A project is an undertaking that has a beginning and an end, and is carried out to meet established goals within cost, schedule and quality objectives. Project management brings together and optimizes the resources necessary to successfully complete the project. These resources include the skills, talents and cooperative efforts of a team of people; facilities, tools and equipment; information, systems, and techniques; and money (Haynes, 2002).
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According to Culp and Smith, a project is carried out by people who come together to complete a specific task. In organizing and managing a project, both organization (structural) and people, are of utmost importance and none of them can be ignored. But most of the times, the structure is considered more important than the people. This is because project managers are trained to use structural management tools but have little training to deal with people (Culp & Smith, 1992).
On the other hand, management is to decide what is to be done and then getting it done through people. This means that people are the most important resources available to managers and through them; all the other resources of an organization can be managed.
The Management Standards Centre states that the key purpose of management and leadership is to provide direction, facilitate change and achieve results through the efficient, creative and responsible use of resources (Armstrong & Stephens, 2005).
The terms leadership and management are used interchangeable by some people. While some people consider them as totally opposite to each other and according to them good manager cannot be a good leader and vice versa. There are some similarities between leadership and management like they both influence employees and they both have authority and power. Nonetheless, there are many differences between both the concepts but with proper training and development one can be both a good leader as well as a good manager. Therefore, despite of having differences, both leadership and management overlap each other.
In this paper, we will discuss the concepts of leadership and management, differences between them and how to make a balance between the two for the success of a project.
Management
Management is the process of coordinating people and other resources to achieve the goals of an organisation (Pride, Hughes, & Kapoor, 2008).
The Processes of Management
Management focuses on achieving results by effectively acquiring, deploying, utilizing and controlling all the resources required, such as people, money, facilities, plant and equipment, information and knowledge (Armstrong & Stephens, 2005).
The various processes of management are designed in such a way so as to attain the objectives and can be categorised as:
Planning- determining the goals of an organization and a method to achieve those goals
Organizing- setting up and staffing people and resources
Motivating- exercising leadership attributes to motivate employees to work together efficiently
Controlling- monitoring the actual performance and comparing it with the expected results and taking corrective actions wherever required (Armstrong & Stephens, 2005)
Management Standards
Management standards specify the list of things that managers need to know and be able to do. They serve as guidelines for managers against which their performance can be assessed. Below are a few management standards as given by the Management Standards Centre:
Providing direction
Facilitating change
Achieving results
Meeting customer needs
Working with people
Using resources
Managing self and personal skills (Armstrong & Stephens, 2005)
Project management is the planning, delegating, monitoring and control of all aspects of the project, and the motivation of those involved, to achieve the project objectives within the expected performance targets for time, cost, quality, scope, benefits and risks (Murray, 2009).
The project manager is the single focus for day-to-day management of a project. He has the authority to run the project on behalf of the project board within the constraints laid down by the board. His prime responsibility is to ensure that the project gives the required results within specified time, cost, quality, scope, risk and benefits. The project manager has numerous responsibilities like:
Prepare documents like project brief, benefits review plan, project initiation document etc.
Prepare reports such as issue reports, end project reports, exception reports, etc.
Maintain records like issue register, risk register, daily log, etc.
Ensure that the work is not overlooked or duplicated
Liaise with any external suppliers
Manage proper communication between directing and delivering levels of the project
Establish and manage the project’s procedures (Murray, 2009).
A project manager should also possess project management skills that are relevant for the specific project which he undertakes. These skills/ competencies include the following:
Planning
Time management
People management
Problem solving
Attention to detail
Communication
Negotiation
Conflict management (Murray, 2009)
According to Meredith & Mantel (2010), hard workers are easy to find, but the difficulty lies in finding the one who can complete a difficult job. The drive to complete the task is considered to be of utmost importance in a project manager (Meredith & Mantel, 2010). For the successful completion of a project, it is essential to select the right person as a project manager. The most sought after attributes while selecting a project manager are:
A strong technical background
A hard-nosed manager
A mature individual
Someone who is currently available
Someone on good terms with senior executives
A person who can keep the project team happy (Meredith & Mantel, 2010).
