MEM-501 Project Management Report: Leadership and Team Dynamics

This report delves into the core aspects of project management, focusing on the critical leadership skills required for effective project execution. It explores the essential qualities of a project manager, emphasizing communication, positive attitude, integrity, vision, and delegation. The report examines the process of assembling a qualified and experienced project team, providing insightful questions to ensure the selection of the right individuals. Furthermore, it addresses the inevitable conflicts that arise in projects, analyzing their major causes, such as communication gaps, scope modifications, project management styles, and stakeholder disagreements. The report outlines various conflict resolution strategies, including understanding the situation, considering different opinions, and reaching agreements to mitigate and resolve conflicts. Ultimately, the report underscores the significance of strong leadership, a well-structured team, and proactive conflict management for achieving successful project outcomes.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
1. What do you consider are the leadership skills required of a project manager in
relation to the processes involved in managing complex projects?.......................................2
2. In any project it is important to assemble a team of suitably qualified and experienced
people. Detail several questions you would ask when staffing projects to ensure success....3
3. Conflicts on projects are inevitable. What do you believe are the major causes of
conflicts and what are the different possible ways of resolving such problems?..................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Project management is an initiative to plan and execute a process in order to achieve
the required goal. In order to ensure complete success of a project, without any difficulties. A
set of rules and responsibility is required to understand by every individual. Project
management helps in building those plans and executing business process which will help in
controlling the project (Heagney, 2016). It helps in achieving the desired project goal in an
effective manner. Hence the process of project management requires a lot of criteria to be
implemented. This paper will help to answer the questions that will help to understand the
role of project manager and the need of project management (Larson & Gray, 2017). The
paper highlights the importance of good project manager and a team who are experienced and
educated. It also explains about the cause of various complications that occurs while handling
a project.
Discussion
Project Leadership:
A project manager acts as a leader who leads the team and is responsible of making
any important decision in the progress of the project. Therefore, he must possess good
discipline and values and has clear vision that will eventually help in successful completion
of the project. The project manager holds the duty to complete the project in an effective
manner. He looks for the team, resources and requirements for the project. Therefore he must
be possessing highly skilled leadership quality in order to manage complex projects. He must
be having a strong managerial approach and enhanced leadership (Kerzner, 2018).
Required Leadership Skills
Excellent Communication Skills: communication is the key to develop any relation. The
ability to communicate with variety of individual will make them comfortable and
understandable. To maintain the progress of a project, smooth communication with the team
members is important (DuBois et al., 2015). The team leader must communicate his vision
and goals clearly. A good listener is a quality of a good leader.

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Enthusiastic and possess positive attitude: the manager of the project must be
enthusiastic and should depict only positive attitude to his teammates. The positive attitude
will create a positive environment and will make the teammates more engaged and happy
while working (Zhao et al., 2016). The positivity created in the environment will make the
team more committed towards his or her project.
Integrity: A good project manager seeks trust of the team. He must be a good influencer.
His habits should influence the team members to be dedicated towards reaching the project
goal. Integrity makes the project manager to refrain from mistakes and bad practices.
Share a vision: the project managers must be able to give a clear picture of what is to
delivered. He must be able to make the individual understand its role and importance. He
must give a view of big picture that will make them believe the value of the project (Johnson,
2018).
Delegacy: it is important for the project manager to understand which individual in the
team has the potential to handle what type if tasks. He must be able to distribute the
responsibilities wisely. The art of delegation will create a positive environment and self-
belief among the individual (Young, 2016). He must regularly check the work of the team
members and keeps hold of the performances.
1. In any project it is important to assemble a team of suitably qualified and
experienced people. Detail several questions you would ask when staffing projects
to ensure success.
Before implementing a project. The primary step is building an effective team (Niazi et al.,
2016). Not just a team, a team who will be leading to a successful project. Selecting the right
person for the team is important and understanding each ones qualification in specific area is
also important (Duhigg, 2016). Experienced and qualified person will be an easy tool to
achieve the goal. Several questions that must be asked are:
 What is the knowledge domain of the candidates?
 How is the communication skill of the respective candidate applying to join the team?
 What are the strong points of the candidate applying to join the team?
 What will be the possible contribution of the respective candidate in the team?
 Is the knowledge domain of the candidate is relevant with the selected project
requirement?

