Leadership and Management Skills Necessary in Projects

Course syllabus (Leadership and Management Skills Necessary in international Projects):

Course learning materials:

Related masters: Diploma Multilateral institutions - Master International Relations. Spanish: Comercio Exterior

Objectives

- Obtaining an acquaintance into leadership skills.
- Knowing how to manage work teams in international projects with various locations.

Course summary (Leadership and Management Skills Necessary in international Projects)

In this module we will learn how to be a leader and we will acquire the necessary skills to manage work teams. Moreover, we will analyze how High-Performance teams work and why leaders fail. Finally, we will study what to do in case of failure of a team leader or other key person in an international project.

Before defining the characteristics that a leader must have, we have to explain what a leader is. A leader is a person who combines a series of skills, knowledge and attitudes, and in this case applied to an international (or several) project.

A leader presents the following main characteristics:

- He/she leads by rather by example than simply by words.
- Motivates his/her employees.
- Plans flexibly but is organised.
- Knows what risks are to be taken.
- Thinks constantly in the client.
- ...

The following diagram shows different qualities relating to personality and behavior which are necessary to be a project leader.

The basic leadership styles are the following:

- Employer (classic) Style: A style where the leader gives orders and takes all decisions.
- Paternalistic Style: A style where the leader motivates his/her employees by being like an old-style father, who looks down on team members, and thinks he is more experienced.
- Participative Style: A style where the project leader collaborates and negotiates all decisions with the team members, decisions are usually taken in committees.
- Permissive Style: A style where the leader delegates all tasks, and where decisions are taken by people in charge of the tasks.

Coaching team members means giving people the opportunity to put into practice the necessary functions and activities to develop their best capacities and professional challenges.

High-performance teams are those made up of a reduced number of people featuring complementary capacities and deploying them irrespective of environment, deadlines, pressure, etc. These team members have a purpose and at least some common objective and are mutually responsible for them.

A leader can fail due to different reasons. These are the most important:

- Inability to give details to team.
- Unwillingness to render modest contribution on the operational tasks.
- Expectations of being remunerated for what they "know" instead of for what they do with their knowledge.
- Worrying too much about his/her followers and competitors.
- Lack of imagination.
- Egotism.
- Lack of restraint in public.
- Disloyalty to the team, sponsor, client, etc.

Leadership, Management, Skills Necessary, international Projects, Style, coaching of leaders, Transparency, credibility, Management of expectations, compensation, High-performance teams, difficult, far-away, locations, Failure