Leadership and Management
It is essential to note that leadership and management are critical elements of success in project management. I selected this area because a manager with leadership abilities leads a team to achieve common purposes. The leader performs the organizational functions that are necessary to implement projects effectively.
In project management, a manager with developed leadership capabilities can complete assignments quickly and accurately. This is because leadership stimulates organizational change by inspiring people, and management focuses on monitoring their performance. Thus, these topics should also be considered to distinguish between leadership and management and establish their importance. Whether the project manager has the opportunity to form a project team independently or the staff is appointed by the organization’s management or the human resources department, the project manager should create an atmosphere of cooperation and enthusiasm within the project team. To solve this problem, the project manager must have leadership potential.
Leadership is about motivating, influencing, and giving examples to teams and individuals. At the same time, management deals with the administrative and organizational aspects of the project. With this in mind, a good project manager should be able to combine their leadership and managerial skills in the interests of the project.
A manager’s leadership qualities have a significant impact on a project’s success at all stages of its implementation, from initiation to completion (Scott-Young, Georgy, and Grisinger, 2019). A high level of leadership allows the project manager to convey the project’s vision and organize the project team to achieve high productivity. Accordingly, in project management, the manager must be capable of practically applying leadership abilities.
A leader understands people and strives to balance the interests of the team, the client, and managers, so that everyone feels respected and appreciated. A good leader strives to communicate with everyone as equals. A single project team may have a better moral atmosphere and higher productivity than a functional unit with a similar work composition (Sauer, 2018). Hence, it will demonstrate the value of leadership qualities for the manager while forming and leading a team to perform projects.
For a project as an activity, the phenomenon of leadership, at first glance, is paradoxical. People are selected for the team for a relatively short time and are assigned to a limited number of tasks. However, the pace of events in the project is usually relatively high, and the requirements for the state of mobilization of participants are almost constant. In these conditions, avoiding unforeseen situations and disruptions, including psychological ones, is challenging. Therefore, it is impossible to do without the leadership position of the head in projects.
In practice, the requirements for project managers are constantly evolving. The project manager, first and foremost, is a professional methodologist, secondly, a manager, and thirdly, a leader (Hillson, 2021). Leadership style today enables managers to lead teams in a way that achieves results in dynamic business environments.
Leadership is also vital when working with team members and other companies. For instance, once I was required to organize the entire team’s work, as I was responsible for a specific project. People work in different sectors, but the important thing is that I, as a leader, must convey the idea that they are all working towards a common goal. That is my leadership principle, and I use it to motivate and unite the team members. However, I need to attend additional courses to enhance my ability to motivate and encourage my team.
Communication
In today’s competitive environment, project management must be performed in response to the significant demands of the marketplace. This means that limited time and money resources should not be conditions that prevent the manager from completing the project. Accordingly, I chose the area of communication because it is one of the primary ways to prioritize and establish executability. Only proper communication will enable the leader to ensure that the project is completed promptly and efficiently. As a consequence, it permits the successful implementation of the projects.
Communication competence is always relevant during project management. This is because this concept is present at all stages of project implementation (Lauren & Schreiber, 2018). For management sciences, management, and marketing, communication refers to the interaction among individuals, organizational units, and organizations. If communication is not sufficiently organized, failures can occur during the project, resulting in an increased time required to complete it.
The project manager spends most of their time on communication, as they influence the prioritization, control the process of completing tasks, monitor deadlines, and promptly solve emerging issues and problems. All this is possible thanks to a constructive dialogue with the client, managers, and, most importantly, the team. The interpersonal communication skills of a project manager involve not only the experience of social interaction but also a combination of technical skills and personal abilities.
Project communication management involves collecting, creating, and disseminating information to all parties involved in the project. The rules of such communications should be defined in advance. First, as in any other project, it is necessary to interact with top management and the project’s customer to inform them about the status, achievements, risks, coordinate changes, and accept results, among other things.
Additionally, it is essential to establish regular management processes in which top management actively participates. Building processes means applying them because, without testing the methodology with real users (the management of the organization), taking into account their requirements. Another important task is to transition top management to work within the system, utilizing the developed methodology based on data from information systems, on the terms of trust in the project office.
