Perfecting the art of leadership is something not easily attainable. In fact the mere start of my previous sentence ‘perfection’ makes it impossible to achieve. But there is certainly some phenomenal leaders in the workplace that make a visible positive impact on teams, while others just cause damage or foster indifference.
‘The Secret Leadership Mindset that Improves Project Delivery’ is a webinar that I attended with Project Management Institute. It was presented by speaker Eric Wright, who brought to the discussion his experience and knowledge from working in the military.
Eric discussed lots of key skills and attributes about what good leader would look like and certainly in the constraints of a project. Project Managers should have the emotional intelligence to engage with their project teams in ways that can only foster delivery, achievement and enables a culture of learning from mistakes.
The secret leadership mindset was broken down into three core attributes:
- Tenets
- Characteristics
- Skills
Each of these attributes have a set of qualities that project managers would naturally have some of them; and should focus on others to better empower them to drive success with their teams. In my previous 3-post series on team management: 3 team structures, the cycle of motivation & team culture and communication, I did not go into the depth of leadership, but rather details on what team are and their cultural difference. Understanding the foundations of teams, would enable a project manager to embellish their skills in leadership.
So what does each of these attributes include:
During the webinar, Eric shared more qualities to each attribute and he elaborated with examples on each one of them. The ones highlighted in green in the table, are ones that I particularly stand by. Making a decision does not come naturally to people. It is always better to make a bad decision than not to make a decision at all. Why is that? Because making a bad decision will help you understand and learn a path that you should not take again. Integrity is not comprisable nor negotiable. A project manager; in fact any professional; without integrity has no chance inspiring, motivating, coaching and building a team for success. Adapting and re-engineering is another great quality project managers should have. The concept that a plan is set in stones, the scope is fixed and everything should happen line by line is an unrealistic concept. Project managers should have the flexibility to adapt to changes since no future is certain. Such flexibility combined with effective planning, time management and analysis will result in a more powerful outcome.
What are you experiences with leadership? Did you have a leader who you thought are absolutely fantastic? What were their skills? Or did you perhaps have a leader that you had no respect nor affiliation with? What did you learn from them? What is it that you did not respect in them?
The Project EDIT 