Impact of Leadership Attributes of Project Managers on Project Success: The Case of Ethiopian Road Authority (ERA)
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Date
2017-05-13
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Very little focus has been placed on the need for leadership competencies as requirements from
PMs. This research study was conducted with the objective of determining the influence of
leadership attributes of PMs on project success. Furthermore, it attempted to identify the
leadership attributes that must be possessed by PMs through meta-analysis of previous literature
and tried to determine the relationship between those attributes and project success.
The meta-analysis revealed that four groups of leadership attribute namely personal trait,
technical leadership skills, soft leadership skills and emotional intelligence. PMs selected for the
study were first grouped into successful or unsuccessful PMs based on the performance level of
the projects they were conducting. A structured questionnaire was distributed and data gathered
were analyzed using SPSS version 20. It was found that all leadership attributes were positively
correlated with project success. Personal traits were the most statistically significant
determinants of project success followed by emotional intelligence, soft leadership skills and
technical leadership skills, respectively. Other than those groups of leadership attributes,
experience was also found to be a statistically significant determinant of project success.
In summary, project success was positively affected by experience and the leadership attributes
of the PM. Recruitment, selection and assignment of PMs to projects should be designed to
include the experience and leadership attributes and Personality test should be administered to
ensure personality-project fit. Training and experience sharing platforms in areas of team work,
communication, project management and sensitivity trainings can have vital contribution
towards improving leadership attributes required of the PM. A lesson learned documents, best
practice documents as well as templates and processes like risk register, pert chart and quality
assurance should be available in an organized manner
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Keywords
Leadership Attributes, Project Success, Project Leadership