According to Hersey and Blanchard, who made a study of this subject as far back as 1960, managers or leaders must change their management style according to the level of maturity of the individual or group. Maturity can be defined as an amalgam of education, ability, confidence and willingness to take responsibility. Depending on this level of maturity, a leader must then decide, when allocating a specific task, whether to give firm, clear instructions without inviting questions or delegating the performance of the task, giving the follower a virtual freehand. These are the extreme outer (opposite) points of a behavioural curve. In between these two extremes lies the bulk of management behaviour. For convenience, the level of maturity can be split into four categories:

The degree of direction or support given to the follower will depend on the leader’s perception of the follower’s maturity, but always in relation to a specific task. Clearly, a person can be more confident about one task or another, depending largely on his or her level of experience of that task, but situational leadership theory can only be applied to the situation (task) to be performed at this particular time.

The simplest way to illustrate situational behaviour is to look at the way tasks are allocated in the army.

A sergeant will give clear direction to a category 1 recruit, which he or she will not expect to be questioned on. There will be little technical or emotional support – just plain orders to perform the task.

A captain will give an order to the sergeant (category 2) but will listen to any questions or even suggestions the sergeant may make, as this follower may have considerable experience.

A colonel will suggest a course of action to a major but will also discuss any fears or problems that may arise before deciding on the exact tactics.

A commander in chief will outline his strategy to his general staff, listen to their views and will then let them get on with implementing the tasks without further interference.

Clearly, in every case the leader must continue to monitor the performance of any follower or group, but this will vary with the degree of confidence the leader has in the follower. At the lowest level, it could be a check every half an hour. At the highest level, it could be a monthly report.

It is not possible to apply mathematical models to managing people who are not only diverse from one another, but can also change themselves day by day depending on their emotional or physical situation at the time.

Fig. 40.1 shows the four maturity categories set against the behaviour grid. It also superimposes a development curve that indicates the progression of behavioural changes from the lowest to the highest, assuming that the follower’s maturity develops over the period of the project.

The leader can help to develop the maturity of the follower by gradually reducing the task behaviour, which means explaining the reasons for instructions and increasing the support by praising or rewarding achievements as soon as they occur. There should be a high degree of encouragement by openly discussing mistakes without direct criticism or apportioning blame. Phased monitoring and a well-structured feedback mechanism will highlight a problem before it gets out of hand, but probably the most important point to be hammered home is the conviction that the leader and follower are on the same side, have the same common interest to reduce the effect of errors and must therefore work together to resolve problems as soon as they become apparent.

It is the fear of criticism that inhibits the early disclosure of problems or mistakes, which tend to get worse unless confronted and rectified as soon as possible. Even senior managers risk instant dismissal if they deliberately submit incorrect information or unduly withhold an unpalatable financial position from the board of directors.

Leaders who are confident in their abilities and able to practise the low-task, low-support style will be able to delegate without completely abdicating their own accountability.

Delegation means transferring both the responsibility and authority to another person, but still retaining the right to monitor the performance as and when required. Clearly, if this monitoring takes place too frequently or too obtrusively, the confidence of the follower is soon undermined. Generally speaking, a monthly report is a reasonable method of retaining overall control, provided of course that the report is up to date, honest and technically correct.

The rules set out the duties of professional members towards their employers and clients, their profession and its institution, their fellow members, the general public and the environment. These rules apply equally to professionals in full- or part-time employment and to those acting as professional consultants or advisers on a fee-basis for and on behalf of private or public clients. Contravention of this code could result in disciplinary proceedings and possible suspension, or even expulsion from the institution.

Project management is a relatively new profession when compared with the established professions such as law, medicine, architecture, accountancy, civil engineering and surveying.

A standard code of conduct was therefore produced by the Association for Project Management (APM), which sets out the required standards of professional behaviour expected from a project manager. These duties and responsibilities can be divided into three main categories as follows.

Further Discussion on Ethics Is Given in Chapter 43 (Governance)

A sponsor or senior director of an organization must be reasonably sure that a person designated as project manager or project director has the attributes described above and is therefore qualified for the particular project to be undertaken. As projects vary in size and complexity, the competence of the project manager will also vary, and it is the job of the sponsor to ensure that the project manager’s competence profile matches the requirements of the project.

While some organizations have developed their own competence framework for their own staff, the need for a more universal set of metrics was clearly a step in the right direction so that smaller organizations with limited resources and less developed managerial maturity could benefit from an accepted standard.

For this reason, the Association for Project Management (APM) designed and published the user-friendly APM Competence Framework in 2015, and with their kind permission some of their major suggestions for measuring competence are described below.

The framework applies equally to project management, programme management, portfolio management, project context and the project office. A manager in any of these five key concepts must satisfy the three relevant domains of technical competence, behavioural competence and contextual competence. Of these, the technical domain and the behavioural domain have been fleshed out by 30 and 9 competence elements respectively, which can be measured relatively easily to enable an assessment to be made of the manager’s competence for the specific project to be undertaken.

The table in Fig. 40.2 shows the elements for the two domains based on the APM Body of Knowledge 6th edition.

The APM then defines four levels of competence A to D, which describe the experience required for each level ranging from project director, through two levels of project manager to associate project manager. A scoring matrix for knowledge and experience can then be drawn up either by a senior manager or by self-assessment.

In practice, many assessments on competence are made (often informally) at the job interview. An experienced senior manager can, by asking the right questions and studying the applicant’s CV, obtain a fairly good idea of the technical and behavioural competence of the interviewee. Experience on a similar project in terms of size and complexity, which was successfully completed, is probably the best measure of competence.