Leadership: The PM Differentiator

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

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I have heard project management referred to as “management without authority”. I understand the reasoning behind that--resources are often assigned to projects from their operational functions and remain reporting to their functional manager, so the PM has no formal positional power over them. I think that statement is a little simplistic, however. Project managers are responsible for the delivery of the project scope on time, budget and quality--and that creates a degree of formal authority. PMs can also call in the “wrath of sponsor” (whether real or implied), and if only through the fear of letting people down can create some authority.

I do like the concept of management without authority, but I like to think of it as management without the need to resort to formal authority. To me, that’s the mark of a true leader--and it sets the people who can achieve it apart.

Leadership in project management
There have been countless books written on leadership and how to be an effective leader, and I’m not going to be so presumptuous as to suggest that I can cover the same ground in a short article. Instead I want to focus on some of the key behaviors that I feel turn a project manager into a leader. Undoubtedly there are some personality types who find leadership easier than others, but the same can be said about project management. I …

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