumstances such as these, companies sponsor projects with a deliberately “fuzzy” mandate, to allow the project team maximum flexibility.
The project lacks a top management sponsor. As we will learn, having a project champion in the top management of the organization can be very helpful to project development, particularly in gaining support for the project with sufficient resources. On the other hand, when no powerful sponsor emerges for the project, it may face underfunding compared to other projects competing for scarce company resources.
The project requirements were deliberately understated. It is not uncommon for project resource needs to be purposely understated at the outset to get them accepted by the organization. Contractors bidding on work for governmental agencies are known to sometimes underbid to win these jobs and then renegotiate contracts after the fact or find other ways to increase profit margins later.
So many projects may be under development that there is simply not enough money to go around. A common reason for lack of resource support for a project is that the company is constantly developing so many projects that it cannot fund all of them adequately. Instead, the company adopts a “take it or leave it” attitude, presenting project managers with the option of either accepting insufficient funding or receiving none at all.
An attitude of distrust between top management and project managers. Sometimes projects receive low funding because top management is convinced that project managers are deliberately padding their estimates to gain excessive funding.
Regardless of the reasons for the lack of project resources, there is no doubt that many projects face extremely tight budgets and inadequate human resources.
Project managers, however, do have some options open to them as they seek to supplement their project’s resource support. If the resource problem is a personnel issue, they may seek alternative avenues to solve the difficulty. For example, suppose that you were the project manager for an upgrade to an existing software package your company uses to control materials flow and warehousing in manufacturing. If trained programmers were simply unavailable to work on your upgrade project, you might seek to hire temporary contract employees. People with specialized skills such as programming can often be acquired on a short-term basis to fill gaps in the availability of in-house personnel to do these assignments. The key point to remember is that recognizing and responding to resource needs is a critical function of project leadership.
Another common tactic project managers use in the face of resource shortfalls is to rely on negotiation or political tactics to influence top management to provide additional support. Because resources must often be negotiated with top management, clearly the ability to successfully negotiate and apply influence where the project manager has no direct authority is a critical skill. Again, leadership is best demonstrated by the skills a project manager uses to maintain the viability of the project, whether dealing with top management, clients, the project team, or other significant stakeholders.
MOTIVATING AND BUILDING TEAMS
The process of molding a diverse group of functional experts into a cohesive and collaborative team is not a challenge to be undertaken lightly. Team building and motivation present enormously complex hurdles, and dealing comfortably with human processes is not part of every manager’s background. For example, it is very common within engineering or other technical jobs for successful employees to be promoted to project manager. Often, they quickly become adept at dealing with the technical challenges of project management, but have a difficult time understanding and mastering the human challenges. Their background, training, education, and experiences have prepared them well for technical problems, but have neglected the equally critical behavioral elements in successful project management.
In considering how to motivate individuals on our project teams, it is important to recognize that motivation ultimately comes from within each of us; it cannot be stimulated solely by an external presence. Each of us decides based on the characteristics of our job, our work environment, opportunities for advancement, coworkers, and so forth whether we will become motivated to do the work we have been assigned. Does that imply that motivation is therefore outside of the influence of project managers? Yes and no. Yes, because motivation is an individual decision: we cannot make someone become motivated. On the other hand, as one career army officer put it, “In the army we can’t force people to do anything, but we can sure make them wish they had done it!” Underlying motivation is typically something that team members desire, whether it comes from a challenging work assignment, opportunity for recognition and advancement, or simply the desire to stay out of trouble. Successful project managers must recognize that one vital element in their job description is the ability to recognize talent, recruit it to the project team, mold a team of interactive and collaborative workers, and apply motivational techniques as necessary.
