A few days ago McKinsey&Company published an interesting article “Decoding leadership: What really matters”, highlighting results of an intensive research on leadership. The research shows, that four kinds of behavior account for 89 percent of leadership effectiveness, namely “Solving problems effectively”, “Operating with a string results orientation”, “Seeking different perspectives” and “Supporting others”. This is highly applicable to projects.

Projects are initiated to resolve problems or problems occur while performing projects in a dynamic environment. Thus, all people involved in a project need to have respective competences. The IPMA Competence Baseline, Version 3.0 (ICB 3.0)  mentions this as a technical competence. However, there are different problems in projects to be resolved, e.g. technical problems, organisational problems or interpersonal problems. The latter might be called a “conflict” or “crisis”, another competence of ICB 3.0, one of the behavioural competences. Results orientation is also highlighted as competence in ICB 3.0 and will continue to be a main driver for success in projects. In projects there is a clear link between the specification of goals and the results. The recently published IPMA Project Excellence Baseline draws also a direct line between the goals of a projects (“foundation of excellence”) and projects results (“proof of excellence”). Results orientation is based on the right attitude, continues with performing the projects towards the set goals and delivering the desired results in the most effective and efficient way.

Seeking different perspectives is another core aspect of project management. It starts from a sound analysis of the context and the stakeholders, takes into account the diversity of the project team and levers it to the best extent. For me, the ability of changing perspectives is very important to overcome challenges in a project. It helps us to see a problem from a different angle and resolve it in a better way. Levering the diversity of a team helps to be more creative and motivates the people to bring to the table what they have to offer. This is agility, often asked for in projects, not only in software development. Finally, supporting people is another key competence, reflected in several of the ICB 3.0-competences (e.g. teamwork, leadership, consultation as well as personnel management). It goes hand in hand with challenging people. This means, to assign new tasks, interesting for the team member and challenging in a sense, that they can advance their skills, learn how to tackle a challenge and develop their competences towards an entrepreneurship. Projects are an ideal tool for competence development. They allow people to practice and learn, they help to develop own competences and allow for a continuous learning – for both, the one leading and the others being led!

Leadership in projects is a challenge. Each project is specific and requires therefore a specific leadership approach. Throughout the project lifecycle the situation changes very often, which requires the leader to adapt and be flexible. External and internal influences, such as politics, cultural differences or change requests is to be taken into account while leading. The aforementioned competences often go hand in hand. This is why I often state in my trainings: “A project manager needs to be virtuous – using all available competences to achieve excellent results in a given situation.”