Susanne Madsen recently released The Power of Project Leadership. The book was easy to read and offered insightful tips on how to improve your project leadership skills.
I found the common sense approach about how to be a better Project Leader uplifting. When I meet with Project Managers and discuss why delivering projects is not all about the process, but rather about how you lead and engage your team, I have received many confused looks. This is a difficult concept and leads to the question – “How can I improve my soft skills to be a better leader?” My answer would now be “start by reading the Power of Project Leadership – and completing the exercises in the book”.
The Power of Project Leadership provides a simple but effective guide to improving your project leadership skills. I liked the approach of having exercises to re-inforce the key learning outcomes and real life examples from respected Project Managers. Susanne has also supplied a website that provides supplemental material such as checklists, inspiring videos and other reference materials.
The message throughout the book is simple – the way we, as Project Managers, are delivering projects is not working – project failure continues to be high and is of great concern to our customers, It is only through analysing our drivers (as outlined in Chapter 2) that we can improve our project leadership skills. Turning a camera on your leadership skills can be difficult. Susanne’s approach is methodical and will help people understand their strengths and weaknesses systematically. The discussion about the empowering mindset is fantastic. I think that one of the key leadership learnings is that you can control your own response to events and having a positive mindset does make complex situations easier to manage.
The seven keys to project leadership discussed in the book, are relevant and pragmatic. The information provided for each of the keys is useful and practical – not just a bunch of platitudes. Sometimes as Project Managers we invoke the victim mentality – constrained by everything. By embracing these seven keys, you can make positive change and improve your project leadership. You set the pace – make small incremental changes or go big – whatever you do your team and your stakeholders will be impressed.
If you are interested in learning more about how to improve your project leadership skills, then this is a great How To guide. Go on – take up the challenge and improve your leadership skills today.