University Project: Leadership and Team Management in Project Context

This report offers a comprehensive literature review on leadership and team management within the context of project management. It begins by defining project management and highlighting the significance of leadership and team dynamics in achieving project goals. The review explores various leadership styles, with a particular focus on transformational leadership and its positive impact on team performance, employee empowerment, and organizational success. It contrasts transformational leadership with transactional leadership, discussing their respective strengths and weaknesses. The report also examines the importance of team management, including effective communication, cohesive leadership, and conflict resolution. It emphasizes the interconnectedness of leadership and team management, underscoring how effective leadership is crucial for building successful teams and navigating challenges. The report provides insights into how leadership styles influence team building, decision-making, and overall project outcomes. It further discusses the significance of adapting leadership approaches to meet changing market conditions and consumer needs, and how effective leadership is essential for maintaining team cohesion, especially during organizational crises.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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1.0. Introduction
The term project management can be defined as the practice of initiating, planning,
executing, controlling as well as closing the work of a team for achieving specific goals along
with meeting specify success criteria within the stipulated time. Leadership and team
management in project management are terms that are considered to be synonymous. It is highly
crucial for managers to understand that in management, leadership is one of the most essential
parts in order to manage an organization in an efficient way. Being a crucial component of
management, leadership behaviour stresses upon constructing an environment where each and
every employee gets a work friendly environment for developing as well as excelling their
performance and skills. The mentioned influence may originate from formal resources that
include acquisition of managerial position in an organization. It is highly crucial for a manager or
a team leader to have leadership traits as well as leadership qualities. This helps the leader to deal
with the team members in an efficient way and thus ensure enhancement of the efficiency of the
team and well established professional relationship between the team members so that the team
develops the potential to achieve its goal. Thus it can be clearly understood that team
management and leadership are two highly interrelated factors. In the following paragraphs
review of academic literatures associated with the two topics that is, leadership as well as team
management have been discussed.
2.0. Literature review on leadership and team management
2.1. Leadership in project management
. According to APM (2012) “leadership can be defined as the ability of a leader for
establishing vision as well as direction, along with influencing and aligning others towards a

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common goal, to empower, inspire individuals for achieving success”.
When it comes to the process of managing a project team, it can be considered as an activity that
allows the leaders to teach the performance of the team member with the help of using feedback,
by resolving strategic as well as operational issues along with managing the changes associated
with the reason behind optimizing the performance of the project (McGrath et al. 2016). The
process of managing a project team possess includes addressing precise challenges of team
management that are related to communication, recognition as well as assessment of the
objectives of the team. It can be considered the responsibility of the team leader or the project
managers for managing the project team along with ensuring the success of the project. Thus it is
highly crucial for a project manager to possess effective leadership skills. According to Henkel,
Marion and Bourdeau (2019), leadership in project management can be considered as a critical
skill for teamwork management as well as team building. An efficient level of leadership allows
the project leader for developing a successful communication with the team members which in
turn ensure efficient communication of the vision and mission of the project. Along with this,
efficient leadership skills also help the team leader to achieve high performance.
According to Aga, Noorderhaven and Vallejo (2016) transformational leadership style
possess the potential to ensure the success of the project. The transformational leadership style
refers to a leadership style that enables a leader to encourage inspire as well as motivating the
employees for innovating as well as creating changes that will result in growth as along with
shaping the future success of the organization. A transformational leader is someone who
possesses the efficiency of bringing a collaborative approach to the team, empowering the team
by providing the team members freedom and responsibilities. Deichmann and Stam (2015) stated
that a transformational leader, unlike leaders who follows transactional or autocratic leadership,

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works with the team members in order to identify the specific areas that requires changes. This in
turn, not only enhance the potentiality and performance of the team members but also enhances
the trust of the team members that eventually results in increment in employee loyalty. He or she
creates a vision that provides the guidance to the changes required along with inspiring the team
for sharing their vision. According to Han et al. (2016) in this era of high competition between
the organizations in any industry, empowerment of the employees can be considered to be an
effective way of retaining skilled and experienced employees. Empowerment of employees
makes them feel valued and thus enhances their loyalty towards the organization. A
transformational leader empowers the employees by considering their perspective before taking
major decision for the team, inspiring them to share their vision along with encouraging them to
execute their plan and participating in the process of changing. Dartey-Baah (2015) pointed out
that transformational leadership initiates with the urge of the leaders to listen for learning instead
of listing for answering.

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Figure 1: Effect of Transformational Leadership on the relationship between Provider’s
Emotional Exhaustion and Turnover Intention
Source (Green, Miller and Aarons, 2013)
Lodders and Meijers (2017) stated that with the change in the market condition and
consumer needs, the perspective of leaders associated with providing effective leadership to a
project team is highly crucial to change. Before the emergence of transformational leadership, a
good number of project team leads used to follow the traditional or transactional leadership in
order to lead their project team. Transactional leadership involves a leadership style that enables
the leader to create step by step plans to execute and thus accomplish the organizational goal

