Lose Manager in Your Title, Replace it with LEADER

Mike Jensen is the VP of Community Development at Daptiv. Here he shares his perspective on the evolution of project management and organizational leadership. Get more of his insights and opinions on community, leadership and collaboration by following him on Twitter @mjtwit.

What will the job of a project manager be in 2020? Let’s start with this thought experiment:

What if we changed titles from ‘Project Managers’ to ‘Project Leaders’ today?

Recently I’ve come across a few blogs/articles about the new generation of leaders, what it means to companies, to existing leaders, to industries as a whole.  Aside from the differences in values between generations, many posts go back and forth on the attributes that differentiate a leader from a manager.  Are they the same? Can you be one and not the other?  Are they “acquired” skills?  There are a lot of different points of view, but one post in particular really caught my attention.  Specifically it was the following paragraph:

“Indeed there are situations wherein management titles are assigned because they allow certain authorities without affecting policy changes, i.e. contracts manager, or project manager. These positions often do not have direct reports and thus do not have responsibilities of leadership. In these situations, the specific job knowledge and/or credentials are more important than leadership traits. Might the contributions of these managers be more valuable if they also had the leadership skills to contribute to the stewardship of the organization?”

So, instead of organizations using the title “Project Manager” what if we use “Project Leader?”

Interesting to think about how that one small word can dramatically change the perspective on what is most important with specific initiatives.  If you look up the word management in Wikipedia one of the many definitions you get is:

“management comprises the interlocking functions of formulating corporate policy and organizing, planning, controlling, and directing the firm’s resources to achieve the policy’s objectives.”

In contrast, look at the definition of leadership:

“leadership is about the capacity of leaders to listen and observe, to use their expertise as a starting point to encourage dialogue between all levels of decision-making, to establish processes and transparency in decision-making, to articulate their own values and visions clearly but not impose them. Leadership is about setting and not just reacting to agendas, identifying problems, and initiating change that makes for substantial improvement rather than managing change.”

Now, think of this in the context of projects.  As a project “Manager” today, that Wikipedia definition is probably spot on.  Organize, plan, control, direct…all towards achieving the objective and charter, keeping the project on scope and on budget. Now let’s say that instead your title is “Project Leader;” sure you likely have to still do elements of the manager role, but now you listen, observe, encourage, initiate, change…all focused on improvement.

The fact is, we will all get titles, and I think the title of Mark Sanborn’s 2006 book states it best: “You don’t need a TITLE to be a leader.”  In the world of project management, I encourage you to lose the “Manager” in your title and replace it with “Leader.”  In doing so, think of how you can incorporate leadership traits into how you collaborate with your teams to improve project success.

Mike is the VP of Community Development at Daptiv. He has been a part of the Daptiv team since January of 2000, initially with a focus on internal technical operations and scaling the datacenter. His role has evolved over the years to encompass customer support and community development. Prior to Daptiv, Mike managed the technology infrastructure for Weyerhaeuser’s Technology Center. Mike received his BA in Business Administration from Western Washington University.