The first thing that I have learnt from this module is the difference between project management and project leadership. The module has given me an insight into project management which can be considered as the procedure which ensures that various requisites of a project are being managed properly such as project timeline, project cost, workforce management and other technical aspect along with the human resources. However the scope of a leader is different from that. A leader along with the managerial skills should have leadership qualities as well (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). A project manager as I have learnt from the module, might not have the leadership quality, while on the other hand a leader may not have management skills as well. However, having both the qualities is essential for a perfect leader. (Harrison and Lock 2017). Hence both qualities are essential if one aims to become an effective leader, as the role and responsibility of a leader requires having more qualities than the project manager. Hence a leader is need of having both the skills so as to aid in the success of a project and to prove effective leadership (Walker 2015). This module has aided me to obtain a closer understanding of these aspects.
In this unit I have studied the concept of project leadership and governance in detail. This study has helped me in understanding numerous concepts related to project management, qualities needed for leading a project (Binder 2016). Although I wanted to explore the context of leadership as it would help me in my career I had very little knowledge like what leadership actually is, what are the different qualities related to leadership, how those qualities should be developed and especially how those qualities need to be integrated for effective leadership (Basu 2014). I was also unaware of the manner in which a leader lead an organisation, aligned the leadership with the goals of the organization for effective and efficient leadership while ensuring effective leadership skills (Heagney 2016). These skills are honesty, communication, inspiring teams and provide motivation for work and service towards organization.
The reason that I was so interested in this subject was that I knew that it will help me in exploring different areas related to project leadership. As I am a civil engineer I already had the required technical knowledge for construction project. However, I did not have the skills required to lead a project successfully. This unit has helped me a lot in learning a lot about various leadership skills. The aspects that I have learnt in this module include role of communication, confidence, honesty and the ability to motivate others as part of effective leadership which will be beneficial for my future endeavour (Takey and de Carvalho 2015).
This module has helped me immensely in exploring the strategy of effective communication especially in the context of leadership. This module has taught me that a leader is someone who is not only responsible for learning different areas of the project including the technical part, but he or she should be able to clearly communicate the ideas to the team members as well (Lee 2016). It is true that team members are also responsible to make them familiar with the project ideas. However, the team members always follow the leader when they have any confusion regarding the requirement of the project (Uhl and Gollenia 2016). Hence a leader should always be able to lead from front. Leading from the front does not mean to have authority over everyone, it mean that the authority is accepted by others as well. However, for that the leader must be a great communicator first, because leaders must be able to create a presence among team members and this is not possible without communication, rather effective communication.
The fundamental quality that people expect to see in a leader is confidence of a leader. Team members often believe that their leaders are individuals with extraordinary confidence. No one will accept someone as a leader who lacks confidence, hence it is an essential quality of any leader, no matter what is the project scope and requirements (Burke and Barron 2014). Hence a leader should always be able to showcase confidence in whatever work he or she decides to execute. Hence leader should not develop confidence only for own tasks, it should be quality of a leader to provide confidence to the team members as well. Having the required confidence in the leadership is an essential quality of a leader.
Another important quality of leadership I learnt in this module is honesty. It is specified that no matter how confident, how elegant the leader is, it does not matter if the leader is not honest (Verzuh 2015). Leaders set example for others and if a leader does not have honesty, it is not justified to expect the team members to be honest towards the project. From this module I have learnt that a leader never aims for profit with means of dishonesty. A leader always thinks for the wellbeing of others, people who follow him or her. A leader thinks that any benefit or profit that the project makes should be made available to all and the process should be transparent as well so that each and everyone in the team is aware. Hence even before thinking of personal profit, a true leader always aims to make sure that any benefit that the project makes should be available to all. When a leader thinks in that respect it is not possible to cheat or make any dishonest decision and that is what everyone expects from a leader.
The next essential quality of the leader according to the module is the ability to motivate others. Leadership comes with the quality of effective team management and providing motivation to the team is one of the essential feature of the proper team management (DuBois et al. 2015). It might happen that sometimes the members working in a team might get demotivated due to various reason such as work pressure, money received for work, organizational culture, behaviour of other team members and other concerns as well. It is the duty of the leader to identify if any team member is having any issue or requires any motivation. A leader should always be there to help the team member and motivate them so that they always maintain a proper attitude towards the organization and the project they have been assigned to.