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(Deichmann and Stam 2015). Unlike a transformational leader, transactional leaders chiefly
focus on their task along with the rigid structure. One of the chief issues faced by the team
members working under a transactional leader is that strict rules and regulations hinder
maximization of the ability of the team. Employees are not provided with the freedom to work as
per their perspective to achieve the organizational goal and are subjected to strictly follow the
structure that has been designed by the leaders. Along with this, major decisions for the team are
taken by the leaders irrespective of the perspective of the employees. This in turn not only results
in reduction of the innovation within the team but also reduces the loyalty of the team members
towards the organization (Amanchukwu, Stanley and Ololube 2015). Organizations that follow
transactional leadership are found to be suffering from major attrition.
Deichmann and Stam (2015) pointed out that unlike the transactional leadership,
transformational leadership works for changing the system itself while maximizing the ability of
the team. The leaders who follows transformational leadership, works outside the box while
utilizing fluid planning structure along with working towards multiple goal within an overall
target. A transformational leader focuses on the target while creating new systems to accomplish
the same.
McDonough (2000) has provided four arguments that explained the influencing role of
the leadership style of the project manager on the practices associated with team building.
Firstly, an efficient leadership is highly required for delineating the task limits for the team along
with allowing the team members for performing within the mentioned limitations. Secondly, the
project leader needs to exhibit an effective leadership style where team members will be
provided with the freedom for exploring discussing as well as making their own decision about
the techniques they want to employ for problem solving as well as for performing the tasks

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associated with project. Thirdly, an effective leadership style is highly crucial for sharing
information as well as information within the team members along with other teams of the
organization in order to ensure a realistic decision. That may include designing efficient
communication n mechanism for sharing knowledge about the chief focuses of the project along
with major changes and development and the responsibilities of individual team members.
Fourthly, effective team leadership in required in order to enhance the commitment of them team
with the help of instilling a optimistic attitude as well a climate that in turn helps the team
achieve success.
2.2. Team Management
The term ‘team management” as per APM (2012) can be defined as “the ability of a
leader to administer as well as coordinate the team members so that they can perform
efficiently.” Efficient team management include effective communication within the team,
proficient team work, objective setting as well as performance appraisal. Long with this, team
management can be considered as the capability of identifying issues along with resolving
conflicts within the team. A good number of techniques as well as leadership styles are used by
the team leaders in order to enhance the productivity of the team members along with preventing
conflict and attrition of team members. According to Aga (2016), the four major elements of a
healthy as well as successful project team include cohesive leadership, effective communication
between the team members along with the team leadership, a common goal and efficient team
roles and responsibilities.
Kraus and Ferrell (2016) stated that in a well functioned team, cohesion amount the team
leaders along with the decision makers is highly crucial. Cohesive leadership can be defined as

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the process here the team leaders of a project team acts together as a unit for making effective
decision for the team instead of operating individually. Cohesive leadership ensures that the team
has been directed in one direction in the place of multiple due to the act that team leaders lacks
the efficiently to consistence with their instruction. Thus cohesive leaders enhance the efficiency
of the team.
da Silva Nogueira and Rodrigues (2015) pointed out the importance of an effectual
channel of communication from the top of organizational structure to the bottom and vice versa.
An effective channel of communication not only allows the messages to be transferred in an
accurate way but also ensure no delay to the intended recipients. This in turn speeded up the
decision making process of the leaders and eventually the operation of the team.
Sohmen (2013) stated it is highly crucial for the leaders for creating a work environment
which will be conductive to the team members who are working together in supportive as well as
goal oriented efforts. Thus, it can said that a effective leadership is clearly imperative for
inducing efficient team building, even, in case the team members are high performers as well as
posses appropriate capabilities, the project shall not obtain success in the absence of effective
leadership.
According to Sommer, Howell and Hadley (2016), the survival of an organization or a
team during adverse situation that includes stress as well as uncertainty relies on the ability of the
team members to persevere as well as persist n their task, despite the adversity faced by them.
An organizational crisis can be defined as the time period or event that involves high uncertainty
level, crucial issues along with time urgency. In such scenarios, it is the decision making
capability and team managing capabilities of a leader that highly influence the resolution of crisis

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specially in the healthcare setting where the wellbeing of the healthcare service users are
ministered by the healthcare service providing teams. It has been found that in healthcare setting,
situational leadership and transformational leadership style have shown efficient risk
management and employee retaining properties in adverse situations, compared to other
leadership styles like transactional or autocratic leadership. Patel et al. 2016 have pointed out
that, because of the crucial proximate outcomes that includes positive affective tone and for
ultimate outcome that include reduced burnouts as well as stress, the role of the team leaders in
healthcare setting. Boamah et al. (2018), stated that in the healthcare setting, the behaviour of
transformational leaders involves four types of behaviours that include idealized influence,
inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be clearly understood that leadership and meeting
management are interlinked to a great extent. Effective and efficient leadership style ensures
effective management of project tams. In this era of highly competition between the
organizations due to skilled and efficient employees, it is highly crucial for team leaders to
develop transformational leadership capabilities so that both the performance of the team as well
as leader-follower leadership can be enhanced. Along with this, leaders also needs to focus on
crucial elements of an healthy and successful team that include of an healthy as well as
successful project team include cohesive leadership, effective communication between the team
members along with the team leadership, a frequent goal along with well-defined team roles as
well as responsibilities.

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Reference List
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Aga, D.A., Noorderhaven, N. and Vallejo, B., 2016. Transformational leadership and project
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Boamah, S.A., Laschinger, H.K.S., Wong, C. and Clarke, S., 2018. Effect of transformational
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Dartey-Baah, K., 2015. Resilient leadership: A transformational-transactional leadership
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Green, A.E., Miller, E.A. and Aarons, G.A., 2013. Transformational leadership moderates the
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