Power-up on Project Leadership

In today's rapidly changing world, all professions are under transformation and project management has no exemption. By 2030, 80 percent of the work of today's project management discipline will be eliminated as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on traditional PM functions such as data collection, tracking and reporting, according to Gartner, Inc

Moreover, the recent Future of Jobs report, by the World Economic Forum, outlines that COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns and related global recession of 2020 have created a highly uncertain outlook for the labour market and accelerated the arrival of the future of work the jobs and skills of the future. Project management professionals must keep up, and transform as the world is transforming around us.

Where project management books focus on hard skills, techniques and methods and to deliver projects, this article focuses on a few tips to help project leaders and the ones aspiring to become one. Essentially, to re-vitalize our projects for the 21st century it's not enough to manage. It's time to lead in in a complex, interconnected, fast-moving, dispersed and rapidly-changing world. The value provided through project management, just as every other profession, is evolving with the pace of change. More than ever our added-value will come from our ability to lead not simply manage. Our current state of managing projects is not enough as we are faced with the most pressing challenges. To overcome we must activate our project leadership and unleash our potential within the #ProjectEconomy.

This article outlines a few tips of what it takes to pro-actively drive our development as project management professionals. These are just our ideas, so feel free to treat it as an open dialogue. Leave your opinion/feedback in the comments section below - and share if you feel the same sense of urgency!

1. Communicate with Purpose (WHY)

Traditionally, project management has been been successful on processes that provided structure around E2E project delivery. As consequence, we, as Project Managers, have naturally gravitated towards a comfort zone in processes and technicality of our methodologies. By priding ourselves on achieving deliverables (WHAT), through our processes (HOW), we have demonstrated an efficiency within our organizations.

And our ability to communicate the purpose of the projects was lost in the process, the bigger picture. For those who have watched Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, successful organizations are the one's that are able to communicate with purpose, beliefs and values. And project management is primarily about communication (typically, 85 to 90% of a PM's time should be spent on communication) and therefore our ability to communicate with the WHY is paramount. Communicating on the WHY requires understanding of the bigger-picture, the broader purpose and benefits driving the value of the project outcomes. On a positive note, the 7th edition of the PMBOK seeks to make a shift from the process-based to a principle-based one, which will help us gravitate towards the WHY!

2. Connect Strategically

It’s understandable that project management focuses on the boundaries of the project. It gives less weight to the benefits and strategic alignment. That’s what program and portfolio management are for - right? Well, not anymore. More than ever project managers must make a concerted effort to connect to strategy, and apply business acumen skills to differentiate their added-value in industry-specific contexts. This is one of three key pillars of PMI's Talent Triangle.

The added-value is not only to execute perfect tactics of project management, but ensure a strategic connection with the vision and purpose of the organization, however imperfect that may be. Project Managers are transveral actors. They pull together cross-functional teams. They are at the heart of change initiatives across the organization. PMs are ideally positioned to be leveraged in this sense.

Nevertheless, PMs find themselves cornered into what may be perceived as tactical or operational responsibilities unable to break-free from those perceptions. It’s time to demonstrate added value as strategic connectors that have the potential enabler transformative intiatives.

Whether it be at the micro-level by influencing the project team culture, or driving cultural transformation Project Managers have the resilience, connection and keystone position to make meaningful impact!

3. Inspire Resourcefulness

The PMBOK helps to provide a process to drive the output of a resource management plan, but does not advocate a mindset of resourcefulness. I am referring to a mindset best described by Tony Robbins as “It's not the lack of resources, it's your lack of resourcefulness that stops you”.

How we can better survive the harsh business and project management environments through the art of resourcefulness? How do we drive project success in today's rapidly changing environment, while companies expect us to do more with less? Today's project managers have to learn on the fly, cope with business turmoil and balance agility with quality. Being resourceful is a mindset - it is the ability to think creatively and to foster an attitude of resourcefulness and stimulate, evaluate and act upon ideas that can benefit the process, result or goals of the team. This mindset enables a project team to be open, anticipatory, change-oriented in the face of harsh conditions. Although the project conditions may sometimes be daunting beyond belief, the Project Managers that live up for the challenge inspire others to do the same. Project Leaders with this mindset represent the #NextGenPM. The International Competencies Baseline 4.0 (ICB4), by the International Project Management Association (IPMA) has a great section that deep-dives into resourcefulness -it's worth checking out!

4. Facilitate Resolution

Escalation is appropriate when the project team sees a threat that is beyond the project manager's authority. Escalation is an important part of managing day projects and operations. How I believe that #NextGenPMs are able to bring added-value is by being masterful in soft skills such as influence, negotiation and facilitation. Not only that, but being able to expand their delegated authority because of when faced with project issues, they can drive the process of moving two factions with different points of view toward an amenable resolution. This also includes the ability to identify potential conflict and crises and to react accordingly through collaboration, compromise, prevention, persuasion and eventually escalation. And to do this effectively means demonstrating trust through transparency and integrity. Soft skills are the name of the game.Soft skills are paramount, but not so easy to teach.