The success of a project management is dependent on the final outcome of the project. The outcomes of a successful project management are:
Completion of the project within budget
Satisfying the project schedule
Adequate quality standards
Meeting the project goal (Munns & Bjeirmi, 1996)
Whereas, the following factors may cause a hindrance to achieve the outcomes of a project:
Inadequate basis for project
Inefficient project manager
Less/no support from top management
Tasks not defined properly
Lack of project management techniques
Improper use of management techniques
Project close-down not planned
Lack of commitment to project (Munns & Bjeirmi, 1996)
To avoid the above mentioned hindrances, proper planning needs to be done to finish the project successfully, a skilled project manager should be appointed, adequate time should be taken to define the tasks properly, information flows should be adequate, motivating employees through rewards, corrective actions should be taken when mistakes are identified (Munns & Bjeirmi, 1996).
Leadership
Leadership focuses on the most important resource known as people. It is defined as the process developing and communicating a vision for the future, motivating people and gaining their commitment and engagement (Armstrong & Stephens, 2005).
Leadership Roles
There are three roles of a leader:
Define the task- a leader should specify what the group is expected to do.
Achieve the task- a leader makes sure that the purpose of existence of group, which is to complete the task is, is fulfilled.
Maintain effective relationships- a leader has to ensure that there is cordial relationship between him and his group members and also between the members within the group (Armstrong & Stephens, 2005).
According to Adair (2004), there are seven qualities of leadership:
Enthusiasm
Integrity
Toughness
Fairness
Warmth
Humility
Confidence (Adair, 2004)
A leader is a person (with leadership qualities) who has the appropriate knowledge and skill to lead a group to achieve its ends willingly (Adair, 2004).
There are three overlapping needs of any workgroup which are task need, team maintenance need and individual need. Hence, the groups look forward to their leaders to assist them in completing the task, help building teamwork aspects and help to meet individual needs. There are many functions that leaders perform which can be categorised in relation to the needs of the group that are task needs, team maintenance needs and individual needs. These functions are:
The ROLE
FUNCTIONS
Evaluating
Motivating
Organising
Providing an example
Definig the task
Planning
Briefing
Controlling
Source: Adair, 2004
The above mentioned functions are handled by leaders with excellent skills and qualities. A leader should possess following characteristics to perform its functions:
Group influence
Commnd
Coolness
Judgement
Application/ responsibility (Adair, 2004)
Project leadership is defined as a presence and a process carried out within an organisational role that assumes responsibility for the needs and rights of those people who choose to follow the leader in accomplishing project results (Cleland, 1995).
A leader of an organisation and a leader in managing a project have many similarities like development of a vision, guidance in both the operations and strategic directions of the project and the organisation; motivate the group members to contribute to the efficient and effective utilization of resources. But a leader of a project has some additional challenges in comparison to a leader of an organisation which are summarised below:
providing cross-functional and cross-organisational leadership environment as the stakeholders are concerned with the team effort.
operating without documented formal authority over the team members, who may report in a traditional authority-responsibility relationship to their functional managers.
working in a matrix organisational design (Cleland, 1995).
The project leader’s direction finder
Managing the stakeholders
Managing performance
Managing project life cycle
According to Briner, Hastings and Geddes (1997), a project leader looks in six directions which are explained below:
Source: Author
Managing the stakeholders-
Looking upwards- the sponsor of the project who is also the project leader’s boss has his own reasons for asking the leader to perform a particular task. Therefore, it is the important for the project leader to look upwards to his sponsor and know and understand the reasons of performing the task.
Looking outwards- all project have end users and numerous other stakeholders who have different expectations with the project and it is the responsibility of a project leader to meet those expectations.
Managing the project life cycle-
Looking backwards and looking forwards- a project leader should look forward and make realistic plans by employing the required resources and also ensure that there are appropriate monitoring and reporting systems so that he is able to meet the set targets.
Managing performance-
Looking downwards- a project leader should make sure that his group members are performing efficiently both individually and collectively.
