Four ways to become a better project leader

Ever wondered how you can supercharge your project leadership skills? Well, look no further. Below, Susanne Madsen, an executive coach for project leaders and author of The Power of Project Leadership and How to do the Inner Work, shares four top tips that will take you from good to great project leadership.

1. Remember: leadership is a coaching relationship

Leadership happens in relation to others because you don’t lead in a vacuum. So, the challenges that people come to me with are often relationship-based. A big part of being a good leader is being a good coach – it’s about having a conversation. It’s not just about you telling someone what to do. You are actually building a relationship.

When it comes to the expectations you might have of a team member, say: “Let’s talk about how we get this delivered. My idea is XYZ. What is your idea and is this achievable for you?”

Don’t just say, “I want this to be done; is that OK?”, so that the other person can only say yes or no. You want to have a conversation where you ask open questions, such as, “How does this fit into your schedule? What concerns do you have about this? What questions do you have for me about this task? Is there another way of doing this?” This means the other person has to engage, and they have to think about and internalise what it is they are committing to, and not just say yes or no.

2. Don’t let yourself become overwhelmed

The topic of ‘overwork’ often comes up, and there are different reasons why people might feel overwhelmed. It could be that they’re very junior and they haven’t got their head around the work yet. That should iron itself out over time. What’s more serious is if somebody is quite senior and they have a track record of working too much, never getting a break and having very high expectations of themselves.

An underlying pattern may be them wanting to please others, so they can’t really set boundaries and can’t say no. Or it could be the idea of always needing to be in control, so it’s difficult for them to delegate because they feel they have to do everything themselves. The end result – no matter the underlying pattern – is that they take too much onto their own shoulders. They desperately want to share and have other people to help them, but they don’t really know how to make that happen.

It’s quite sad to see, but it’s very common. It depends on which of these patterns is true for someone, but the rule I will often give to them is to put their own oxygen mask on first, because if you’re running around, super stressed, it’s very hard to gain perspective and see what you can change.

Then I ask them how they can energise themselves. Can they just take 10 minutes to do something that they know is going to give them a lot of energy, something that they will find inspiring? And when they feel more resourceful, they can begin to look at what’s really happening, because if they’re really drained, it’s very hard to even have the energy to look at the deeper patterns.

3. Don’t be a hero

Don’t be the kind of project leader who feels that they have to fly in, save everything and get everything done. Don’t think that, if nobody’s stepping up, then you will step up, put your cape on, sort it all out and your managers and clients will love you. Why do people do it? It’s because we all want a hero to come and sort it all out, but that’s a pitfall.

We need to shift out of ‘fixing and doing’ and start empowering others. How can you create other leaders? How can you coach? Instead of telling people what to do, you need to take that tiny step back and create space for others. And that comes through having a conversation and asking more questions. How can we do this? How can you do that? What support do you need from me? It’s a gradual process of you stepping back and allowing others to step up and step forward.

4. Use your emotional intelligence to go from good to great

The difference between somebody who’s good and somebody who’s great is emotional intelligence, because leadership happens in relation to others, and the challenges that often arise for a leader are in relationships. It could be that their team members aren’t doing what they expect them to do, or that they don’t know how to give feedback to a particular person.

It’s emotional intelligence that makes you able to do that with finesse. You don’t want to be overly direct if that’s not appropriate, or to avoid the conversation. You need to have that emotional understanding and emotional intelligence to adapt your message to the person you’re with and the context you’re in.

Emotional intelligence has many aspects. One of them is self-awareness; another is self-management. So, if you get frustrated, do you show your frustration or not? What do you do with it? And then there’s the whole empathy piece. You need to have all these pieces in order to lead effectively. You need to be able to go a bit deeper in your conversations to build trust, because there’s so much more research now pointing to the fact that great relationships come from trust building.

Ask yourself whether you can show some vulnerability. Can you have a real conversation? Can you have the kind of trust where you can make a mistake one day and it’s still OK, because you have built up that trust with each other over a long period of time? All of that is very difficult if you do not have emotional intelligence.

Susanne Madsen’s latest book is How to Do the Inner Work (TCK Publishing). For more information, visit her website. Listen to Susanne’s interview with APM Podcast via your favourite podcast app.