A Comparative Analysis of a Project Management Leadership styles at "A Deep Excellence" Case study

Yorkville University, 2024 Overview: According to Chen (2023), multinational corporations conduct business in two or more countries. Aligned with the definition given by Chen (2023), "A Deep Excellence" is a multinational organization, primarily known for dealing with complex time-based projects from various industries such as information technology (IT), construction, healthcare, pharmaceutical, sports equipment and so on. In other words, "A Deep Excellence" is a project-based organization. As per the work of Wagner (2018) A project-based organization (PBO) is according to Davies and Hobday one in which the project is the primary unit for performing certain tasks. Especially service firms, for example engineering providers, film studios, consultancies, legal firms, marketing, and advertising, are rather organized around projects. "A Deep Excellence" has different project teams competing to attain with best proposal for completion. Interestingly, the time-based projects often create stress among employees (Zehra & Faizan, 2017), especially in the IT sector (Haque & Aston, 2016). Nonetheless, such projects also offer to develop psychological capital (Haque et al., 2020), innovative work behavior (Haque & Yamoah, 2021), and creativity (Vartanian et al., 2020). Team Azure and Team Mahagany - Project Leaders: In today's case study, the two distinct teams are taken into consideration because of the role of project lead. Team Azure and Team Mahagany. Margareta May is the project lead as well as the project manager of Team Mahagany while Team Azure is led by project manager Mark Paddington. Both project leaders have over two decades experience in different industries, however, Margareta have extensive experience in manufacturing industry while Mark has been associated more with service sectors. Their teams consist of both permanent and temporary workers, skilled and specialized in different areas of project management. Margareta (leading Team Mahagany) and Project "Re-Moto-Set": Margareta has been more involved and responsible in leading a team by motivating and engaging them, frequently part of orientations and welcome sessions, creating pleasant work environment so that all members could maximize efficiency. She often spends huge amount of time in one-on-one interactive sessions with her members and part of committees ensuring collaboration with other project leads. She is part of meetings and seminars to interact with other project leads and team leaders and project managers working on their own distinct projects. Margareta is also responsible for keeping concern parties up to date by providing timely project status. She prepares progress (status) reports and share it with distinct stakeholders. Her focus is more on developing interpersonal skills of the team members. Margareta has more soft skills and approach the situation by focusing more on the people-orientation, which is a type of leader typically requires discussion with the team to determine the correct adjustment to new pressures (HRDQ, 2022). One of such instances was while working on a project - "Re-Moto-Set" dealing with long-term objective, there are external factors leading towards change in objectives. In the meeting, team reflecting on long-term objectives, identified that deadline is tight for the on-hand project. Hence there is not much clarify about handling the situation while meeting the objectives. Through discussions with team members, she concluded that a completion of project is not a likely reality in short time, but Minimum Viable Product could be developed right by deadline. One of the new members from your team offers an idea to accomplish the short term few objectives by streamline, cut, and rearrange few elements of the sub-tasks, making it more realistically achievable. Another member suggested that by reordering tasks around, enabling the project leader to check the interests and expertise of members while keeping them engaged and involved in the project via offering motivation, opportunity, and recognition. Her transformational style was more predominant during this project. However, the project did not complete in the time and client was unhappy with the partial outcomes. Mark (leading Team Azure) and Project "Comp-Connect": On the other hand, Mark having higher practical approach due to excessive focus on task-orientation, by being more quick and agile in his stance to cope up with new pressures due to higher understanding of the situation and his team to make immediate decisions (HRDC, 2022). His philosophy centered on 'horses for courses' by changing only to ensure the completion of task in timely manner. Mark dedicates a lot of time making a process work on paper. He is responsible for projects from initiation to close, making sure the work gets done efficiently and satisfactorily. He is involved in day-to-day schedules that are rapidly changing. He focuses more on the project process planning, formulating budget line, effective management of time, and communicating with clients. He monitors the projects whether they are meeting the set deadlines and provide solutions, in case of issues arising during the project phases. While working on project - "Comp-Connect", Mark found that there was change in the dynamic environment and many external factors were uncontrollable. Again, the deadline was tight and exerted huge pressure on the employees to accomplish. Nonetheless, Mark was positive that the task could be attained through tight and disciplined management. His transactional and task-oriented leadership was exhibited by assigning specific roles and tasks to each member and ensuring that guidelines are given to accomplish tasks. He had no time for discussion as he saw it a waste of time, but he was assured that deadline was too tight but achievable. Although, more pressure was hovering because of no time to rest until task accomplished. Nevertheless, Mark requested the management to give a week-long off to the employees over the successful completion of the project. Some of the members were burn-out and exhibited higher depression and anxiety (Haque, 2023) because Mark has already clarified that there will be reward on completion, but also a punishment for falling short. Despite that, his team was able to accomplish the task, reflecting that Mark was able to achieve the desired result (task at hand). In addition to the completion of