Leadership Styles In Project Management

Leadership means directing, motivating and organizing groups of people for performing the set tasks. Leaders must have the quality to lead the groups of people. They must have the capability to inspire others and must make them perform the tasks timely.

Project leadership plays a very important part in project management. Each leader has own leadership style and the style differs from person to person, which depends upon their experiences, philosophies and their personalities. Leadership styles is the behavior of the leaders towards the team they are leading. The different kinds of leadership style will have different effects on the environment and the output produced by the team.

There are different leadership styles that a project leader must have, in order to be effective in their role in leading the teams. The different kinds of leadership styles are:

The Autocratic Leadership Style: The leaders have all the authority and they give instructions to the team what all tasks have to be done and how it is to be achieved.
The Democratic Leadership Style: In this style the leaders focus to build group consensus and commitments in the team management of decision making processes. The leaders participate with the team and greatly motivate the team members which is very important for the organization in achieving their goals.
The Coercive Leadership Style: This style is used by the project leaders when they issue orders in the manner when there is only one direction of communication. The leaders give a direct order to to the team and they have strong control over the situations.
The Authoritative Leadership Style: The leaders share the vision with the team, and allows the team to give their input in the decisions. The leaders motivate the team members and the team’s contribution is given greater value.
The Affiliative Leadership Style: This style is used by the leader to encourage every member, promote cooperation and team harmony.
The Pacesetting Leadership Style: The leadership style in which high performance standards are set and the team members have the capability to achieve the goals with less supervision.
The Coaching Style: In this style the leaders teach and allows the team in identifying the strengths and weaknesses. The team is given full support and encouragement, and the mistakes are considered as learning opportunities in the development processes.
The Transformational Leadership Style: This kind of style is helpful when the organization is going through some changes and the team members are being replaced. At this stage the leaders can motivate the team by creating new styles and inspire them with enthusiasm and positive styles.
The Free-rein Leadership Style: The leaders do not direct the team members on how to perform a task. They only assign the tasks and the time period by which it has to be achieved. The team has complete freedom to make decision on policies and methodologies to be adopted for the goal achievement.