Successful project managers: an exploratory study into the impact of personality

Abstract

Although the literature is replete with studies regarding project success, there appears to be little information regarding the effect of the project manager's personality, specifically as determined by peer assessments. Therefore, this paper reports the results of an exploratory study to investigate the influence of project manger personality traits, as determined by the Five-Factor Model (FFM), on project manager success. Perceptions of both personality and project manager success were analysed using Student's t-test, a correlation matrix, and hierarchical generalised linear modelling (HGLM). The results indicated that two of the FFM personality traits, Conscientiousness and Openness, seemed to positively correlate with project manager success. Emotional Stability, another personality trait, was found to be significant with the difference of means test but not the HGLM effort. Finally, the remaining FFM traits, Extraversion and Agreeableness, did not appear to correlate with project manager success.

Keywords:

• project manager
• job performance
• personality
• five-factor model