Choosing Appropriate Project Managers

Matching their Leadership Style to the Type of Project

Ralf Müller, Rodney Turner

• Publisher: Project Management Institute
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781628251517
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Gestión de proyectos

In Choosing Appropriate Project Managers, the authors set out to challenge two commonly held – and related – views found in the project management community: Project Manager as a tool: The project manager is simply a facilitator for the project management process and that implementing the right systems and procedures are more important than any individual project managerProject management is universal: Once an individual has acquired the skills of project management, that individual can manage any type of project, regardless of technology, industry or domain knowledge

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

There are two strongly held beliefs pervading the project management community.

(a) The first is held by omission. There appears to be a belief that the project manager, and his or her competency and leadership style, make no contribution to project success. When we review the project success literature in Chapter 3, we show that it almost studiously ignores the project manager. It talks about the tools and techniques used, risk management, and communication with the client, project team and other stakeholders, but it does not mention the project manager. One might say that the project manager’s competence is implied en passant. If it is said that good planning, good risk management, or good communication is a success factor; then by implication the project manager must be competent in those things and he or she must be competent for the project to be successful. But if the project manager is ignored, and as long as good, appropriate tools are used, the project will be successful regardless of the project manager’s competence. As long as the right tools are used, the project can be managed by the proverbial chimpanzee. Perhaps this is one reason why project managers are so undervalued in some disciplines.

(b) The other is a tenet of project management, that once you have learned the skills of project management, you can manage any project, regardless of the technology and industry. This is the issue of domain knowledge, and people hold very strong opinions. Some say that to manage an information systems project you need to be an information systems professional, to manage the construction of a nuclear power station you need previous experience of the nuclear power industry. Others say, no, the tools of project management are generic, and once you have learned them they can be applied to any project. Most people within the project management community hold the latter view; the competent project manager can apply his or her skills to any project, regardless of technology. Interestingly, these discussions are almost always in terms of the technology. Can you apply your project management skills to managing an information systems project even if you know nothing about computers? Can you apply your project management skills to the construction of a nuclear power plant even if you know nothing about welding a nuclear reactor together? The discussions are never in terms of temperament. Do you have the temperament to manage a team of computer programmers? Do you have the temperament to stand on top of a nuclear reactor at two o’clock in the morning as the pressure test is being conducted?

These two beliefs may appear to be incompatible initially; the first is saying the project manager does not make any difference, while the second focuses on the project manager. But in fact they are two sides of the same coin. The first is saying that it is only the planning and control tools that make a difference, not the project manager and his or her competence and leadership style; while the second is saying that once someone knows how to apply the tools and techniques, they can apply them to any project, regardless of their domain knowledge and temperament, both of which are elements of their competence.

In a recent research project sponsored by PMI, Lynn Crawford, Brian Hobbs, and Rodney Turner have shown that one reason why organizations categorize projects is to be able to develop and choose appropriate project management methodologies for different types of projects (Crawford, Hobbs, and Turner 2005). But, if they use different project management methodologies for different types of projects, then surely they need to use project managers with different competency profiles on different types of projects! Thus, we conclude that unquestionably the success of the project must be dependent on the competence of the project manager, and that different profiles of skills and competence are appropriate for different types of projects.

Crawford (2001, 2003, 2005) defines competence as the knowledge, skills and personal characteristics required to achieve job performance as defined by appropriate standards. Thus, to manage the project effectively, the project manager needs knowledge about the application of project management tools and techniques, and not only the skill to apply them in routine situations, but also the competence to apply them in unfamiliar situations to be able to respond to unexpected situations. The project may also need technical knowledge of the project domain, and the skill to apply it.

