Project leadership and situational sensitivity

Project leadership is a journey of continuous adjustments and refinements of actions and behaviours, rather than the mere mastery of a best practise-based set of skills. It has remained one of the most talked about issues in project management, if not contentious.

Project leadership is as situational as it is task-oriented. This makes the project leader’s role sensitive, with the added complexity of working within constraints of time, budget, uncertainties, and customer expectations. Consequently, there is no one way to benchmark the effectiveness of a project leader because effectiveness is relative to the demands of the situation. With every project literally different, leadership in projects is about adaptation and being situationally sensitive.

Situational sensitivity is one of the traits of leadership. Simply put, it is an understanding of the need (e.g., type, quality, quantity, level of involvement, foresight, etc.) for leadership corresponding to the situation. In a project management context, just an understanding of the need for leadership seems intuitively limiting, unless it is followed by a response to the need and the dynamics of interactions between people, processes, and systems within the project eco-system. Since systems and processes are created by people, people remain the main drivers of situational sensitivity in projects.

Project leadership through situational sensitivity requires tactful handling of multiple elements and parameters within the project ecosystem through a cocktail of diplomacy, objectivity and fairness, empathy, sound judgement, decision-making, and standing ground when needed.

With projects becoming increasingly complex, the skills set needed by future project managers has emerged as an important area of research, and an understanding of how to deal with situational sensitivity effectively is part of these trends. While possessing the desired skill set or an understanding of how to exercise situational sensitivity in projects is not an antidote to project failures, these skills can certainly help in avoiding major pitfalls in project management.

Without going into the debate on the merits of the role a project manager should play, certainly, these words epitomise the approach needed for project leadership through situational sensitivity for improved project outcomes.