Attributes of Leadership for Success in Project Management

In the hypercompetitive business environment, to maximize returns to the organization and to minimize risks on failures in project execution, we need a special kind of leadership. A project manager holding such a mantle relinquishes positional authority and becomes part of the work group to provide direction, communication, group process facilitation, coordination and support to achieve better results, faster and more consistently than in conventional orientation. The project manager does not have the luxury to select the team of his choice; rather members are assigned from various functional disciplines based on the disposition of the discipline head. Often times, team members are new to project environment and face difficulty in coping with the pressures posed by the project stake holders through the project manager. The domain of leadership has seen phenomenal change during the past few decades. The project manager can no more be purely transaction oriented to address the issues of meeting project milestones. The human factor has assumed greater and complex dimensions. Organizational sustenance, if not growth, has become a question mark. In the light of these factors, we shall review the evolution of management theories and project management principles and practices and identify a fitting set of leadership attributes with which the project manager can steer his project(s) to success without compromising the aspirations of