Submitted by: David Shoemaker I.

When thinking of the tasks of a project manager, you probably think of Gantt charts, work-breakdown structures, handling budgets or running meetings. However, this is only a small piece of what a project manager does in an organization. The job role includes an organizational component in which project managers must understand how to execute a project from start to finish, while at the same time managing different personalities and making sure they work together.

Fundamentally, a project is an effort designed to produce a specific outcome. A project involves a group of people with diverse needs and skills. These people are brought together to accomplish a distinct variety of tasks. Subsequently, managing a project is similar to supervising a temporary mini-organization whose job is to produce a specific result in a certain amount of time and within a specific budget. As a project manager it can be difficult to provide leadership to such a diverse group. The person assigned the role of leadership in project management must be able to handle to the challenges of defining clear goals, as well as, managing diverse personalities.

Is poor leadership in project management the only reason that projects fail? Research has shown that a top reason projects fail is that project managers may not adequately take into account the different types of uncertainty that can exist. Instead, they treat every project the same and believe that if it worked right for one project, it will work for all others. However, some environments require more attention be devoted to specific areas. As the amount of uncertainty facing the project increases, the project manager needs to both motivate the team members, as well as, accomplish the tasks of the project. There is certainly a science to being a project manager.

When project managers contemplate how they will blend together the work efforts of their diverse team to create a production system they should be determining how to manage the uncertainty that saturates project life. However, doing so can be a complex task, given the diversity of attitudes and opinions, as well as, the environmental changes that are likely to occur over the course of the project life. A course in project management can help you understand how to more effectively lead your team through a vague environment.

Completing a course in project management will improve your skills in a variety of areas. You will gain a leadership certificate and update your skills to fulfill your current job position! First off, you will become comfortable discussing the concepts of differentiation and integration in the context of organizational design. Secondly, in your role of leadership in project management, you will be able to identify functional approaches to integration and when appropriate, describe both the positives and negatives of these approaches in order to decide on the most practical one. Lastly, you will be able to define a matrix organization and identify the skills needed to lead effectively. This newly accomplished leadership certificate will put you in a place of exploration and achievement.

A course in leadership in project management will prepare you to analyze your organization s matrix and distinguish behaviors for managing projects. This way, the right approaches will be chosen, and plans will be executed and completed in the most practical way possible. Your organization will operate successfully by being both efficient and effective, all thanks to your newly perfected skills in leadership in project management.

About the Author: David Shoemaker is Vice President of Learning Solutions and Innovation at eCornell. For more information on

leadership certificate

,

leadership in project management

, or eCornell, please visit http://www.eCornell.com

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