Leadership is important because it is a vector that empowers others to accomplish personal goals and contribute to the successful completion of group objectives. Vectors have both force and direction. Leaders align team members in the same direction and accelerate each member so that the force generated is more than the sum of all members.
Leadership is influenced both by the situational context and the personalities and skill levels of team members. Project Managers typically break down projects into 5 phases. These Project phases are as follows:
- Planning is exploring possible options, assessing risks, and preparing the work roadmap. Planning includes defining the detailed work breakdown, identifying resource requirements, and finalizing the timeline.
- Engagement is both for the clients and team members to have a shared vision and be excited about the future and the outcome.
- Launch: is performing the work as outlined in the project scope.
- Catalyst: is to avoid burnout and sustain consistent velocity.
- Maintain: is about monitoring and controlling the daily production, fixing defects, and supporting the client issues.
Each phase needs a different primary leadership style. Leadership Style Inventory (LSI), outlined by Kathleen Kelley Reardon in her book “The Secret Handshake,” simplified into four main categories:
- Commanders direct people to action. They are authoritative and sets the pace.
- Logical – use reasoning and walking over compelling logic to influence team members. The logical style tends to be process-oriented and rules-based.
- Inspirational – attracted to radical change, innovative with ideas, uses empowerment of others and excitement. Inspirational tend to be emotionally supportive.
- Supportive – follow the path that others agree is the best one, so everyone is pleased. These democratic types are also good coaches. The supportive style is altruistic.
Everyone has a primary and secondary style. It is excellent to know your leadership style(s) to thrive in your vest environment and succeed in phases of your projects.
Entrepreneurs tend to have a primary inspirational style with a backup of commanding style.
The Planning phase favors the logical style of explaining and reasoning, but Commander Style will do well in the launch phase when time is short and quick decisions benefit to progress. Engagement Phase leans heavily on inspirational leadership style for its success.
The maintain phase favors the use of a supportive leadership style as the main style. Team members are more knowledgeable as project build winds down. There are longer decision times in the maintenance phase as delivery pressure is reduced and timelines renegotiated. Supportive style can unite experienced members to get more consensus for insightful decision making.
The common qualities among the different leadership styles are
- Clear Communicators
- Competent Producers that Lead by Example
- Character and Caring by acknowledging and giving credit to others.
- Optimistic in challenges
- Resilient in stumbles and setbacks.
Keep these in mind as you turn the corners in your project journey.
