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Project Leadership

Certificate ID: PLC1
Lead project and cross-functional teams to success by mastering the leadership skills necessary to build and manage teams, exercise influence without authority, and monitor and control project performance.

Description

Project leaders are more than just project managers; they are talented individuals that have mastered the leadership skills necessary to build a high-performing project team, leverage the collective intelligence of the group, manage it through the process of completing a project, and exercise influence with out authority to ensure superior results. This six-course certificate series, authored by faculty from Cornell University’s College of Engineering, is designed to build the critical leadership skills that Project Management Professionals (PMPs), project managers, and business managers need to lead a project team to success.

The most successful project managers and leaders need to know what it takes to make project or cross-functional teams perform at the highest level and understand that they need to be able to mange the uncertainty inherent in today’s complex projects. They know that the true success factors of high-performance project management are the leadership and interpersonal skills which enable them to get team members to work collaboratively and perform at the highest level.

The courses in this certificate series are designed to introduce and distinguish the concepts of project leadership and project management to develop the critical leadership skills necessary for the success of even the most complex project. The courses in this certificate series integrate collaborative group projects, practical case studies, interactive assessments, and frameworks and toolsets to apply the concepts.

The courses in the Certificate in Project Leadership will enable you to:

• Manage the uncertainty inherent in projects
• Manage projects in matrix organizations
• Build a cohesive project team
• Leverage the collective intelligence of the team
• Understand and prevent the issues that can fragment and undermine team performance
• Monitor and control team performance
• Motivate team members to perform and achieve objectives
• Exercise political and personal influence when you don’t have the formal authority to mandate action
• Mitigate and resolve conflict to ensure the success of the project

Project Leadership incorporates the essential leadership skills that lead to improved project management performance, recognizing that projects are social systems that exist within the social system of an organization. The most effective project leaders understand and know how to manage the human dimension to project management and are able to exercise their own power, influence, and authority to ensure the success of a project.

This certificate series is based on the research and teaching of Cornell University Professor Frank J. Wayno, Ph.D. It will develop the skills you need to master the critical competencies to lead your project and cross-functional team to superior performance and results.

The courses in this certificate series have each been approved for 6.0 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from the Project Management Institute (PMI) except for CEPL 552 Project Teams: Mining Collective Intelligence, which has been approved for 6.5 PDUs.

Who Should Take This Certificate?

This certificate series is essential for Project Management Professionals (PMPs), project managers, and functional managers charged with leading a cross-functional or project team to success. It is appropriate for business leaders, mid-level managers, and project managers who need to learn the critical leadership skills necessary to ensure the high performance of a project team.

Enrollment

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To register, click 'Add to Cart' at right, or contact an Enrollment Counselor at info@ecornell.com or 1-866-eCornell (+1-607-330-3200 from outside the United States).

Certificate programs are eligible for eCornell Payment Plans. Discounts are available for military personnel, veterans, and Cornell University Alumni. eCornell programs are not eligible for financial aid or federal Pell Grants. Contact an enrollment counselor for more information.

Courses in this Certificate

• Introduction to Project Leadership

  • Everyone needs to manage projects – the complex set of tasks that require the marshaling of resources to accomplish defined objectives. Managers and leaders are increasingly finding that mastery of the technical skills of project management is not sufficient to ensure the success of a project; project leadership skills are critical to understanding the uncertainty that surrounds projects and developing a management and leadership approach that leverages the capabilities and collective intelligence of the team.

    This course introduces the concept of project leadership as being distinct from project management. Project leadership builds upon the technical skills to manage a project and focuses on developing new skills to identify and manage project uncertainty.

    Project leadership is a core skill, not only for Project Management Professionals (PMPs) but for any manager that has responsibilities to manage formal or informal projects or implement organizational initiatives. The most successful project managers and project leaders know how to understand, motivate, and build an optimal level of cohesion among their project teams, can leverage the group’s collective intelligence, and are highly skilled at getting a team to perform even when they don’t have the formal authority to mandate action,

    This course prepares you to be a highly effective project leader. After taking this course, you will develop deep insights into the many roles of the project leader, learn how to maximize your likelihood of project success, minimize the chances of failure, and understand how to manage change and uncertainty as it unfolds. Focuses of this course include understanding the intricacies and complexities of managing and leading in a matrix organizations, managing the competing constraints of time, cost, and functionality, and introducing the toolkits that will be developed throughout the series to increase project management effectiveness.

    Based upon the research and teaching of Professor Frank J. Wayno, Ph.D., of Cornell’s College of Engineering, Introduction to Project Leadership recognizes that project teams are social systems and they exist inside the social system of an organization; the only way to lead a project to success of a project is to understand that reality and master the skills to use it to your advantage. This course provides the foundation to learn these competencies and develop the skills to implement them in practice.

    Regardless of your formal role in project management, this course will help ensure that you develop the leadership skills you need to be a better project manager.

    This course has been approved for 6.0 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

    Course Description
• Project Teams: Mining Collective Intelligence

  • Today’s projects are increasingly collaborative, drawing in participants from inside and outside of an organization, and often global in scale. This diversity of project team membership provides the opportunity to mine the collective intelligence of the team which, when properly managed, can exceed the sum if the capabilities of the individuals. This team intelligence is the project leader’s key resource to managing uncertainty and leading the project to success.

