Leadership and values-based project management

Abstract

Leadership is relevant for all places where people work, be it, politics, corporate world or construction projects. In corporate world, leadership is concerned with managing an enterprise and various business disciplines such as corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, human resource management and project management. In order to successfully complete a project, it requires a project leader to supervise and coordinate different work teams. Project management may not always relate to engineering and construction work, but it may also relate to other group of activities such as preparing a detailed project report, writing a book or making a documentary film. While ‘management’ as a process involves transforming organizational vision and mission into a desired product or service delivery, project management involves transforming a plan into a viable project such as a power plant, a petroleum refinery, a detailed project report (DPR), a published book or a documentary film. Project management over the years has become completely IT-enabled and several project management softwares such as PRIMAVERA covering network techniques are available these days. This paper apart from highlighting significance of leadership for project activities, also makes a comprehensive review of leadership qualities and styles; and discusses how qualities and styles backed by spirituality and human values can transform project services decipline into what we call values-based project management. The paper argues how leadership impacted by human values and spirituality could facilitate speedy execution of some special projects such as temples and spiritual complexes (ashrams) following employees’ commitment, then every civil engineering project, be it, Sardar Sarovar, Tehri Hydro Corporation or several delayed irrigation projects of Maharashtra Government can also be completed fast enough under a spiritual project leader. These projects in past faced opposition from environmentalists or some vested groups leading to inordinate delays in project execution, which a values-based leader can circumvent by taking all stakeholders including general public into confidence.