Leadership styles

Revision as of 09:29, 22 September 2015

In literature, many things have been written about project management and the best practice hereof. Various standards exist with the aim of describing the field, and a long list of terms and processes are defined and described. These standards aim to describe project management across different types of projects and across fields, but also the project manager and the best version of him. In the ISO standard \cite{iso}, the issue is referred to as "Competencies of project personel", and treats both the competencies a project manager should have and the competencies that the project team as a unit should have. Here it is stated that the project team should have a certain skill set, and that any gap between the required and available competencies could be a risk, and should be addressed. On the other hand there are listed three categories of competencies that a project manager should possess, that being technical competencies, behavioural competencies, and contextual competencies \cite[page 7]{iso}. Here, the technical competencies refer to the project management techniques. This is the same approach as the International Project Management Association (IPMA) takes \cite{ipma}. IPMA focuses on 46 competence elements, whereof 20 of them are in the technical category. The two other categories are like in the ISO Standard behavioral and contextual competencies. Here too the technical competencies refer to the project management techniques. The project managers' desired technical competencies covers management of requirement and objectives, teamwork, scope and deliverables, time and project phases, etc. All competencies that can be acquired, and these are the competencies that a basic Project Management certification will confirm knowledge about. In the PMI standard (PMBOK), it is mentioned that in addition to area-specific skills, project managers possess a set of characteristics \cite[page 13]{pmbok5}, being within the area of knowledge, performance and personal. These characteristics covers many of the same areas as the ISO and IPMA standard, just using another terminology and with a different degree of details.

These are all well known standards that are used across various fields and industries, and guide project managers to follow the best practice of management in a given project. They all describe processes, techniques, and concepts, and aim to give the project manager a concrete and well tested set of tools to have the highest chances of obtaining success in a project surrounding.

In the brief overview of what skills a project manager must possess, it might at first glance seem surprising that there is a lack of requirement of the field specific technical knowledge. There is a long list of requirement to the technical knowledge in the sense of project management techniques, but the demand of the area specific technical knowledge is limited. Here it is noted that the organisations behind the standards all have an interest of being as broad as possible, so that as many project managers and leaders can use and apply their standards. In the PMBOK there is a slight opening of a discussion about area specific skills, but the majority of the concept is treated in an appendix in the 4th edition \cite{pmbok4}, and is referred to as "Application Area Extensions". Noticeably this section has been removed in the 5th edition \cite{pmbok5}. This though is only an introduction to the extension material that PMI offers within each project type, e.g. software projects, construction projects, etc., and treats for example area specific processes.

This naturally raises the question: does a project manager need area specific knowledge of the projects that he manages? Does a leader need technical skills within an area to lead a team to meet predefined goals and objectives? Looking into the mentioned standards, the answer is no. There can be some area specific processes that would be ideal to follow \cite[appendix D]{pmbok5}, but there is not explicit requirements for concrete technical knowledge related to the working area. But what is the alternative then? An obvious suggestion would be to have people working their way up in the hierarchy, for example different types of engineers working themselves up to be project managers and project leaders. This will also lead to problems. First of all it will in general take many years to work up to a position as project manager, if it has to be learning by doing. It will also take away the good work force from the project teams, and have highly competent people doing things that they aren't necessarily good at, just because of company politics and rewarding systems. Furthermore there could also easily be a tendency of people working in the same field (and probably within the same company) for years after years to be more narrow minded, and less likely to think out of the box. After years in the field with practical experience and even more years climbing the latter, it is very easy to have a set way of doing things. Is it too much to require from a person that he is both a highly competent leader but also a very skilled worker? Taking a step back, and once again thinking of having a leader with very limited area-specific skills, one also encounters problems. Being a successful project leader means being successful at delegate work to other people, in order to meet a set of predefined goals and objectives. This naturally means that the project manager needs to have some kind of respect about his person, so what he lacks in area-specific skills, he must make up for in other areas. But also a task as setting up a project team that covers a wide set of skills and estimating the time needed for specific sub-tasks becomes difficult. A solution used in some bigger companies, is the dual leadership model (come with example hereof.). Here, duos of leaders are composed, where one person possesses one set of skills, and the other possesses another set of skills. In this way they can compliment each other, and cover a wider set leadership skills within a field. This model brings other challenges with it. There has to be a clear definition of roles, for the duo to work dynamically. There also has to be a very clear communication strategy, for information to flow efficiently within an organization. But these examples are less dominant compared to the cost of a setup like this. One successful and money-making project after the other could very easily make the setup worth it, but it puts a very natural limitation of the types of companies and projects that could have use of this model. It has to be of a certain size.

All in all it is difficult to give one single answer to what type of leader a project or company needs. In all situations it is necessary to take a look at the project surroundings and prioritize the qualifications needed, and thereby to find the most suitable solution within the framework of the company. But also being ready to spend time on further education of a leader's qualifications, that being either the project management skills or the area-specific skills, seems necessary.