HAVING A VISION AND FIGHTING FIRES
Successful project managers must operate on boundaries. The boundary dividing technical and behavioral problems is one example, and project managers need to be comfortable with both tasks. Another boundary is the distinction between being a strategic visionary and a day-to-day firefighter. Project managers work with conceptual plans, develop the project scope in line with organizational directives, and understand how their project is expected to fit into the company’s project portfolio. In addition, they are expected to keep their eyes firmly fixed on the ultimate prize: the completed project. In short, project managers must be able to think strategically and to consider the big picture for their projects. At the same time, however, crises and other project challenges that occur on a daily basis usually require project managers to make immediate, tactical decisions, to solve current problems, and to be detail-oriented. Leaders are able to make the often daily transition from keeping an eye on the big picture to dealing with immediate, smaller problems that occur on a fairly regular basis.
One executive in a project organization highlighted this distinction very well. He stated, “We seek people who can see the forest for the trees but at the same time, are intimately familiar with the species of each variety of tree we grow. If one of those trees is sick, they have to know the best formula to fix it quickly.” His point was that a visionary who adopts an exclusively strategic view of the project will discover that he cannot deal with the day-to-day “fires” that keep cropping up. At the same time, someone who is too exclusively focused on dealing with the daily challenges may lose the ultimate perspective and forget the overall picture or the goals that define the project. The balance between strategic vision and firefighting represents a key boundary that successful project managers must become comfortable occupying.
COMMUNICATING
Former president Barack Obama was widely admired for his communication skills. He displayed a seemingly natural and fluent ability to project his views clearly, to identify with his audience and shape his messages accordingly, and to not waver or contradict his basic themes. Project managers require the same facility of communication. In Chapter 2, we examined the role of stakeholder management in successful projects. These stakeholders can have a tremendous impact on the likelihood that a project will succeed or fail; consequently, it is absolutely critical to maintain strong contacts with all stakeholders throughout the project’s development. There is a common saying in project management regarding the importance of communication with your company’s top management: “If they know nothing of what you are doing, they assume you are doing nothing.” The message is clear: we must take serious steps to identify relevant stakeholders and establish and maintain communications with them, not sporadically but continually, throughout the project’s development.
Negotiating is another crucial form of communicating. We will discuss the process of negotiation in detail in Chapter 6, however it is important to recognize that project leaders must become adept at negotiating with a wide variety of stakeholders. Leaders negotiate with clients over critical project specifications (for example, a builder may negotiate with house buyers over the number of windows or the type of flooring that will be laid in the kitchen), they negotiate with key organizational members, such as department heads, for resources or budget money, and they negotiate with suppliers for prices and delivery dates for materials. In fact, the total number of ways in which project leaders routinely engage in negotiation is difficult to count. They understand that within many organizations, their authority and power to impose their will autocratically is limited. As a result, negotiation is typically a constant and necessary form of communication for effective project leaders.
Communicating also serves other valuable purposes. Project managers have been described as “mini billboards,” the most visible evidence of the status of their project. The ways in which project managers communicate, the messages they send (intentional or unintentional), and the way they discuss their projects send powerful signals to other important stakeholders about the project. Whether through developing good meeting and presentation skills, a facility for writing and speaking, or through informal networking, project managers must recognize the importance of communication and become adept at it.
One of the most critical means by which project managers can communicate is through their ability to run productive meetings. Meeting skills are important because project managers spend a large amount of time in meetings—meetings with team members, top management, clients, and other critical project stakeholders. Meetings serve several purposes for the project team, including:6
They define the project and the major team players.
They provide an opportunity to revise, update, and add to all participants’ knowledge base, including facts, perceptions, experience, judgments, and other information pertinent to the project.
They assist team members in understanding how their individual efforts fit into the overall whole of the project as well as how they can each contribute to project success.
They help all stakeholders increase their commitment to the project through participation in the management process.
They provide a collective opportunity to discuss the project and decide on individual work assignments.
They provide visibility for the project manager’s role in managing the project.
