Omar JabbarProject Management and Digital Transformation Consultant| OGreen IT Service Inc.Ontario, Canada
More and more PMs find themselves reporting to leaders with less delivery or domain experience. Is this a healthy shift toward strategic leadership, or a mismatch that creates friction?
What do you think?
Does deeper PM experience help or hinder team dynamics?
How should leadership adapt when the PM knows the work better?
Is this a sign that PM career paths need updating?
PMO Leader | Speaker & Mentor | Content Leader – PMOGA Latin America
Hub| Catholic University of UruguayMontevideo, Montevideo, Uruguay
When the PM has more operational experience than their manager, the problem is not hierarchy, it is the leadership model.
It works if the leader understands their role: making decisions, removing obstacles, and connecting with strategy, not competing in technical expertise.
It fails when authority is confused with "knowing more."
This is not an anomaly: it is a sign that PM careers need to evolve toward roles where experience and decision-making coexist, not clash.
Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
This is not fundamentally a question of hierarchy. It is a question of governance maturity.
In many organizations, directors are being repositioned toward portfolio optimization, capital allocation and enterprise risk, while PMs remain closest to delivery reality. When that shift is intentional and roles are explicit, it is healthy. When it is accidental and ambiguous, it creates friction.
Deeper delivery experience in a PM does not hinder team dynamics. It strengthens them, provided authority, accountability and decision rights are clearly defined. The director’s responsibility is not to out-execute the PM. It is to define strategic intent, set risk appetite, arbitrate trade-offs across initiatives and own the consequences of those decisions. The PM’s responsibility is to integrate constraints, surface emerging risks early and protect execution coherence. That is structural complementarity, not competition.
Leadership must therefore adapt from positional control to clarity of intent and disciplined decision architecture. In complex, fast-moving environments, technical depth alone is insufficient at the top. What matters is the ability to design the interface between strategy and execution so that knowledge flows upward and decisions flow downward without distortion.
Yes, this signals that PM career paths need updating. Seniority should not be defined only by vertical promotion. There are at least two legitimate forms of progression: deepening integrative delivery mastery, and expanding enterprise-level strategic stewardship. Both require credibility, but they are not interchangeable.
If a PM consistently knows the work better than their director, the real issue is not personal capability. It is whether the organization has made explicit who decides what, at which level, and with what accountability. When that architecture is clear, experience compounds value. When it is not, hierarchy amplifies ambiguity. Saving Changes...
This isn’t really a PM experience issue; it’s an organizational design issue. Leaders don’t need to know the work better than PMs, they need to set direction and constraints. PMs translate that into execution and surface tradeoffs. Friction happens when those roles and decision rights aren’t clear.
If leaders rely on title instead of context, they overrule expertise.
If PMs rely on expertise instead of alignment, they resist direction.
Neither problem is about experience. It’s about clarity on who decides what. When organizations define that clearly, differences in experience help. When they don’t, hierarchy turns into conflict. Saving Changes...
Program Manager, PPM&PMO Specialist.| Coppel, Mexico.Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico
Omar in my opinion, this situation is a test of true leadership. A great leader knows how to leverage the team's strengths. In this case, a director should lean on the PM's deep experience to achieve better results.
Unfortunately, we often see the opposite: some directors feel threatened by the PM's expertise, which is a clear sign of poor leadership and insecurity. When a leader acts as a facilitator instead of a 'boss,' the dynamic becomes healthy and strategic. If the leader tries to control technical details they don't understand, it only creates friction and slows down the project. Francisco Saving Changes...
Omar Jabbar Law of Power, Never outshine your master. However, the master should also have an open mind by brainstorming with the more experience colleague when solving a problem.
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1 reply by Omar Jabbar
Feb 19, 2026 8:02 AM
Omar Jabbar
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Thanks for your reply, Akin, but even with strong collaboration, this approach doesn’t always succeed. As a Program Manager or Sr. Project Manager, you ultimately developed your own management style, professional identity, and strategic judgment. Many people can perform the mechanics of project management, but only a small number truly exemplify what it means to be a Project Manager. It’s this combination of self‑defined leadership, exposure to different management styles, and situational awareness that sets the top performers apart from the rest.
Saving Changes...
Omar JabbarProject Management and Digital Transformation Consultant| OGreen IT Service Inc.Ontario, Canada
Feb 18, 2026 4:01 PM
Replying to Akin Fadare
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Omar Jabbar Law of Power, Never outshine your master. However, the master should also have an open mind by brainstorming with the more experience colleague when solving a problem.
Thanks for your reply, Akin, but even with strong collaboration, this approach doesn’t always succeed. As a Program Manager or Sr. Project Manager, you ultimately developed your own management style, professional identity, and strategic judgment. Many people can perform the mechanics of project management, but only a small number truly exemplify what it means to be a Project Manager. It’s this combination of self‑defined leadership, exposure to different management styles, and situational awareness that sets the top performers apart from the rest. Saving Changes...
Program Manager| HARPER SRLSanto Domingo / Distrito Nacional, Dominican Republic
It only becomes an issue if ego gets in the way. If roles are clear and there’s mutual respect, experience and strategy can actually balance each other well.
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1 reply by Omar Jabbar
Feb 19, 2026 8:43 AM
Omar Jabbar
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I completely agree with your comments. You’ve raised some important points that really resonate with me. It’s crucial to consider these perspectives as we move forward. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Saving Changes...
Omar JabbarProject Management and Digital Transformation Consultant| OGreen IT Service Inc.Ontario, Canada
Feb 19, 2026 8:30 AM
Replying to Lissette Indhira Pimentel Sosa
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It only becomes an issue if ego gets in the way. If roles are clear and there’s mutual respect, experience and strategy can actually balance each other well.
I completely agree with your comments. You’ve raised some important points that really resonate with me. It’s crucial to consider these perspectives as we move forward. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Saving Changes...
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