Five Ways to Develop Your Leadership Skills

Developing leadership skills is vital for project managers to improve team performance. Successful project managers combine their innovative and creative skills with leadership abilities to achieve common goals. Communication is king when it comes to leadership. Clear, unambiguous, and complete communication is essential to articulate the vision, goals, guidelines, and expectations to the team. Building team spirit and understanding the process and dynamics required for creating a tight-knit, cohesive unit is fundamental. Creating a vision, recognizing the motivational power of everyone, and reinforcing the team helps people commit to the project vision. Credibility building is about setting an example and showing integrity, credibility, and capacity. Cultivating a climate of trust between team members and avoiding situations that may affect motivations and overall performance is crucial. Negotiations are a long-term process that may occur during several stages of a project. Effective project managers demonstrate competence in communication, team building, vision creation, credibility building, and negotiation.