The definition of competence also talks about personal characteristics. The project manager must have the appropriate temperament to manage this type of project. Perhaps, the reason an information systems professional is needed to manage an information systems project is that the project manager must understand what makes computer programmers tick; what motivates them; what aspirations they have; how they work. If one is managing the construction of a nuclear power station, one needs to know what it is like to be hung upside down on a nuclear reactor at two o’clock in the morning, trying to perform a precise technical weld, the failure of which can delay the program by months. If one is managing an environmental project as part of the Sydney Olympics in 2000, one needs to be able to communicate with Greenpeace and keep them onside, and communicate with highly intelligent but reticent academics to extract from them the science to make it work. (We shall see in Chapter 5 that the project required two project managers because both sets of communication skills could not be found in one person.) The project is dependent on the leadership style of the project manager, and different types of projects require different leadership styles and different temperaments.

In the general management arena, six schools of leadership have been developed over the last seventy years. All six schools suggest that a manager’s leadership style influences the performance of his or her organization, and the last five suggest that different leadership styles are appropriate for different contexts. The general management literature says it is this third dimension of competence, the personal characteristics, and particularly leadership style, that is the main differentiator for performance as a manager. Against this background, it would be strange indeed if a project manager’s leadership style did not influence the success of his or her project, and if it were not the case that different leadership styles are appropriate on different types of projects. Thus, we have undertaken this research project, sponsored by the Project Management Institute, to answer the following two questions:

1. Does the project manager’s competence, including his or her leadership style, influence project success?
2. Are different competence profiles, including different leadership styles, appropriate for different types of projects?

The research project

In order to answer these two questions we conducted two surveys. First, we developed a research model. We wished to test whether certain leadership styles are more likely to lead to the successful outcome of projects, and whether different profiles of leadership styles are more successful on different types of projects. From the general management literature we identified a fifteen-dimensional model for leadership competence, with fifteen competencies grouped into three competence groups: Emotional Quotient (EQ), Managerial Quotient (MQ), and Intellectual Quotient (IQ). We also needed to define what we meant by project success. We started with five qualitative criteria of project success, but expanded that to ten based on our interviews. We were then ready to answer the first question. To answer the second we needed to identify different project types. From the work of Crawford, Hobbs, and Turner (2005), we identified nineteen types of projects, grouped into six attribute areas. Using those we determined whether, for those nineteen different types of projects, different profiles of the fifteen leadership competencies were appropriate for the nineteen types of projects. However, we were also able to combine the nineteen different types to obtain a much wider range of types of projects.

We were then ready to conduct our two surveys.

1. The first was a series of interviews with managers responsible for appointing project managers to projects. We asked them whether they could identify with our research model, the leadership dimensions, the measures of success, and the types of projects. We asked the interviewees to rate the fifteen leadership dimensions to compare with the results from our questionnaire later. All could identify with the leadership dimensions. But based on the interviews we expanded the measures of success from five to ten, and the number of types of projects from sixteen to nineteen. Based on the interviews we added three contract types. We also asked the interviewees whether they considered the project manager’s competence and leadership style when appointing them. They all said they did. Sometimes they considered project management competence, sometimes domain competence, and sometimes leadership style. Several said they made the decisions when appointing people to the pool of project managers, but once someone is in the pool, they can manage any project the organization undertakes.
2. The second survey was a Web-based questionnaire. This was aimed at project management professionals. We asked the respondents to answer two sets of questions. The first set asked them to describe the last project they worked on, to rate its success, and to categorize it against the nineteen types. The second set of questions determined their profile against the fifteen leadership competencies. We were then able to determine if different profiles of leadership styles were more appropriate on different types of projects. We found across the board that project managers rate high on the emotional quotient (EQ). Somewhat to our surprise we found they rate low on the intellectual quotient (IQ), but this was consistent with the results from the interviews. Looking at the individual competencies we found the following had the greatest impact on success:

• conscientiousness and motivation for engineering projects
• communication and self-awareness for information systems projects
• communication and motivation for organizational change projects
• emotional resilience and communication for medium complexity projects
• sensitivity for high complexity projects
• developing for mandatory projects
• motivation for repositioning projects
• communication and self-awareness for renewal projects
• communication and sensitivity on fixed-price contracts
• communication and influence on remeasurement projects
• conscientiousness and communication throughout the project life cycle, with managing resources also important at the design stage, and motivation and sensitivity at commissioning
• conscientiousness, sensitivity, managing resources and communication on multicultural projects.

