Leadership styles and development

Effective leadership is critical to have successful projects. A project managers leadership style has significant impact on the project, the team’s motivation and productivity and the overall performance. Different leadership styles can be used, as not all projects are the same and the teams involved are different in every project.

Self-awareness and self-reflection are some of the most important competencies a leader can have. When it comes to being a good leader, understanding one-self and understanding the people that must be lead is crucial. Being self-aware can potentially lead to understanding of behaviours and initiate useful changes to enhance leadership skills, such as learning to keep calm in stressful situations and enhance communication with stakeholders. Better communication applies to the team as well. Understanding the members of the team and knowing how to communicate with each sets a good work environment for successful projects.

Leadership development is the practice of preparing and improving future and current leaders, to lead their teams efficiently and effectively. Furthermore, leadership development is an investment in the organisation’s internal growth. Good leadership leads to many different benefits, and no matter what the desired goal is, developing the necessary skills to reach the goals can significantly improve the productivity and morale towards the organisation. This article will describe applications of leadership styles in a project context. Furthermore, a discussion of the different tools that can be used for developing leadership skills. Potential limitations of the different leadership styles and tools will be discussed lastly.

Leadership and Management

Project managers are expected to be leaders, but project management and leadership are two different things. The most effective project managers are both good leaders and successful project managers. According to the DS/ISO 21502 managing a team should aim to motivate the team and maintain a positive work environment, where team members feel involved, perform their best and focus on their assigned work and the project objectives . This requires leadership abilities as well as management abilities. Successful project managers deliver successful projects – they develop their skills through experience in doing their type of projects. On the contrary, successful leaders are courageous, ambitious, confident, and self-aware. They continuously develop the strengths of themselves and their project teams . The performance of both project managers and leaders is measured in the performance of the team, making it even more important for project managers to develop leadership skills. Projects are temporary and do not provide a long timeline for continuous leadership development. The project team is assembled to focus on the objectives of the project and not the leader's improvements. Thus, learning the art of leadership proves to be challenging.

Leaders vs Managers

Leaders	Managers
Innovative	Administer
Seek challenges	Seek to maintain the status quo
Think long term	Think short- to mid-term
Motivate and inspire	Control
Worry about doing the right things	Worry about doing things right
Have a wide circle of influence	Have limited influence

Leadership styles

A leadership style refers to the approach that a manager or leader takes to provide motivation and direction to their team and achieve project objectives. There are numerous leadership styles available, each tailored to suit the leader's personal style, team dynamics, and project requirements.

However, each leadership style has its own set of strengths and weaknesses that can influence its effectiveness in various scenarios. Therefore, when choosing a leadership style, it is essential to consider the specific situation and context, such as the project type, team culture, and individual characteristics of the team members. The selected leadership style may need to be adjusted depending on these factors to ensure optimal outcomes.

The six leadership styles by Daniel Goleman, are shown below with their strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths and weaknesses of leadership styles

Leadership Style	Strength	Weakness
Coercive	Effective in emergency and crisis situations	May lead to resentment and mistrust among team members
Authoritative	Provides clear direction and vision for the team	May not be effective in situations where team do not share vision or values
Affiliative	Promotes a positive work environment	May be inefficient in situations withouth a clear direction
Democratic	Encourage open communication and collaboration among the team	May be time-consuming and slow in decision-making
Pacesetting	Effective in situations where team is competent and motivated	Can lead to stress among team members
Coaching	Development of team members	Require skillful leader

Choosing a leadership style is a very complex and challenging process. Different styles may be more or less effective depending on the specific situation and the people involved. The leader must understand their strength and weaknesses, and have to consider their own personal values and communication style, to figure out which style works for them. Furthermore, the leader must understand the situation. What are the project goals, resources, and what is the general state of the project. Understanding the team that is being lead is crucial. The leadership style will change the team is best motivated. Some teams need more coaching, and a coaching style will be more motivating. Whereas, teams that has all the necessary skills to complete the project may benefit from a more empowering leadership style, such as the pacesetting leadership style. All of these factors can change what leadership style will be most efficient for success and due to this being able to adapt is crucial.

A seventh leadership style is situational leadership. It is a leadership concept that argues that not just one leadership style works for all conditions. Therefore, it is a flexible style where the leader must adapt to the situation and the individuals on the team to be able to lead in the most optimal way at all times,. As this style assesses the maturity level of the people within the organisation and the current project situation, it is a difficult style to master. The leader needs to be able to understand the people involved at a high level and be able to adapt both to the individuals and to the project, meaning the leader must master several leadership styles to be successful.

Leadership Theories

Leadership theory describes how and why some individuals become effective leaders. Leadership theories generally focus on the individuals personal traits, such as confidence and charisma, while others focus on the individuals behaviour, such as decision-making styles, communication skills and motivation skills.

