Project Management and Leadership: Equal Partners for Project Success

Ruffin Veal III, M.S., PMP, Principal of Ruffin Veal & Associates, Inc. has been an information technology and management professional for over three decades. His management and leadership related articles can be seen in the Project Management Institute's (PMI) Virtual Library as well as in national and international publications. He is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP). He holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science and an M.S. degree in Project Management.

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Part I—The Four Project Management Processes of Leadership and Management

As project management professionals, we are all aware of the management aspects of our profession. These include the tasks, processes and sequences of steps that we all know by heart. However, client feedback and our own self evaluations or “lessons learned” often tell us that we should be addressing a frequently neglected but equally important demand of our profession. That demand is leadership.

Why this new emphasis on project managers as leaders? Why are management skills alone no longer enough?

Well, let’s look at project management in today’s world. I believe we can all agree that the profession of project management is increasing in complexity. We regularly are called upon to supervise projects that are global in nature, involving different cultures, nations and industries. These increasingly complex projects require budgets totaling millions of dollars. It seems that as the world continues to get smaller, projects will continue to get larger. This means that our inventory of skills needs to increase, as well.

One skill that has always been overshadowed by our emphasis on management is that of leadership. Oh sure, we all say that we practice both, and some of us would even say that we are good at both. But are we really as good as we think we are? Let’…

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