Learning Leadership
George Jucan is an experienced Project Manager Professional (PMP) with 20 years of technical and management experience in complex environments, both in public and private sector. He is well known in the project management community as a successful IT project management consultant, speaker at public events, trainer and author of project management articles.
Most project managers have the accountability to deliver their projects, but few have the right level of authority required for the job. Without formal authority, the project manager can rarely force the team members to perform the assigned tasks and must rely on leadership abilities to motivate the people to get the job done.
Clearly, there are some people who are born to be leaders. History offers great examples of people with natural leadership capabilities that have been able to inspire and move millions: Alexander the Great, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King are just a few.
How about the rest of us? Well, it seems to me that a project manager must have some leading capabilities already acknowledged by the organization and peers, otherwise they would not have been entrusted with the project in the first place. For example, the desire of organizing the activity of others is a clear sign of leadership capabilities--not everyone wants to stick its head out of the crowd.
It is also true that these capabilities might be rough in their native state, and to be able to use them most of us must actively enhance them. There is plenty of literature talking about the discovery of born skills, learning how to use them and applying and perfecting them in real life. Some books are really good and worth the time reading them. Until …
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"I'm not saying anything. There is no message." - John Lennon |