Trait Theory

Trait theory suggest that certain personality traits are inherent in successful leaders. Several different studies have been conducted in an attempt to map what the essential traits are to become an effective leader, although specific personality traits do not necessarily guarantee the development of a successful leader. Trait theory is one of the earliest approaches to understanding leadership. It seeks to identify and measure the traits that are needed in order to better understand what makes a good leader.

Behavioural Theory

Behavioural theory proposes that leadership is a set of learned behaviours that can be taught and developed over time. This can for example be providing feedback, communicating clearly and inspiring others.

Leadership Development

Skills and competencies

Each leadership style emphasises different skills and competencies a leader must exhibit to be considered an effective leader. There are many different skills that are of importance when considering leadership. Deciding which skills and competencies that are the most important can depend on what type of organisation the leader is part of. Although, there are some general competencies that will prove relevant in most cases.

Project Manager Competency Development framework (PMCD) is a framework for defining, assessing and developing project manager competencies. It defines key competencies that impacts a project managers performance . The PMCD describe competencies as "a cluster of related knowledge, atttitude, skills and other personal characteristics that affect major parts of one's job" . They can be grouped into six units representing competencies:

• Achievement and action
• Helping and human service
• Impact and influence
• Managerial
• Cognitive
• Personal effectiveness

Each of these units are broken down into more elements reflecting the skills or behaviours related to the competency. The clusters are interconnected and interdependent and it is important to develop competencies across all six areas to be an effective leader.

The Achievement and action cluster defines leaders as task-driven. Their main priority is to complete the project. The competencies related to this is therefore concern for order, quality and accuracy, as well as the ability to initiate action and seek information. The Helping and human service cluster deals with people. The competencies described are customer service orientation, implying a desire to help others, and interpersonal understanding. The Impact and influence cluster focus on the ability to influence people and the project. The competencies include the competence of impact and influence, which is about influencing others to have an impact. For that to be possible relationship building competencies are crucial as well as organisational awareness. The Managerial cluster is considered to hold the key competencies for conducting successful projects. The competencies defined in this cluster are teamwork and cooperation, team leadership, which is defined as the desire to lead others, developing others and directiveness. The Cognitive cluster defines competencies within problem analysis. The two competencies in this cluster is analytical- and conceptual thinking. The last cluster deals with personal effectiveness and the competencies include self-control, self-confidence, flexibility and organisational commitment .

Strategy

Becoming proficient in these skills requires practice since no individual is born mastering all the necessary competencies. Furthermore, different people may excel in different competencies and find some competencies easier to learn than others. This is due to a lot of factors both internal and external. Therefore, being self-aware of what competencies come more naturally and which to specifically focus on is essential to becoming a successful leader.

The PMCD framework proposes a process for developing competencies. It is based on an iterative process, consisting of three steps.

The first step is an assessment step, where the purpose is to assess the competence of the project manager or leader.

Many assessment tools can be used to create more self-awareness and to determine what competencies need developing. Self-awareness can potentially lead to the development of all the skills that are needed as it provides insights into what the leader is good at and what needs development. One of the most widely used tools is the Meyers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI). A paper by Dean Gehring concludes that MBTI can be used by project managers to help them better understand how their personality type either supports or opposes the traits required for effective leadership. MBTI assesses a person's preferences in four different areas, and based on that provides insight into the person's strengths, weaknesses, and communication style :

1. Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I): measures whether the person gets energy from group activities or gets exhausted.

2. Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N): measures whether the person prefers to focus on concrete details or abstract concepts.

3. Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F): measures whether the person prefers to make decisions based on logic and objective analysis or personal values and subjective feelings.

4. Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P): measures whether the person prefers to approach the world in an organised, structured way or in a more spontaneous flexible way.

MBTI can be used to help understand one's preferences and how they impact their leadership style. For example, the personality type ISFJ may prefer the affiliative leadership style as they are extremely committed, well-organised and they are good at considering how their decisions impact other people. ISFJs are good at staying on track with their goals, but they may struggle with seeing strategising and therefore find it difficult when there is not a clear direction .

The assessment tool can also be used to develop and improve skills and competencies. For example, individuals with a preference for intuition, xNxx types, may benefit from developing their strategic thinking skills, while individuals with a preference for sensing, xSxx types, may benefit from focusing more on details and data analysis since their personality has a preference for this.

Once an individual has achieved self-awareness, for example through MBTI, they can take the specific steps to develop the competencies they have identified as needing improvement. Step 2 in the process is developing a competence development plan. The plan should be made using the information about strengths and weaknesses that were found in the first step and it should be done in a timely manner. Furthermore, the plan should prioritise areas that are more critical to the individual or the organisation.

The last step is to implement the plan and thus develop the competencies. When implementing the plan, it is important to get feedback from colleagues that can provide valuable insight.

While self-awareness is a crucial component of leadership development, there are other factors that can contribute to improving one's leadership skills. As an example, building resilience can help stay focused and motivated during difficult times, while going through the continuous development process.