Based on the results from the web-based questionnaire, we were also able to determine more detailed profiles of all fifteen leadership dimensions for the managers of high performing projects of most types of projects.

Thus, we concluded that the two hypotheses were supported, that the project manager’s leadership style does influence success, and that different leadership styles are appropriate on different types of projects. The messages for the managers of projects are as follows:

1. When appointing project managers to projects, they should consider their leadership style and appoint project managers with appropriate leadership styles for the projects they have to manage.

2. They understand the types of projects the organization is undertaking, develop within the pool of available project managers’ appropriate leadership styles for those projects. This may require the psychometric testing of project managers, and the implementation of training and development programs to develop the appropriate styles. It may also require psychometric testing of project managers as they are appointed to the pool.

3. They should value their project managers. The project manager’s competence does contribute to project success, and so competent project managers should be valued.

The research was undertaken from December 2004 to March 2006. It was initiated and sponsored by the Project Management Institute. It was also supported by the Lille School of Management and by the Umeå School of Business, Umeå University.

Structure of this report

This report describes the results of our research project, and is structured as follows:

Chapter 2: Describes what the general management literature says about leadership. It describes the six schools of leadership, and how they are reflected in the project management literature. It discusses personality and how one is born with personality, but can adapt it to obtain an appropriate leadership style in different situations. Personality also relates to a person’s performance as a project team member and we discuss why that is not the same thing as a leadership style. We expand further on how some of the schools say that different leadership styles are appropriate in different circumstances. We use one school, the competence school, to provide our fifteen leadership competencies.

Chapter 3: Reviews the project success literature. We describe what we mean by success factors, and how the project manager is usually not recognized as one of them. We also describe how project success is judged in choosing the model for our research. We review in detail what the project management literature says about the project manager’s leadership style on different types of projects, and their contribution to success. We then describe how to categorize projects to provide the third element of our research model.

Chapter 4: Describes our methodology. We convert our two research questions into two hypotheses, and then describe our research model in more detail. We explain how we conducted the interviews, how we conducted the web-based questionnaire, and how we analyzed and validated the results.

Chapter 5: Describes results of the interviews. We describe the views of the interviewees on the three components of our research model and how they rated the fifteen competencies.

Chapter 6: Presents the results of the web-based questionnaire. We analyze the data for different types of projects to determine significant correlations between project performance and the three competence groups, EQ, MQ, and IQ, and the fifteen competency dimensions. We present the results for individual project types and combinations of them.

Chapter 7: Presents the project manager profiles in high performing projects against the fifteen competency dimensions.

Chapter 8: Presents our final conclusions and recommendations. We also suggest possible future research, and ask whether the research needs to be repeated for other project roles such as the project sponsor.

Appendix A: Gives the authors’ contact details.

Appendix B: Describes the definition of the fifteen leadership competencies used as independent variables in the study.

Appendix C: Gives a full list of the fourteen project attributes suggested by Crawford, Hobbs, and Turner (2005) for categorizing projects, and some categories within each attribute. The six attributes and nineteen categories used as moderating variables were drawn from this list.

Appendix D: Presents the questions used in the semi-structured interviews.

Appendix E: Shows data from the interviews.

Appendix F: Presents the Web-based questionnaire.

Appendix G: Contains data from the Web-based questionnaire, and describes how it was analyzed, both to correlate the fifteen competency dimensions to project success, and to determine the profiles of managers of high performing projects.

In considering whether the project manager’s leadership style influence project success, and whether different styles are appropriate on different projects, it is natural to start by considering first what has been written over the years about what constitutes good leadership, and whether different leadership styles have ever been found to be better in different contexts.

CHAPTER 2

Leadership

The aim of this research is to determine whether the project manager’s leadership style or personality has an impact on project su...