The Role of Situational Eadership in Project Success
INTRODUCTION
The analysis of leadership and its role in the success of a project in an organization has become increasingly important with the recent changes in organizations activity. Leadership not only has been a dynamic attribute, but also critical to the changing economic landscape over the last centuries. Although they have kept up introducing and adopting various leadership styles in organisations they are merely the adoption of strategies to achieve organizations goals.
Leadership is the ability to affect human behaviour to accomplish a mission or the act of influencing a people to set and achieve goals (McGraw, 2009). McGraw (2009) suggests successful project leadership involves: leading courageously; influencing others and acting with resilience.
Great leaders are visionary people who are able to achieve results using people. They exhibits authority in themselves and exhume confidence in their team members. Circumstances make men, just as much as men make circumstances (Marx and Engels, 1947:29). Some leaders are democratic, allowing team members to air the opinions. Some are dictatorial, explaining what they want from their teams to the team members to execute. All styles have opportunity and challenges and may be used in certain circumstances.
There are an umpteen number of factors that may affect success on a project (Lechler, 2000; Gemuenden & Lechler, 1997). The only agreement seems to be the disagreement in the field on what constitutes ‘project success’. It is the aim of this study to investigate project leadership approaches in relation to success of the project, irrespective of the industry, budget, culture, or the geographic location. In doing this, the following research questions are addressed:
• Which leadership approach leads to a higher level of project success?
• How do leaders switch between different leadership approaches to be more successful?
Effective project manager leadership is an important success factor on
The analysis of leadership and its role in the success of a project in an organization has become increasingly important with the recent changes in organizations activity. Leadership not only has been a dynamic attribute, but also critical to the changing economic landscape over the last centuries. Although they have kept up introducing and adopting various leadership styles in organisations they are merely the adoption of strategies to achieve organizations goals.
Leadership is the ability to affect human behaviour to accomplish a mission or the act of influencing a people to set and achieve goals (McGraw, 2009). McGraw (2009) suggests successful project leadership involves: leading courageously; influencing others and acting with resilience.
Great leaders are visionary people who are able to achieve results using people. They exhibits authority in themselves and exhume confidence in their team members. Circumstances make men, just as much as men make circumstances (Marx and Engels, 1947:29). Some leaders are democratic, allowing team members to air the opinions. Some are dictatorial, explaining what they want from their teams to the team members to execute. All styles have opportunity and challenges and may be used in certain circumstances.
There are an umpteen number of factors that may affect success on a project (Lechler, 2000; Gemuenden & Lechler, 1997). The only agreement seems to be the disagreement in the field on what constitutes ‘project success’. It is the aim of this study to investigate project leadership approaches in relation to success of the project, irrespective of the industry, budget, culture, or the geographic location. In doing this, the following research questions are addressed:
• Which leadership approach leads to a higher level of project success?
• How do leaders switch between different leadership approaches to be more successful?
Effective project manager leadership is an important success factor on