The impact of specific leadership styles at a selected information and technology training institution in Cape Town

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the impact that various leadership styles have on the execution of Information Technology (IT) projects. The present levels of technology would have made the success of project execution a lot easier, contrary to this there is a high rate of project failure in the IT industry. Together with this is the reality that almost all project managers are qualified and experienced people, and yet the failure rate continues unabated. The people element in any organisation can work as an asset or a liability. The objective for the study was to identify leadership style(s) that would be ideal for effectively executing IT projects, which are known to have a high failure rate. To obtain the necessary information needed a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods were used with the assistance of a questionnaire with three sections. The first section covered the biography, to give an understanding of the characteristics of the population. The second section focused on the likert scale dealing with the perceptions, attitudes and emotions. The third section was open ended, allowing for interaction between interviewee and interviewer. The findings clearly identify that responsiveness, empathy, emotional intelligence and ability to communicate are critical components for effectively managing the IT projects. This is not discounting the need for information technology skills (hard skills) on the part of the project leader it can be concluded that soft skills were cited as critical for effective IT project execution.