The main strength of the project concept lies in delegating power and assigning responsibility for achieving goals to specific managers, as well as key team members. The difficulties that arise in this case are twofold: on the one hand, the creation and management of a temporary yet cohesive team, and on the other, the need for this team to interact with the organization’s permanent management system (Fanse & Shirbhate, 2022). In addition, the importance of interaction between project participants —those who produce unique products and those who will use them —increases.
Project communication management is considered one of the key areas of knowledge necessary for creating, collecting, disseminating, storing, receiving, and ultimately using project information. Communication management processes – creating interaction between information and project participants. Managers may spend too much time interacting with project participants, customers, department managers, and sponsors; it is essential to understand how this will impact the project’s course and successful implementation. Communication skills are related to project management, but are not the same concept.
My current performance and opportunity for development in this area should be noted. I need to improve my communication skills to resolve such problems more quickly. For instance, I communicate with other team members. Once, I had a situation where I was confused about the financial part of the project. Finally, when I decided to communicate the problem to our accountant, it was solved, and this helped all team members complete the work more quickly.
In general, it can be concluded that the project manager, who is also a good leader, has good communication skills, the ability to inspire the team (including setting clear goals and objectives and emphasizing the importance of the project), creates a supportive, creative atmosphere, competently distributes the roles of project team members, deserves the trust and respect of project team members by fairly resolving issues.
Problem-Solving and Innovation
It is essential to mention that making and implementing management decisions, as well as problem-solving, are crucial to managing an innovation project. This can be associated with defining goals and monitoring the progress of their implementation, aimed at the performance of a creative idea. Therefore, solving problems and being innovative are critical to the implementation of projects. I chose this field because the ability to make decisions based on innovation effectively provides quick solutions to problems. Moreover, the innovativeness of these solutions can help accelerate projects and enhance overall productivity.
The key to an enterprise’s success in an innovation-oriented economy lies in regularly implementing successful innovations that can be successfully introduced to the market. Innovation, as the generation and application of new knowledge, should be based not on chance but on systematic research and timely developments within the framework of responding to market signals based on an effectively organized process of production and implementation of innovations.
An essential tool for this is project management, which is closely related to innovation management. Projects are an organizational framework for the systematic, methodical, and rules-based acquisition of knowledge, ideas, and results (Kerzner, 2019). The project organization tool is widely used in modern market economies for both complex and relatively simple tasks.
From the moment the project idea originates to the termination of the team’s work, managers have to make decisions without which it is impossible to move forward. The decisions taken within the framework of project planning and implementation are diverse in complexity and the scale of the resources involved in their implementation. As a rule, solutions are a choice of several options or alternatives. At the same time, each alternative carries a greater or lesser risk of failure, as well as wasted resources, effort, and time. Therefore, the task of the project manager and project team members is to evaluate alternative solutions in terms of resource and time parameters, as well as the risks of failure or inadequate work performance.
The most complex, non-standard problems characterize the highest level of innovation. To achieve a satisfactory result, they require a completely new approach. Often, such a problem can be one that was previously poorly understood, and completely new concepts and methods are required to solve it. The manager must be able to understand completely new and unpredictable problems, the solutions of which often require the development of a new way of thinking.
The most modern and difficult problems may require the creation of a new branch of science or technology to solve them. This problem often involves investment decisions, particularly those associated with high risk. Sometimes, a new technical language, computer programs, databases, tools, or production facilities are required.
The development of organizations typically occurs through the introduction of various innovations. It is also closely interrelated with the potential of enterprises located in the region, their activity in relation to the innovation process, and the ability of employees to perceive these innovative transformations. These innovations can affect all areas of the organization’s activities.
The degree of innovation of an object is determined by the share of the contribution it makes to accelerate the qualitative improvement of the objects associated with it (Berggren, 2019). With such a formulation of the question, for example, the innovativeness of a product offered to the market should be determined not so much by the novelty of the technology used in its production, not by its market novelty, but by the momentum of development that brings this product into a given socio-economic system.
