{"id":777,"date":"2007-12-14T06:47:22","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T06:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/2007\/12\/14\/managing-to-lead\/"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:36:46","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:36:46","slug":"managing-to-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=777","title":{"rendered":"Managing to Lead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"b-leading.jpg\"What’s the most important thing you do that makes you a good project manager?\u00a0 The only contest I ever won was answering that question.\u00a0 About ten years ago I entered the weekly contest in the nationally syndicated Working Wounded<\/em> column in the San Francisco Chronicle business section.\u00a0 My winning answer was (and still is) “I do whatever it takes to protect the project team from management and enable them so they can do the job we pay them for.”<\/p>\n

Is this project management or project leadership?\u00a0 What’s the difference and why should you care?\u00a0 The answer of course is – it depends.\u00a0 Here are 3 aspects (out of many) that jump out to me:<\/p>\n

Job title\/description:\u00a0there’s no consistency\u00a0in the\u00a0definitions of project manager and project leader across companies, and sometimes even within the same company.\u00a0\u00a0Often the terms are used interchangeably.\u00a0 Job titles provide no help in\u00a0planning your career when there’s no clear relationship to expected behavior.<\/p>\n

Methodology – There are many methodologies, each with their own definition, and you’re generally stuck with\u00a0the “company standard”.\u00a0 The PMBOK<\/em>\u00ae, for example,\u00a0defines leadership as one of the Interpersonal Skills (section 1.5.5) “needed for effective management” and defines it as “developing vision and strategy and motivating people to achieve that vision and strategy.”\u00a0 \u00a0In contrast, the Agile Project Leadership Network (www.apln.org<\/a>) is “focused on making people great project leaders by focusing on the following:\u00a0 value, customers, teams, individuals, context and uncertainty.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

YOU – What do your heart and gut tell you about the balance between doing things right and doing the right thing?<\/p>\n

\"b-laot.jpg\"Leadership as defined by Lao-tsu\u00a0is what inspires me (though not specific to project leadership, it still works): “to lead people, walk beside them: as for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence: when the best leaders work is done the people say ‘we did it ourselves!'”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s the most important thing you do that makes you a good project manager?\u00a0 The only contest I ever won […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[202,268,231,1370,84,211],"class_list":["post-777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-agile","tag-agile-leadership","tag-career","tag-leadership","tag-management","tag-project-manager-role"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13871,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions\/13871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}