Influence of Project Manager’s Leadership Competencies on Construction Projects’ Performance

Leadership often influences organisational performance. The level of competence of a leader determines the impact of leadership on performance criteria. For maximum impact, project managers’ leadership competence must extend through all levels of organizational setting. Researches’ have been conducted on the influence of leadership on performance. However, focused on factors identified as key performance criteria. More recent work has identified other relevant performance criteria that were left out in previous attestations. This work considers all criteria adjudged to be relevant in literature to establish the level of influence. A questionnaire was administered among construction stakeholders in private and public sectors of the construction industry in Nigeria. Seven performance criteria and five leadership competence were the subject of the research through self-administration of the questionnaires. Both descriptive and correlation analysis were used to analyse the relationship between Project Managers Leadership Competencies and the Performance of construction projects. The results of the study established a significant correlation (0.616) between Project Managers’ Leadership Competencies and Project Performance. However, the competency factors indicate different levels of correlation with the project Performance criteria. The factor “Communicate expectations” is the most critical Leadership Competency that influences each performance criteria. The study recommends that clients take competencies of project leaders seriously without abstracting the “communicate expectations” factor in order to improve project success. Wider leadership competence criteria such as, competency profiles, information management, professional development, leadership skills, and strategic leadership roles of project managers be considered in future study.