I’ve talked in previous articles about aspects of being a great project manager, including what I view as business-oriented leadership: driving forward and leading the team to ensure that a project is launched, planned, and executed with alignment to business goals and customer needs.
I haven’t yet touched much on a different aspect of leadership, which I refer to the “leadership persona” - not just what you do as a leader, but also how you come across to others as you lead the team. Along the line I have heard particular managers labeled as strong leaders based (apparently) on their extroverted motivational styles. “He’s really good at keeping the team charged up.” “She’s excellent at inspiring everyone even when the project is difficult.” Did this mean that “rah rah motivational leadership,” being good at making speeches to keep the team jazzed, was a must? That’s how it came across to me at the time.
Over time I have concluded personally that successful team leadership does not depend on the “rah rah” version of extroverted leadership as a foundational requirement. But I do believe that how you come across to people as you fulfill the project manager role can significantly add to or subtract from your effectiveness and the team’s energy, morale, and success.
We ask people to do hard things - work hard, meet tough deadlines, operate in the midst of uncertainty and pressure. It is certainly helpful if the way we lead makes it easier for them to follow and contribute and get it all done with a positive attitude! I have looked back at times to ask myself, who made me feel we had a chance of a great outcome, who instilled in me a sense of confidence and trust, even during particularly challenging projects or organizational situations? And when have I felt I was a good leader in this way, or a NOT so good leader?
Here are a few vignettes:
Communicating through more than words: I remember being PM for a new medical software application, lots of feature decisions to make, rapid iterations to make business-critical milestones several weeks apart. One day I was walking down the hall thinking about a decision I had to make. I passed one of the team members and he said, with quite a bit of worry in his voice, “Wow, what’s wrong?!” Startled, I said “Nothing, why?” His answer was, “You just looked really tense and I thought something had gone wrong on the project.” I realized that he had seen my problem-solver face. Coming from an engineering background, where a primary joy in life is in wrestling nasty problems to the ground, intense worrying of the details of a problem is normal, not negative, actually a positive! But there I was, giving this team member the impression that the sky might be about to fall in. Was I walking around looking like this all the time? There were certainly enough challenges on this project that it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Yikes! When a project is intense already, who needs their leader walking around looking like doom?
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