As a result of the wide variety of uses meetings serve, the ability of project managers to become adept at running them in an efficient and productive manner is critical. Meetings are a key method for communicating project status, collectivizing the contributions of individual team members, developing a sense of unity and esprit de corps, and keeping all important project stakeholders up-to-date concerning the project status.7
Two forms of leadership behaviors are critical for effectively running project meetings. The first type of behavior is task-oriented; that is, it is intended to emphasize behaviors that contribute to completing project assignments, planning and scheduling activities and resources, and providing the necessary support and technical assistance. Task-oriented behavior seeks to get the job done. At the same time, effective project leaders are also concerned about group maintenance behavior. Group maintenance suggests that a project manager cannot act at the expense of concern for the team. Group maintenance behavior consists of supportive activities, including showing confidence and trust, acting friendly and supportive, working with subordinates to understand their problems, and recognizing their accomplishments. Group maintenance behavior increases cohesiveness, trust, and commitment, and it satisfies all team members’ needs for recognition and acceptance.
Table 4.1 identifies some of the critical task and group maintenance behaviors that occur in productive project meetings. Among the important task-oriented behaviors are structuring the flow of discussion to ensure that a proper meeting agenda is followed, stimulating conversation among all meeting participants, clarifying and summarizing decisions and perceptions, and testing consensus to identify points of agreement and discord. The project manager is the key to achieving effective task behaviors, particularly through a clear sense of timing and pacing.9 For example, pushing for consensus too quickly or stifling conversation and the free flow of ideas will be detrimental to the development of the project team and the outcomes of meetings. Likewise, continually stimulating conversation even after agreement has been achieved only serves to prolong a meeting past the point where it is productive.
TABLE 4.1 Task and Group Maintenance Behaviors for Project Meetings8
Source: Gary A. Yukl. Leadership in Organizations, 5th ed., p. 329. Copyright © 2002. Adapted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Task-Oriented Behavior
Specific Outcome
1. Structuring process
Guide and sequence discussion
2. Stimulating communication
Increase information exchange
3. Clarifying communication
Increase comprehension
4. Summarizing
Check on understanding and assess progress
5. Testing consensus
Check on agreement
Group Maintenance Behavior
Specific Outcome
1. Gatekeeping
Increase and equalize participation
2. Harmonizing
Reduce tension and hostility
3. Supporting
Prevent withdrawal, encourage exchange
4. Setting standards
Regulate behavior
5. Analyzing process
Discover and resolve process problems
Among the group maintenance behaviors that effective project leaders need to consider in running meetings are gatekeeping to ensure equal participation, harmonizing to reduce tension and promote team development, supporting by encouraging an exchange of views, regulating behavior through setting standards, and identifying and resolving any process problems that cause meeting participants to feel uncomfortable, hurried, or defensive. Group maintenance behaviors are just as critical as those related to task and must be addressed as part of a successful meeting strategy. Taken together, task and group maintenance goals allow the project manager to gain the maximum benefit from meetings, which are so critical for project communication and form a constant demand on the project manager’s time.
Although running productive meetings is a critical skill for project leaders, they also need to recognize that face-to-face opportunities to communicate are not always possible. In situations where team members are geographically dispersed or heavily committed to other activities, finding regular times for progress meetings can be difficult. As we will discuss in Chapter 6 on virtual teams, modern international business often requires that meetings be conducted virtually, through platforms such as Skype or Adobe Connect. These electronic media and new technologies have shifted the way many business communications are handled. Project leaders must possess the ability to handle modern electronic forms of communication, including e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook social networking sites, as well as emerging methods for online communication. For example, it is becoming common for project leaders to set up social networking or group collaboration sites for their projects, including project team Facebook accounts, Twitter feeds, Google docs, and Yammer collaboration spaces. These sites can create an atmosphere of teamwork and help promote networking, while also maximizing the ways in which project leaders can communicate with members of their team. In short, although project team meetings remain one of the most useful methods for leaders to effectively communicate with their subordinates and other stakeholders, it is not a requirement that their meetings have to be face-to-face to be effective.
Table 4.2 paints a portrait of the roles project leaders play in project success by ranking the nine most important characteristics of effective project managers in order of importance. The data are based on a study of successful American project managers as perceived by project team members.10 Note that the most important is the willingness of the project manager to lead by example, to highlight the project’s goals, and to first commit to the challenge before calling upon other team members to make a similar commitment.