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 What are the past works of the candidate in the other project?
 Is the quality of the previous of the candidate is standard?
 Does the respective candidate has the ability to cooperate with the other team
members during the project development?
 Does the candidate has leadership quality?
 Does the candidate has the history to follow the ethical approach towards dong the
work?
Conflicts on projects are inevitable. What do you believe are the major causes of conflicts
and what are the different possible ways of resolving such problems?
Due to difference in mindset of each and every individual in the team, conflicts arises (Niazi
et al., 2016). Though the objective might be same but perception may be different. The
common cause of conflicts are:
 Lack of communication: sometimes, the project manager fails to communicate with
the teammates in an effective manner. He must be available 24/7 to solve any
problem of the team members. There must be a clear connection between the project
manager and tem members.
 Modification in scope: any change in scope suddenly is the major reason of conflict
on project. For example, the project is to implement a model of smartphone. All the
specifications and requirements are placed and all of the sudden the company decides
to implement windows phone (Steghöfer et al., 2016). The team becomes pressurized
in such situation to complete the task within such short span. All the efforts goes into
vein.
 Project management style: the style with which the project is managed play a vital
role in completion of a project. The conflict arises between what project manager
wants and how the team tends to do it. There can be instances, where the project
manager bounds the team to not be too creative but the team may feel that their
method can help in much better output.
 Stakeholder agenda: stakeholders can be of many types vendors, customers,
government and many more. The difference in their interests raises conflict.
Conflict Resolution

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The project must be prepared with all necessary equipment to solve it. Discussing the impact
of conflict and the reason behind it help in reducing any further causes of conflict.
Understanding situation: the situation must be discussed within ate team and everyone’s
opinion must be considered. The different opinion will help in digging the main reason of
conflict. What will make the project beneficial and how must be discussed (Binder, 2016).
The concern of each and every members must be heard and clarity to the situation must be
made.
Reaching an agreement: after discussing the situation among each other, the final decision
must be made. The root cause of the conflicts must be discovered and futher planning must
be made accordingly that will eliminate the cause of conflict arousal (Wu et al., 2018). By
considering each and everyone’s opinion, an agreement must be made with the consent of
project manager and the whole team.
Conclusion
The paper concludes that while managing a project, conflict arises, which also can be
resolved concerning the root cause. Therefore, the importance of intelligent team
certain leadership characteristics must be there in the project manager that will ensure
a successful completion of the project. Finally this paper suggests that good
leadership skill will help in controlling and managing complex projects. The
dependency of team towards its leader is natural hence the team leader must be wise
and worthy of his position. The conflicts that occurs while handling the project are
unavoidable therefore preventive measures and resolution techniques must be
acquired to make the project successful. Further it also advises to make a quality
team which will be the stepping stones to the success. Without an effective and
remarkable team it will be hard to achieve the goal. The selection of team is a major
process that is performed by the project manager. Hence he must choose a set of
qualified and intelligent team. He should built set of questions to test their
intelligence and must analyze who is the perfect fit for the project.

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References
Binder, J. (2016). Global project management: communication, collaboration and
management across borders. Routledge.
DuBois, M., Koch, J., Hanlon, J., Nyatuga, B., & 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).
Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The
New York Times Magazine, 26, 2016.
Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.
Johnson, K. (2018). Using a “Project Management Mindset” as an Administrative
Approach to Creating Workplace Efficiencies & Building Employee Leadership
Skills. In Project Management in the Library Workplace (pp. 245-259). Emerald
Publishing Limited.
Kerzner, H. (2018). Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence.
John Wiley & Sons.
Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2017). Project management: The managerial process.
McGraw-Hill Education.
Niazi, M., Mahmood, S., Alshayeb, M., Qureshi, A. M., Faisal, K., & Cerpa, N. (2016).
Toward successful project management in global software
development. International Journal of Project Management, 34(8), 1553-1567.
Steghöfer, J. P., Knauss, E., Alégroth, E., Hammouda, I., Burden, H., & Ericsson, M.
(2016, May). Teaching Agile: addressing the conflict between project delivery and
application of Agile methods. In Proceedings of the 38th International
Conference on Software Engineering Companion(pp. 303-312). ACM.
Wallensteen, P. (2018). Understanding conflict resolution. SAGE Publications Limited.

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Wu, G., Zhao, X., Zuo, J., & Zillante, G. (2018). Effects of contractual flexibility on
conflict and project success in megaprojects. International Journal of Conflict
Management, 29(2), 253-278.
Young, T. L. (2016). Successful project management. Kogan Page Publishers.
Zhao, X., Hwang, B. G., & Lee, H. N. (2016). Identifying critical leadership styles of
project managers for green building projects. International Journal of
Construction Management, 16(2), 150-160.