Introduction

It has now been well established that leadership skills can be key to project management success. Most project management bodies of knowledge, standards, textbooks and training courses now highlight leadership as one of the most important aspects of managing projects or project teams. In other words, leadership is a critical success factor for project managers.

Leadership involves many things, but clearly understanding motivation is an important aspect of project leadership. Program and project managers need to understand what will motivate their teams, individually and collectively, to higher performance. Executives need to understand employee motivation in order to implement policies and actions to stimulate performance and increase program, project and organizational success. And we all need to understand what motivates ourselves, often the first step in knowing what might motivate others.

Motivation is an important factor for leaders of all types of organizations, but especially project-oriented organizations, and even more so for program and project managers for whom positive performance is so critical.

But what are the leading motivators for project managers and project management professionals (and team members)? Is it recognition, more rewards (e.g. more money), happy workplace, less stress, or what? We all have our ideas and opinions, perhaps based on our own experiences, theories or books we have read. Maybe motivation varies by project type, industry, location, culture or other factors. In all likelihood, if you are an executive, program manager or project leader, you have made some decisions in order to motivate others and in order to move your program or project forward (or to avoid disruption, problems or for other reasons).

As a student and teacher of project management, the importance of both leadership and motivation has been clear to me for many years. I was therefore drawn to a fascinating article on this very topic in the January-February edition of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) by Amabile and Kramer. The conclusions and message were, on the surface, somewhat surprising; but they also carry an important message for project managers.

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