    The project leader is ultimately responsible for ensuring that the project team works effectively as a group and is able to manage the “triangle of relationships” – the complex dynamic of relationships between the individual, the project manager, and the project team. This course develops the skills necessary to understand the research-grounded theory of group dynamics and teaches the skills to create and maintain group cohesion, facilitate group problem-solving, and manage the most common challenges to effective group functioning including a lack of cohesion, the onset of Groupthink, and dealing with virtual teams.

    Leading a project team is a core responsibility of a project leader; learn how to get the most out of this critical resource.

    This course has been approved for 6.5 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

    Course Description
• Dealing with Difference

  • Successful collaboration and team functioning hinges on attaining an understanding and respect of difference and diversity. Difference can be at the national, personal, or cultural level, and managed well, can be a tremendous asset to a project team. This course explores the ways in which differences can create disconnects within a team and how those disconnects can be overcome. The best project leaders are well versed on the issues that can fragment a high-performing project team or undermine the group’s collective intelligence, and knows how to deal with them effectively.

    This course focuses on the three main areas of difference – national and functional culture, personality, and learning style – and how different perspectives can create misunderstanding and misalignment issues within a project team. Particular emphasis is placed in diagnosing and overcoming the challenges associated with these differences among team members. A variety of frameworks and toolsets are provided to build bridges of understanding and develop processes to overcome actual and potential disconnects including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to identify and overcome personality differences.

    Difference is an important component of any team. Taking advantage of the collective intelligence by tapping into diverse thoughts and expertise is one of the key roles of a project leader. This course will teach you how to master these skills.

    This course has been approved for 6.0 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

    Course Description
• Earned Value Management

  • In highly uncertain project environments, project managers must make sure they always know how their project is performing against reported timelines and budgets. The earned value method is a key control system that allows project managers to quickly calculate metrics that describe the work performed against expectations. This course focuses on the methods of calculating the right metrics, interpreting the data, and making adjustments to the project plan to compensate if a project is off target.

    Initial emphasis is placed on understanding control systems, the methodology of Earned Value Management, and the tools a project manager can use to measure project progress, including Work Breakdown Structures, network diagrams, scheduled, budgets, and Gantt charts. The communication challenges of reporting project progress and status are also explored, recognizing how your ability to report about your project impacts your reputation as a manager and leader.

    If a project is off target, the project leader is responsible for managing the issues that are keeping the project from reaching completion. One major cause of derailment involves a lack of team member motivation. This course develops the skills necessary to diagnose demotivation and explores four important tools for increasing motivation. This course also deals with managing yourself as a valuable project resource and the project leader’s role as a coach with responsibilities for developing the skills of the team’s individual contributors.

    Projects succeed because of the leadership of the project manager. This course develops the skills to guide projects towards success by ensuring objectivity in the measurement of goals, maintaining a tight focus on tasks that contribute to the value of a project, and establishing a framework for keeping team members and other stakeholders aligned with project objectives.

    This course is anticipated to be approved for approximately 6.0 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

    Course Description
• Influence Without Authority

  • Project Leadership is about exercising influence to get tasks and projects accomplished even when you may not have the formal authority to mandate action. Whether you work in a matrix organization or lead a cross-functional team, your goal as a project leader is organize the actions of your team members to ensure the successful completion of a project.

    To exercise influence without authority, you need to see your organization as a political system, understand the nature of power and influence in your organization, understand your own personal sources of influence, and know how to leverage your own personal political power. The most successful project leaders of the more unpredictable projects spend a considerable amount of time building networks of relationships with stakeholders and influencers; this course develops the skills necessary to employ these interpersonal and leadership skills putting you in the position of being able to manage the complex, and often adversarial, relationship dynamic of individual contributor, functional manager, and project manager.

    This course focuses on exploring the primary strategies of influence – retribution-based, rationality-based, and reciprocity-based – and provides frameworks and tools to select the most appropriate strategy for the circumstances. Influential power is the result of more than your position in an organization; this course also introduces the Power Motivation Inventory, a diagnostic self-inventory model that will assess your capabilities as an influence agent and prepare you to leverage your abilities to maximize your influence.

    The ability to exercise influence without authority is probably the single most important skill of the project leader. This course will develop your capability to assess and increase your influential power to accomplish your objectives.

    This course has been approved for 6.0 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

    Course Description
• Conflict Resolution

  • Conflict is inevitable and, as a project leader, you need to be able to resolve it quickly and effectively. Conflict is inherent in almost every project for a multitude of reasons including project complexity, misaligned stakeholders, diverse team members, scarcity of resources, and matrix organizational structures that by definition place two sets of managerial values and priorities into tension with each other. The best project leaders have a well-developed capacity for managing and resolving conflict.

    This course focuses on understanding the organizational nature of conflict and the approaches that a leader can use to resolve conflict including, avoidance, competition, accommodation, compromise, and collaboration. Participants will assess their own response to conflict using the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument and will determine which approaches are consistent with their own profile and are appropriate to specific situations. This course also focuses on the technique of principled negotiation to avoid or resolve conflict. Principled negotiation, an interest-based technique popularized in the best-selling book Getting To Yes, provides a framework to separate people from problems, focus on interests, generate options, and evaluate options.

    Successful project leaders can diagnose and resolve conflict in a manner that enhances team cohesiveness and improves the likelihood of successful results.

    This course has been approved for 6.0 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

    Course Description

Accreditation

Participants who successfully complete all six courses in this certificate series will receive a Certificate in Project Leadership from Cornell University’s College of Engineering.

Technical Requirements

With all eCornell courses, access is easy. Participants only need a computer and an Internet connection. To view specific technology requirements, visit our Technology Requirements page.

 
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