Assessing Leader Behaviors of Project Managers Associated on Linkedin: Are You Behaving?

Project leadership has been shown to increase project performance, yet a review of the literature suggested that project managers may prefer alternatives to the leadership behavior shown to produce the highest levels of project performance and that three situational variables may influence this choice. In this book, 175 project managers from 39 countries completed the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire over a 6-week period to assess their leadership behavioral style and examine if certification, gender, and country of employment (culture) influenced their preference. Testing this data with non-parametric statistical tests revealed initiating structure was preferred to consideration and balance, and that significant, strong relationships existed between preference and certification, gender, and culture. Reviewing these results added clarity to the project leadership literature, advanced the behavioral leadership literature, and suggested that organizations could modify project manager training programs to create leader behavior awareness, developing competencies based on initiating structure primarily and consideration secondarily, prepare project managers for certification.