Leadership Fads and Facts

There’s an interesting message hidden in the offerings at the recent Project Management Institute’s World Congress.  Classes in Technical Skills comprised only 18 of the 65 classes listed by “content aim;” the largest individual class category was not about Agile, or Change Management – it was “Leadership Skills for Project Managers, Program Managers and Portfolio Managers.”

It affirms our conviction, backed by a survey quoted by PMI, that people skills are a major factor in a project manager’ career.

Trends in leadership theories abound; Googling “Business Management Leadership Theories” yields nearly two million hits.  It’s easy to get tangled up in Theory Overload –

Management By Walking Around, Emotional Intelligence, and others flourish.  Whatever the theory, though, our years of experience confirm that the best project managers:

•  Recognize that the most important element in a project is time
• Earn and maintain the trust of the project teams
• Inspire the team members commitment to the project with mutual support and individual accountability.

Those three points work together and will work with just about any theory, yielding successful projects and successful careers.