Problem-solving and innovation are essential in the modern environment. Today, project management is closely tied to new information technologies, and as a successful professional, I must stay current with them. When it comes to problem-solving, I strive to find innovative approaches. I ask myself how I can approach the problem from a new perspective, which motivates me to make informed decisions while managing projects. However, I need to develop skills to encourage the team to propose innovative solutions and choose the best ones.
Time Management and Resilience
One of the most difficult aspects of project management is effective time management. Managers should manage time effectively and ensure resilience to complete the project on schedule. This is essential because it will help attract investment and enable the team to create an accurate execution plan. Often, one must deal with competing goals, in addition to the requirements of one’s team and the expectations of one’s customers and stakeholders.
I selected this field because time management is defined as the number of hours spent on a project and the progress made. Time management and resilience are the more fundamental qualities of project management. When leading a project, the manager should set the exact time to complete it.
Time management is an important component of task management. This helps break down projects, assign tasks, and complete projects on time. Fortunately, with a little effort, you can utilize time management techniques that will make you more efficient and your work life more enjoyable.
Project time (duration) management focuses on planning, monitoring, adjusting, and analyzing deadlines to ensure timely project completion, from the standpoint of effective work performance (Leal, Rodríguez, and Gallardo, 2018). Time management involves distributing project execution time across successive stages of implementation, scheduling the project and its individual tasks, and monitoring their compliance.
It is much easier to implement a project within the pre-defined plans and budgets and to comply with the required product quality indicators in words than in deeds. Project implementation management in modern conditions is associated with a significant degree of uncertainty that is not under the control of the project manager (Hilson, 2021). The project encompasses a range of activities, including various meetings, report preparation, consumer interaction, and more. The success of individual activities included in the project and the project as a whole is determined by the project manager’s ability to manage his own and his subordinates’ time.
It can be quite difficult to establish the team’s work, and even if it is established, there is a risk that all efforts will be in vain because the requirements for the necessary result often change. However, it is possible to significantly simplify the project work and learn how to manage it, thereby increasing the team’s efficiency, by using a resilient project management system called Agile. Instead of waiting for all the stages (phases) to be completed, the Agile method suggests using a phased approach (Arachchi & Perera, 2018). Its essence is that initially, all the requirements necessary for the project are collected, after which the entire architecture is completed, the design is created, the code is written, and so on.
To enhance my productivity, I employ various techniques to manage my time effectively. One of my favorite methods is planning, and the “Pomodoro” technique, which is particularly useful for completing both short- and long-term tasks (Cirillo, 2018). Indeed, another important skill is to stay resilient. In a rapidly changing world, managers must learn how to remain adaptable and effectively implement new strategies in their work. To improve my sustainability skills, I need more practice in project management. This will enable me to hone my skills to the highest level.
Reference List
Arachchi, S.A.I.B.S. and Perera, I. (2018) ‘Continuous integration and continuous delivery pipeline automation for agile software project management’, 2018 Moratuwa Engineering Research Conference (MERCon), pp.156-161.
Berggren, C. (2019) ‘The cumulative power of incremental innovation and the role of project sequence management’, International Journal of Project Management, 37(3), pp. 461-472.
Cirillo, F. (2018) The Pomodoro technique: the life-changing time-management system. London: Virgin Books.
Fanse, T.S. and Shirbhate, A.V. (2022) ‘Organizational behavior entity: communication modes in project management’, International Journal of Research in Engineering, Science and Management, 5(2), pp. 174-176.
Hillson, D. (2021) Fundamentals of project management. Cornwall: MPG Books Group.
Kerzner, H. (2019) Innovation project management: methods, case studies, and tools for managing innovation projects. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Lauren, B. and Schreiber, J. (2018) ‚An integrative literature review of project management in technical and professional communication’, Technical Communication, 65(1), pp. 85-106.
Leal, J.L., Rodríguez, J.P. and Gallardo, O.A. (2018) ‘Project time: time management method for software development projects-analytical summary’, Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1126(1), p. 012030. Web.
Sauer, S. (2018) ‘Project management between project leadership and project support’, Journal of International Management Studies, 18(3), pp. 53-62.
Scott-Young, C.M., Georgy, M. and Grisinger, A. (2019) ‘Shared leadership in project teams: an integrative multi-level conceptual model and research agenda’, International Journal of Project Management, 37(4), pp. 565-581.