What power can the project manager exert as interpersonal influences?
The power that the project manager can exert as an influence on the team members is usually based on the way he or she interacts with the individuals. The project manager has various powers at his disposal, which include the power of an expert, formal power, reward power, penalty power and referent power. The formal power is usually based on the status of the project manager as being the one managing the project (Blomquist et al., 2010). People will thus obey the project manager because of his or her formal power. The project manager has power in the giving of rewards. The rewards can be either monetary or non-monetary. People can have bonuses, salary increments or appreciation letter and recognition from the project manager. Furthermore, he or she can give penalties to punish various team members. In this case, fear is used in ensuring that the people obey the orders and carry out the tasks accordingly.
Referent power can further be noted as the power of fame and charisma. The project manager in such a case can have various connection with people of influence in the organization. In such a case of fame or charisma, people may be attracted to the managers and would like to emulate his or her action especially in becoming like him. Finally, the project manager is an expert and thus has the technical skills and requirements that are important for the finishing of the project. The powers help the project manager do his work appropriate and maintained the various interpersonal relationships among his team members. The project manager has the power at his disposal to use them for the benefit of furthering the project and ensuring that the team members work together towards achieving the goals of the project. Managing interpersonal relationships is important and the project managers should thus use his or her powers to prevent any conflicts that may arise among the team members and thus prevent wastage of time and other resources important to the completion of the project. Though the project manager has the powers at his disposal, they can be limited in scope as set by the various managers who are involved in the project.
How effective are these powers and what are their limitations?
The limitation of the project manager is that the projects are conducted outside the scope of the hierarchical setting. The power of the project managers is limited because he is not in control of all the resources available to the projects since he has to negotiate with the functional manager (Turner, 2014). Removal of employees to be used in a project cannot be allowed as quickly as possible by process managers from the request of the functional managers. The project managers are further limited since they do not have control over the wages and salaries. The power of project managers in administering rewards or punishment is greatly limited or they may not have it at all. The project managers do not have power to direct certain employees who should be working for them to leave other projects.
Therefore most of the power can be in the hands of other people who are related to the project living the project manager at the mercy of the functional or process mangers to name a few. The power of the project mangers can be greatly lessened by the presence of other managers in the organization and he or she may not perform the work as quick as possible. The project managers can greatly affect the way the employees work by overseeing the various operations to ensure timely completion but he or she cannot force things like deployment of employments to other sections to enable the quick finishing and completion of tasks.
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