Looking inwards- a project leader should also consider his own performance for the overall success of the project (Briner, Hastings, & Geddes, 1997).
Leadership vs Management
Leadership and management are two different concepts. Leadership is not better than management or a replacement for it and vice versa. Management alone is inadequate and organisations have a need to create efficient leaders. According to Bennis [1989 as cited in (Elearn, 2007)], the attributes of a leader and a manager can be summarised as follows:
The Manager
The Leader
Administers
Innovates
Maintains
Develops
Relies on control
Inspires people
Shorter range view
Longer range view
Asks how and when
Asks what and why
Accepts the status quo
Challenges it
Does things right
Does the right thing
The behaviours of a leader and a manager are different and can be listed as follows:
Subject
Leader
Manager
Essence
Change
Stability
Focus
Leading people
Managing work
Have
Followers
Subordinates
Seeks
Vision
Objectives
Approach
Sets direction
Plans detail
Decision
Facilitates
Makes
Power
Personal charisma
Formal authority
Dynamic
Proactive
Reactive
Style
Transformational
Transactional
Wants
Achievement
Results
Risk
Takes
Minimizes
Conflicts
Uses
Avoids
Direction
New roads
Existing roads
Concern
What is right
Being right
Credit
Gives
Takes
Blame
Takes
Blames
Source: (Leadership vs. Management, 2011)
The function of management is to attain the organisational goals while leadership deals with influencing people to achieve a common goal. According to John P. Kotter, leadership and management can be distinguished on the basis of their functions as follows:
Management functions
Leadership functions
Planning
Establishing direction
Organizing/staffing
Aligning people
Controlling
Motivating and inspiring
Source: (Promoting Thought Leadership…, 2011)
Conclusion
Technical skills of managementInspite of all the differences between leadership and management, leadership is an important aspect of management in conjunction with planning, organizing, motivating and controlling. According to Kotter [2001 as cited in (Elearn, 2007)], management helps in bringing consistency and order in technical dimensions like quality. While Bennis [1989 as cited in (Elearn, 2007)] says that the art of influencing people to behave in a specific way is called as leadership. To complete a project successfully, strong leadership should be combined with effective management and the people involved in the project should be developed in both the areas.
Managers need both relationship and technical management skills
Relationship skills of leadership
Source: (Elearn, 2007)
Rather than considering leadership and management as positions, efforts should be made to treat them as different and complementary processes which are incomplete without each other. Then leadership will become one of the roles of managers.
According to Robert Quinn [2002 as cited in (Elearn, 2007)], managers should specialise themselves in playing both management and leadership roles. The eight roles of managerial leader can be summed up as follows:
The roles of a managerial leader
Values
Competences
The innovator is creative and facilitates adaptation and change
Innovation
Adaptation
Living with change
Thinking creatively
Managing change
The broker is politically astute, persuasive, influential and powerful and is concerned with maintaining the organisation’s external legitimacy and obtaining external resources
Growth
Resource acquisition
Building and maintaining a powerbase
Negotiating agreement and commitment
Presenting ideas
The mentor is helpful and approachable and engages in the development of people through a caring, empathetic orientation
Morale
Commitment
Understanding self and others
Communicating effectively
Developing employees
The facilitator encourages teamwork and cohesiveness and manages interpersonal conflicts
Participation
Openness
Building teams
Using participative decision making
Managing conflict
The monitor checks on performance and handles paperwork
Information management
Documentation
Monitoring individual performance
Managing collective performance
Analysing information with critical thinking
The co-ordinator maintains structure, schedules, organises and co-ordinates work of people
Stability
Control
Managing project
Designing work
Managing across functions
The director engages in planning and goal setting, sets objectives and establishes clear expectations
Direction
Goal clarity
Developing and communicating a vision
Setting goals and objectives
Designing and organising
The producer is task oriented and work focused and motivates members to increase production and to accomplish stated goals
Accomplishment
Productivity
Working productively
Fostering a productive work environment
Managing time and stress
Source: (Elearn, 2007)
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