So how do we build our soft skills, especially when HR professional highlight that they are not as easy tech as technical skills? How can we develop to resolve challenges that are not only governed by processes and thus course-correct, by thus provide added-value through the application of soft skills to resolve challenging situations?

5. Serve and Empower

Top-down management was historically the common management approach. Project management inherited this, and embedded it into the processes governing project management. Just as Agile has embraced this notion of service leadership and self-accountability, so must we all in the project management community. Essentially this requires us to be vulnerable, lose control and place trust in others to reach their full potential. And as Brene Brown famously said "Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection"

In a previous publication, I advocated that the PMBOK considers an “empowering process group” that stresses servant-leadership, self-organization and networked collaboration as a framework.  To transition into a more empowering approach Project Managers must provide the project team with a supportive space to take on an increased level of responsibility and authority over the work that they do, giving them the autonomy to plan and manage work, make their own decisions and solve their own problems. This concept can already be seen in scrum methodologies whereby teams are empowered to self-manage and self-organize their work. For example the Scrum Master is a Servant-Leader and by design does not have any organizational authority or power. A Scrum Master is not a master of the team, but rather one who encourages, enables, and energizes people to collaborate as a team and realize their full potential within the Scrum framework.

6. Empathy: High PM EQ

Sure, “Knowledge is Power” but that’s not enough in the world that we operate. More stakeholders, greater diversity, distributed teams, social media, new technology, and the need to do more with less, are some of the reasons why complexity has greater importance than ever before. As a certified Project Manager, you've probably mastered the processes, themes and techniques of different books of knowledge, which can be understood as Project Management IQ. Having a high PM IQ, therefore means to be well versed in the technical knowledge of these methodologies and processes. However, this alone is no longer enough to deliver successful projects on time, budget and to quality expectations – both EI and IQ are needed to transition into a Project Leader. Nowadays, it is equally (if not arguably more) important for a Project Manager to possess and to hone in their EI for project success. Think how many times you've led a whiteboard meeting asking your team members "how do you feel" while pointing to the green, yellow, or red smiley.

We do that as Project Managers because we understand that importance of emotions in driving performance, which means being able to handle conflicts and to create a harmonious environment in the most difficult of times. Having strong EI is to be able to rally the team to solve problems together.

Project Managers must have a well-developed EI that puts people at ease, helps them feel appreciated, and enables us to build and maintain solid relationships founded on confidence and trust, which are critical to driving performance and sustaining motivation around project milestones. A Project Leader must be equipped, not only with the technical knowledge and methodologies, but also with a strong sense of EI. In transitioning into a Project Leader, a well-developed EI is a must-have. It will enable you make the right calls, action the critical feedback from your project team and drive your project to successful completion - because it's emotions that drive people, and people drive performance!

Project Leaders must lead, inspire and motivate a team. Emotional intelligence (EI) is the foundation for success in this field with empathy at it's heart.

7. Enable the Transformative

The role of the Project Manager can be underestimated by senior management. Overlooked as being perceived too operational in nature. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that the profession is evolving and, now more then ever, Project Managers are acquiring more and more business acumen, leadership and strategic skills. And this evolution is making them a 'hidden gem', a strategic asset, to organizations during cultural transformations.Tapping into and harnessing the leadership, cross-functionality and skills of the Project Managers during cultural transformations can inspire, catalyze and help support organizations to make a wider and deeper impact. Next time your organization is looking to re-vitalize their approach to company culture, think of Project Managers as enablers that can effectively become an accelerator for cultural transformation. If you are a project manager yourself promote your value, don't be afraid to demonstrate your leadership and rise out of your comfort zone to become a role-model in your company to drive inspire, catalyze and help orchestrate a cultural movement. 

Conclusion

Leadership is a trendy business topic and senior management obsesses about it, we should equally be obsessed about it in our projects. Of course Project leaders needs to have the right technical skills to best achieve their project goals, but that is not enough to tackle the complex issues and challenges facing organizations. There is no cookie-mold for leadership nor is it an innate. It's a mosaic composed of individual experiences, personal characteristics and competencies. Deeply rooted, in heart, head and guts as highlighted in their popular leadership book, ‘Head, Heart & Guts– How the World’s Best Companies Develop Complete Leaders’ the authors make the case that leaders who operate only from the head are what they consider ‘incomplete leaders’. To truly thrive and lead successfully in today’s complex social and business environments, ‘whole leaders’ must learn to find a balance between their head, heart and guts. Marty Linsky, co-author of several books on adaptive leadership along with Ronald Heifetz, mentions that “technical leadership is from the head, and adaptive leadership is from heart and gut”. This video strongly resonated with me, and I see the parallels with our transition from project management to project leaders:

I believe that we can all activate project leadership within us all and to be successful in our DACRI world. If it is too overwhelming at once, then try an agile approach and iterate. A step-by-step approach to gear up for what's ahead - the next generation of project management! #NextGenPM