Empowering transformative leadership

Company leaders tend to favour project managers who keep things predictable, calm and uncontroversial.

Here, however, is the uncomfortable truth: if your project manager is universally liked, consistently amiable and endlessly diplomatic, your project might already be headed toward missed deadlines, budget overruns, scope chaos and disappointing results.

Transformative projects—especially those involving significant business, IT or cultural shifts—are inherently uncomfortable endeavours. They're designed to disrupt existing norms and challenge ingrained habits, requiring everyone involved to stretch well beyond their comfort zones.

If your project manager prioritizes likability over accountability, clarity or confrontation, seemingly small risks may remain unmitigated, and critical issues may be ignored and unaddressed until it's too late.

The reality of exceptional leadership

Great project managers are transformational leaders. Exceptional project managers are sometimes perceived as unreasonable because they refuse to accept anything less than clear outcomes, rigorous accountability and decisive actions. 

Effective program and project leaders are challenging; they focus on clarifying issues and then driving relentlessly toward the business outcomes defined as critical.

Exceptional project managers are more interested in driving meaningful outcomes than in maintaining superficial harmony. Their commitment to accountability and transparency sometimes creates friction that can feel uncomfortable, but this may be precisely what moves a project forward with speed and integrity.

Your path forward

If you want transformative results, you need a transformative project manager who demonstrates great leadership. Here's how to identify—and empower—the type of project manager your initiative requires:

When senior executives understand and embrace this approach, the organizational mindset shifts dramatically. Projects no longer drift quietly toward mediocrity; instead, they advance deliberately toward clear, meaningful objectives.

The takeaway

If you truly care about outcomes, you should not settle for a merely likable project manager.

Instead, actively seek out leaders who are willing to be uncomfortable, to challenge the status quo and to demand rigorous accountability. When you embrace this approach, you may find these project managers demanding, persistent and even occasionally irritating. But soon, as results become visible, reticence will transform into respect. You'll realize that what you felt as friction was actually leadership driving toward transformative outcomes.