From the perspective of delivering successful projects, the value of a skilled project sponsor and project manager outweighs many other factors. Projects need leaders who can give them vision, identity, keep the stakeholders and the project team on board and make the difficult decisions that will enable the project to continue (or, if necessary, be terminated). These are human skills that don't necessarily feature large in the project management bodies of knowledge. Ralf Müller and Rodney Turner's Project-Oriented Leadership explains the key leadership models of managerial, intellectual and emotional leadership and shows how they can be applied within projects to lead processes, functions and people, and ensure an ethical and inclusive approach within projects and programs.
Biography
Ralf Müller is Professor of Project Management at BI Norwegian Business School. In parallel he is the managing director of PM Concepts, a Sweden based Management Consultancy, which advises larger enterprises in project, program and portfolio management. He lectures project management, project leadership, project governance and research methodology. His research focuses on project, program and portfolio management improvement from an organization-wide and leadership perspective. His research studies have appeared in more than 120 publications and he is frequent speaker at global researcher and practitioner conferences. As a consultant he worked in 47 different countries, for the improvement of project related practices in large organizations. He also managed national, international and global IT projects and consulting organizations. Dr Müller is a member of the Editorial Review Board of several international academic journals. He is a member of the Consortium for Research in Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, and a co-founder of PMI's Frankfurt and Munich Chapters, as well as contributor to the PMI Standards for Organizational Project Management Maturity (OPM3), Program Management, and Portfolio Management.
'Müller and Turner have compiled a terrific ready-reckoner that all project managers would benefit from reading and reflecting upon to challenge their performance. The authors have condensed considerable experience and research from a wide variety of professional disciplines, to provide a robust digest that highlights the significance of leadership capabilities for effective delivery of project outcomes. One of the big advantages of this book is the richness of the content and the natural flow of their argument throughout such a short book....Good advice, well explained and backed up with a body of evidence...I will be recommending the book to colleagues who are in project leader and manager roles and to students who are considering these as part of their development or career path.' - Arthur Shelley, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, International Journal of Managing Projects in Business ’In a remarkably succinct 89 pages, Müller and Turner review an astonishing depth of evidence, supported by their own (published) research which challenges many of the commonly held assumptions not only about project management, but about what makes for successful leaders. This book is clearly written more for the project-manager type personality than for the natural leader. Concision, evidence and analysis are the main characteristics of the writing style...it is massively authoritative, and so carefully written that a couple of hours spent in its 89 pages may pay huge dividends compared to the more expansive, easy reading style of other management books.’ - Mike Turner, Director of Communications for NHS Warwickshire