TABLE 4.2 Characteristics of Project Managers Who Lead
Rank
Characteristics of an Effective Project Manager
1
Leads by example
2
Visionary
3
Technically competent
4
Decisive
5
A good communicator
6
A good motivator
7
Stands up to top management when necessary
8
Supports team members
9
Encourages new ideas
Equally interesting are findings related to the reasons why a project manager might be viewed as ineffective. These reasons include both personal quality flaws and organizational factors. Table 4.3 lists the most important personal flaws and the organizational factors that render a project manager ineffective. These factors are rank-ordered according to the percentage of respondents who identified them.
TABLE 4.3 Characteristics of Project Managers Who Are Not Leaders
Personal Flaws
Percentage
Organizational Factors
Percentage
Sets bad example
26.3%
Lack of top management support
31.5%
Not self-assured
23.7
Resistance to change
18.4
Lacks technical expertise
19.7
Inconsistent reward system
13.2
Poor communicator
11.8
A reactive organization rather than a proactive, planning one
9.2
Poor motivator
6.6
Lack of resources
7.9
BOX 4.1 Project Management Research in Brief
Leadership and Emotional Intelligence
An interesting perspective on leadership has emerged in recent years as greater levels of research have examined the traits and abilities associated with effective project leadership. While characteristics such as technical skill, analytical ability, and intelligence are all considered important traits in project managers, an additional concept, the idea of emotional intelligence, has been suggested as a more meaningful measure of leadership effectiveness. Emotional intelligence refers to leaders’ ability to understand that effective leadership is part of the emotional and relational transaction between subordinates and themselves. There are five elements that characterize emotional intelligence: (1) self-awareness, (2) self-regulation, (3) motivation, (4) empathy, and (5) social skill. With these traits, a project manager can develop the kind of direct, supportive relationships with the project team members that are critical to creating and guiding an effective team.
Self-Awareness.
Self-awareness implies having a deep understanding of one’s own strengths and weaknesses, ego needs, drives, and motives. To be self-aware means to have a clear perspective of one’s self; it does not mean to be excessively self-centered or self-involved. When I am self-aware, I am capable of interacting better with others because I understand how my feelings and attitudes are affecting my behavior.
Self-Regulation.
A key ability in successful leaders is their willingness to keep themselves under control. One way each of us practices self-control is our ability to think before we act—in effect, to suspend judgment. Effective leaders are those individuals who have developed self-regulation; that is, the ability to reflect on events, respond to them after careful consideration, and avoid the mistake of indulging in impulsive behavior.
Motivation.
Effective project leaders are consistently highly motivated individuals. They are driven to achieve their maximum potential and they recognize that to be successful, they must also work with members of the project team to generate the maximum performance from each of them. There are two important traits of effective managers with regard to motivation: First, they are always looking for ways to keep score; that is, they like concrete or clear markers that demonstrate progress. Second, effective project managers consistently strive for greater and greater challenges.
Empathy.
One important trait of successful project managers is their ability to recognize the differences in each of their subordinates, make allowances for those differences, and treat each team member in a manner that is designed to gain the maximum commitment from that person. Empathy means the willingness to consider other team members’ feelings in the process of making an informed decision.
Social Skill.
The final trait of emotional intelligence, social skill, refers to a person’s ability to manage relationships with others. Social skill is more than simple friendliness; it is friendliness with a purpose. Social skill is our ability to move people in a direction we consider desirable. Among the offshoots of strong social skills are the ways we demonstrate persuasiveness, rapport, and building networks.
Emotional intelligence is a concept that reflects an important point: many of the most critical project management skills that define effective leadership are not related to technical prowess, native analytical ability, or IQ. Of much greater importance are self-management skills, as reflected in self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation and relationship management skills, shown through our empathy and social abilities. Remember: project management is first and foremost a people management challenge. Once we understand the role that leadership behaviors play in effective project management, we can better identify the ways in which we can use leadership to promote our projects.11