tasks, as promised, employees were given additional time to relax so they are prepared for another project begins. The two true contrasts: Interestingly, Margareta and Mark both demonstrated ethical leadership traits by remaining honest, respectful, transparent, and accountability (Darby, 2023). Nonetheless, Margareta has higher traits in her project leading style such as, adaptability, open-mindedness, active listening, emotional intelligence, and active listening and communication. On the other hand, Mark was transactional in his approach with autocratic approach. His traits reflect by showing focus on achieving goals, practical and in-hand approach, reward performance, external motivation, clear expectations, and reward-and-punishment approach. Margareta's team was not able to finish the task in a project-based organization but allowed her members to be more creative and grow with positive mindset. In other words, unfortunately, her style was not result-oriented in terms of profit for the organization, but the mental well-being and self-actualization developed among the members. They were involved in the process through participation. In contrast, Mark was able to finish the task, but the employees showed higher sign of anxiety, depression, and burnouts. Thus, Mark should be appraised for his managerial role, but the management asked him to revisit his approach while dealing with people. In other words, his soft skills need improvement. Unlike Margareta who was continuously engaged in exchanging information with all stakeholders and focused on the development of her members yet fell short in the completion of task, resulting in heavy loss. Her decision to meet different project leaders and discussions wasted her precious time. Also, listening more to fresh and senior employees led to her weak positionality as a project lead. These are few to name, but her decisions cost the company almost $1M in long run as the client was not happy with the partial completion. Aftermath and findings: In the ad-hoc meeting Mark and Margareta's approach as well as team performances were discussed at length. There is no denial that both as leader showed strong personality traits and did their best to tackle the scenario. However, the room for improvement should not be ignored. Both project leads made errors in their decision making while one looks on paper successful project in terms of profitability but the compromise on the mental well-being of the members, deteriorating health, depression, anxiety, and agitation is more prominent. Thus, it is not completed a successful project in terms of overall impact. Again, it is difficult to satisfy all stakeholders but to ensure long tern sustainability, the lessons must be learned. While other project lead appeared successful in terms of long-term employee development, talent retention, and higher organizational commitment but she did not attain the desired results for the company in terms of financial aspect and eventually led to dissatisfied client. Both managers had made incorrect decisions that affected the project success to some extent. Nonetheless, a good project lead and project manager is the combination of effectiveness and efficiency while ensuring all stakeholders remain on same page. Moving forward the ad-hoc committee asked the two project leads to shake hand and prepare their reports on what went wrong and what were the positives. Given the chance, what would they do differently? Informal suggestion from the board of members came that Mark and Margareta shall try working on a project together to benefit from each other's experience and knowledge. The above case focuses on understanding the relevance and impact of different project leadership style in relation to project success (comparing in terms of profitability and personnel development). Provide a critical reflective summary based on the case study considering: Compare the contrasting leadership styles and approaches and their short-and-long term consequences. Give example from the case at hand as well as support examples from the real world. Critically evaluate the impact of decisions on the success of a project. Offer a critical summary of the pertinent facts in case to describe the background of leadership style affecting the final outcomes. What was common between the two contrasting styles. Write your reflection, if you were in this situation, what soft skills you would have used while ensuring completion of the project in timely manner. Draw the comparison to answer who you thought did better? What will you do differently than Mark and Margareta for completion of successful project. Reference List Chen, J. (2023). Multinational Corporation: Definition, How It Works, Four Types. Retrieved from: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/multinationalcorporation.asp Darby, J. (2023). What is Ethical Leadership? Attributes, Traits, & Examples. Retrieved from: https://www.thomas.co/resources/type/hr-blog/what-ethical-leadership-attributes-traits-examples Haque, A.U. (2023). Handbook of Research on Dissecting and Dismantling Occupational Stress in Modern Organizations. IGI Global. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-6543-1 Haque, A.U., and Aston, J. (2016). A Relationship between Occupational Stress and Organizational Commitment of I.T Sector's Employees in Contrasting Economies. Polish Journal of Management Studies, 14(1), 95-105. Haque, A.U., & Yamoah, F.A. (2021). The Role of Ethical Leadership in Managing Occupational Stress to Promote Innovative Work Behaviour: A Cross-Cultural Management Perspective, Sustainability, 13(17), 9608, DOI: 10.3390/su13179608 HRDC. (2022). Task-Oriented vs People-Oriented Leaders: What's The Difference? Retrieved from: https://hrdqstore.com/blogs/hrdq-blog/task-people-oriented-leaders Vartanian, O., Saint, S. A., Herz, N., & Suedfeld, P. (2020). The Creative Brain Under Stress: Considerations for Performance in Extreme Environments, Frontiers in Psychology, 11, DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.585969 Wagner, R. (2018). Will project-based organisations be the new normal? Retrieved from: https://ipma.world/will-project-based-organisations-new-normal/#:~:text=A%20project%20based%20organisation%20(PBO,are%20rather%20organised%20around%20projects. Zehra, N., & Faizan, R. (2017). The Impact of Occupational Stress on Employees at Project Based Organizations (PBOs) in Pakistan, International Journal of Applied Business and Management Studies, 2(1), 1-9.