Management Styles and Leadership

Research has shown that successful project managers have firstly leadership skills, secondly conceptual and organisational skills and thirdly domain knowledge. The complexity and international nature of today’s major projects means that increasingly it is no longer sufficient for a project manager to produce a tightly specified product or service within an existing organisational structure. Long life cycles and changing client requirements now require the ability to handle both a transactional and a transformational contract and many major projects and programmes now involve the delivery and leadership of change.

The seminar examined the qualities of successful leadership and whether leaders are born, and to what extent their qualities can be developed. It opened with the presentation of a large ongoing joint leadership project, followed by the experiences of a management consultant whose key role has been the coaching and mentoring of leaders of change.