Expectations from the course and how much it has met those expectations
In order to analyse whether the course has met my expectation or not, it is important to review the course in terms of its strengths and limitations. The course has its own pros and cons. The course has done really well in some aspects while some features need improvement as well. In this section I will review the course and will provide details about things I have liked along with features I have not liked. According to me these sections needs improvement to enhance the overall quality of the course.
Some important features I will like to highlight about the course are easy to follow, enough details about the concepts as well as right amount of detailing while providing lessons to the course attendant.
The course has met my expectations in various sections. Whenever I had difficulties in learning the concepts I could approach the instructor of the course. However I expected that I will be able to approach the instructor even outside the course. However the learning was only limited to classroom interaction. Still about the quality of the materials provided for course, I would say that the material was very well designed and they were easy to follow as well. However I expected to learn all the concepts about effective leadership that I already researched on the internet. I learnt from the internet that in order to incorporate leadership into project management, an individual should have four important skills such as adaptability, engaging others, a compelling voice, and integrity. However, the skills that I have learnt are motivation, confidence, honesty and communication. I believe that the skills that I have learnt in this course will help me in achieving those skills as well as both the skills sets are much related to each other. Hence learning these skills are important for me for increasing my knowledge about the project management and the project leadership. Hence I am extremely satisfied with the course as it has helped me a in learning various concepts that will help me to excel in my career as a project manager and as a leader as well.
The skills that I have developed and skills that I set out to learn at the beginning
As I have already specified in the course review and expectation section that the course as a whole has met my expectations in terms of providing the necessary knowledge that I intended to learn when I decided to join the course. Hence, I was quite satisfied that I was able to gather the learnings on completing the course. I have learnt various concepts and I believe that they will act as a boost to my performance in future. Skills like confidence, motivation, honesty was not in my learning list and I had learnt these concepts in reference to the project management and leadership. However, the course has really helped me in identifying the areas where I already have some knowledge and also areas where I can improve so that I might become a successful project manager besides being a leader for the team members. In a word I can say that the course was overall helpful for learning most of the skills I decided to learn before I joined the course.
Now that I have completed the course, I learnt the various facets related to project management and leadership. However as I progressed through the course I was really enjoying the course as the course was very detailed, structured as well as extremely easy to follow. I developed a different attitude towards the course and started to learn the course with attention.
However I expected the course will also allow the course attendants to access the course material from anywhere and it will also allow to interact with the course instructors outside the classroom. Hence, I expected that the course will be highly traditional and less interactive. However, I had to change my expectations as the course were interactive even though digital learning was not incorporated into the course. I also expected that the course will be much theoretical in nature and proper attention will be provided in that regard. However the course not only focused on the theoretical aspects, it also helped students to learn how to apply those concepts in actual projects and that was very helpful for me.
Hence I can say that during the course I had to change my expectations, however in most of the cases I was happy to do that as those were essential to make the course even more efficient and effective for offering better scope for learning the course and the concepts taught in the course module related to project management and project leadership.
References:
Basu, R., 2014. Managing quality in projects: An empirical study. International journal of project management, 32(1), pp.178-187.
Binder, J., 2016. Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. Routledge.
Burke, R. and Barron, S., 2014. Project management leadership: building creative teams. John Wiley & Sons.
DuBois, M., Koch, J., Hanlon, J., Nyatuga, B. and Kerr, N., 2015. Leadership Styles of Effective Project Managers: Techniques and Traits to Lead High Performance Teams. Journal of Economic Development, Management, IT, Finance & Marketing, 7(1).
Harrison, F. and Lock, D., 2017. Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.
Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.
Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Lee, M.R., 2016. Leading virtual project teams: Adapting leadership theories and communications techniques to 21st century organizations. Auerbach Publications.
Takey, S.M. and de Carvalho, M.M., 2015. Competency mapping in project management: An action research study in an engineering company. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), pp.784-796.
Uhl, A. and Gollenia, L.A. eds., 2016. Business transformation management methodology. Routledge.
Verzuh, E., 2015. The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.
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