Topic validation

1. What is the problem or condition to be addressed?

Determination of traits required for project team success

2. In what professional area does this occur?

Project teams run by a project manager

3. Are there any negative effects of the problem?

Project managers who do not possess desirable traits are less likely to lead a successful project team.

4. What is the learner’s interest in the problem?

As a manager of project managers, I need to have an objective criterion for assigning project managers to specific projects within the portfolio. Using Loehr and Schwartz’s (2001) model of a corporate athlete seems appropriate if the specific dimensions can be measured. The one dimension of the physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual model that has received little attention is spirituality. Fry (2003) posits that spirituality serves an additional role in the model, one he describes as “fusion”. By this he means that spirituality provides the integrating dimension for the entire model.

5. Who is affected by it?

Portfolio managers

Managers of project managers

Project Managers

Project management trainers

6. How will this study help?

An understanding of the traits and competencies needed for project team success will allow me to select the “best qualified” project manager for the most important projects in the project portfolio. Additionally, a clear understanding of deficient competencies will allow the customization of training to increase the probability of project success.

7. What is the professional value of the project?

Although the specific domain chosen for the study is project teams, Loehr and Schwartz’s model is applicable across the realm of leadership theory. Spiritual competencies identified by this study may be combined with physical competencies (Neck et al., 2000, Atwater et al., 1999, McDowell-Larson et al., 2002), with emotional competencies (Salovey & Mayer, 1990, Prati et al., 2003), and with cognitive competencies (Judge et al., 2004), to produce a competency model of leadership.

8. What needs to be done?

a. Spiritual competencies need to be delineated

b. Appropriate project success criteria need to be determined

c. Emotional competencies need to be evaluated for conceptual overlap with spiritual competencies

d. Confounding variables need to be examined, such as LMX.

e. Appropriate instruments will be found. Missing instruments may be designed, tested, and validated.

f. Sample population of projects and project managers will be selected

g. Population survey

h. Exploratory data analysis (EDA) performed to discover data relationships

i. Model developed from EDA

9. What other topics, issues, or subjects are involved?

a. Spirituality

b. Spiritual leadership

c. Spiritual competencies

d. Emotional Intelligence

e. Emotional competencies

f. Trait theory of leadership

g. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory

h. Cognitive resource theory

i. Project manager competency models

j. Project success criteria

k. Performance measurement systems

10. How does the study relate to theory?

Trait theory of leadership (Bass, 1990)

Gardner’s (1983) Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984)

11. What will result from the study?

A model of spiritual competencies that will be indicative of project success. This competency model can then be combined with existent competency models for physical, intellectual, and emotional domains to produce a model of a corporate athlete in the future.

12. What has or has not already been done?

There has been considerable work done in the area of measurement of project success. One of the best and most recent studies was done by Bryde (2005).

Bethea (2004) identified spiritual competencies in a study of rehabilitation counselors.

Elkins (1988) defines a nine dimensional model of humanistic-phenomenological spirituality and defines measurements for the nine dimensions.