Why is leadership important for delivering successful projects? Leadership theories, methods and concepts

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, University of New England, course: Project Management, language: English, abstract: Leadership has long been considered as an essential success factor in business, government, and military environments. However, the optimal style of leadership in a particular organizational setting still remains unclear. Increasing public scrutiny of leaders has also raised the question of what leadership style is to be put in action that can guarantee success. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to identify and analyse in what key ways leadership is important to delivering successful projects and also what leadership theories, methods and concepts are most helpful in understanding effective project leadership. With a view to achieving these objectives, this report at first spots some key factors of effective leadership and then discusses few concepts that are momentous in delivering present day views of leadership. The periphery of such undertaking is enormous and it is quite complex to capture an instant snap shot across a number of leadership strategies. In order to react to the changing global environment, leaders consistently modify their strategies and behaviours. Therefore, the paper has attempted to limit the depth of investigation across the various measurement criteria because of time and resource constraints. Nonetheless, these can be satisfactorily used for high level evaluation.