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LEADERSHIP IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Xiong et. al (2008) affirms that effectiveness and efficiency should be integrated into the project leadership skills if any private or public company has to be successful in the day to day operations. However, this overview makes available a comprehensible thoughtful on how effective leadership skills can be integrated into the project management, predominantly in the private sector. Project management fosters on planning, organizing and leading.

Leading includes co-ordinating, directing and motivating in order to finish a particular one time task. Furthermore, the connection between project management and project leadership set the paradigm of the successful projects and spell out the leadership styles of good project leaders. Thus, leadership is dynamic and not static. Leadership is narrower than management. Leadership focuses on change and not policy. Additionally, project leaders should be innovative and see what other managers cannot see. Although, leaders are born; project managers can be trained into leadership. Therefore, companies that embrace leadership skills are globally successive and attain cost benefits in various projects while companies that are not able to integrate its project managers into the leadership skills bare high risk of failures and accumulate a lot of losses within their specific projects. More than 70% private companies headed for failure in 1991 when the second president of Zambia Dr. Fredrick Chiluba embarked on liberalise of economy. Although we had qualified managers but they could not quickly foresee and handle the pleasure of foreign products and services that were coming from developed countries. Zambian local products were inferior in terms of quality and therefore they could not competitive favourably on the free market. Leadership skills play a major role in manager’s day to day operations because they can see what other executive directors cannot see.

Up to now Zambia is living in the Chiluba’s error. Only fewer Zambian manufacturing companies are strangling and initiating change in the free market (Sakamba, 2015).

Leadership skills must exist at every level of management or department in order to enhance project corporate governance and strategy. Turning any company into the learning organizational enhances leadership skills and styles. Learning organization aspect enables project managers to acquire new skills and specializations. Employees definitely become effective leaders and become more efficient in the day to today project operations. They will be able to out fight competitors and reinvent new services and products. Depending on the project situations project leaders will be able to apply contingency approach in order to attain organizational goals. Thus, they will automatically become entrepreneurs or innovative, team prayers, risk takers, motivators and focus on change. They will be able to perceive what other executive directors cannot perceive. Good project leaders are able to set accurate paradigms in an organization such as Chreso University is one the most successful Christian University in Zambia. It has trained its members in various skills, indeed Chreso University is the open system ready to adapt to any new technology. Although the institution is young our management has been successful because our emphasis is on leadership development such as formal training, coaching, and career advancement and enhances team work.

The findings suggested that leaders gain authority mainly from their personality strengths. Thus, personal traits in leadership skills themselves cannot be acquired by training, but they can only be modified by training and experience. However, other private universities in Zambia headed for failure in their projects because they could not effectively outline the importance of good governance in project management and furthermore they could not effectively implement the total quality management (TQM) aspect and main features of good governance such as equity/fairness, accountability, rule of raw, social responsibility and transparency in their project management. Governance is the course of action of decisions making and implementation (Sakamba, 2013).

Projects managers must identify the factors that affect project management and make quick decisions. Decision making includes non programmed decisions making and management decision making. Thus, if project managers possess leadership skills will effectively apply personal decision making or non- programmed decisions making without difficulties in their endeavours projects activities.

Some of these tools of non- programmed decision making are decision tree and force field models. However, management decisions making have less implication in the executing of project activities because they are applied in accordance with the laid down policies of an organization.