Leadership Skills for Project Managers and Matrix Teams Training Course

Course overview

Project managers rarely lead through direct authority alone. They must secure decisions from functional managers, influence specialists with competing priorities, resolve resource conflicts, and keep sponsors aligned when scope, risk, and delivery pressure increase. This course addresses the leadership gap between maintaining a project plan and mobilising a matrix team to deliver it. Participants learn how to create clarity, build commitment, and intervene constructively when accountability is distributed across departments, suppliers, and senior stakeholders.

The course develops practical leadership methods for project environments: stakeholder power and interest analysis, RACI and decision-rights design, situational leadership, influence without authority, difficult-conversation planning, conflict diagnosis, meeting leadership, escalation management, and sponsor communication. Participants practise translating project controls from Microsoft Project or Jira into leadership conversations that prompt decisions and ownership. They also learn to adapt their approach for technical experts, functional managers, remote contributors, and executives who require concise, evidence-based updates.

Teaching combines instructor-led models with realistic project cases, facilitated role plays, team simulations, and structured peer feedback. Participants apply each method to a live or representative project, building a Leadership Action Plan that includes a stakeholder map, influence strategy, team operating agreement, decision log, conflict intervention plan, and 90-day implementation priorities. The resulting deliverable gives both the participant and their manager a practical framework for improving project leadership immediately after the course.

The programme is designed for experienced project managers, programme coordinators, workstream leads, and technical professionals who already manage delivery activity and now need stronger leadership impact across a matrix organisation.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Diagnose matrix-team authority, accountability, and decision gaps using RACI and decision-rights mapping
• Construct stakeholder influence strategies using power-interest analysis and tailored engagement plans
• Lead project teams through situational leadership approaches matched to capability, commitment, and delivery risk
• Facilitate decision-focused project meetings using agendas, decision logs, action ownership, and escalation criteria
• Conduct difficult performance, priority, and conflict conversations using a structured conversation-planning model
• Negotiate resource commitments and delivery trade-offs with functional managers using evidence-based project data
• Design a team operating agreement covering communication norms, meeting cadence, issue ownership, and response times
• Produce a 90-day Project Leadership Action Plan for a current project or matrix-team challenge

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Project Managers — who must deliver through functional teams and stakeholders outside their reporting line
• Senior Project Managers — who need to influence sponsors, resolve cross-functional conflict, and lead complex delivery
• Programme Managers — who coordinate multiple workstreams with competing resource and governance demands
• PMO Managers — who need consistent leadership practices across project managers and delivery teams
• Technical Workstream Leads — who lead specialists while balancing technical quality, schedule, and stakeholder expectations
• Business Transformation Managers — who depend on matrix teams to adopt change across functions and locations

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience contributing to or managing projects, including familiarity with scope, milestones, dependencies, risks, issues, stakeholders, and status reporting. They should be able to discuss a current or recent project in which they worked with people outside their direct reporting line. Basic awareness of a planning or work-management tool such as Microsoft Project or Jira is useful, because examples use project data in leadership discussions. No formal project management certification, psychometric qualification, people-management title, or advanced software expertise is required. This is not a beginner course in project fundamentals.

Training methodology

The five days use short instructor-led inputs followed by application to a running matrix-project case and participants’ own projects. Participants map stakeholders, design RACI charts, prepare influence conversations, run decision meetings, and practise conflict and resource-negotiation scenarios in rotating roles. Case evidence includes schedule slippage, competing functional priorities, and sponsor challenge, requiring participants to use project data rather than opinion. Facilitated peer review and instructor coaching test the practicality of each approach. The final workshop converts learning into a prioritised 90-day Project Leadership Action Plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Leading where authority is shared

• The project manager's leadership mandate in a matrix organisation
• Formal authority, expert power, relational power, and sponsor power
• Project governance roles and decision-rights architecture
• RACI analysis for deliverables, decisions, and escalations
• Role ambiguity and accountability failure patterns
• Situational leadership for project contributors
• Leadership diagnosis using project symptoms and stakeholder evidence

Workshop: Participants analyse a matrix-project scenario and produce a RACI map with named decision owners, consultation points, and escalation routes.

Day 2: Influencing sponsors and stakeholders

• Power-interest stakeholder mapping
• Stakeholder salience and influence-network analysis
• Stakeholder engagement plans linked to project milestones
• Sponsor expectations and executive communication preferences
• Influence without authority using reciprocity, credibility, and framing
• Evidence-based messaging from risk registers and schedule data
• Managing resistance to project decisions and change

Workshop: Participants build a stakeholder influence plan for a live project, including priority relationships, messages, channels, and planned interventions.

Day 3: Creating commitment and team accountability

• Team operating agreements for matrix and hybrid teams
• Psychological safety and productive challenge in delivery teams
• Goal alignment through milestone and outcome framing
• Delegation levels and ownership boundaries
• Meeting design for decisions, issue resolution, and coordination
• Decision logs, action registers, and commitment tracking
• Remote collaboration norms using Microsoft Teams

Workshop: Participants facilitate a simulated project recovery meeting and produce a team operating agreement, decision log, and action register.

Day 4: Handling conflict, negotiation, and escalation

• Conflict diagnosis: task, process, relationship, and values conflict
• Interest-based negotiation for resource and priority disputes
• Difficult-conversation planning using facts, impacts, requests, and boundaries
• Giving corrective feedback to project contributors without line authority
• Managing scope pressure and competing stakeholder demands
• Escalation thresholds and no-surprises sponsor communication
• De-escalation techniques for high-stakes project conversations

Workshop: Participants conduct a role-play resource negotiation with a functional manager and produce a documented trade-off and escalation recommendation.

Day 5: Sustaining leadership through project delivery

• Leadership rhythms across project lifecycle phases
• Using Microsoft Project and Jira data in leadership reviews
• Risk ownership and accountable issue resolution
• Leading through uncertainty, change, and delivery setbacks
• Coaching project team members for ownership and problem solving
• Personal leadership strengths, triggers, and development priorities
• Building a 90-day Project Leadership Action Plan

Workshop: Participants present their 90-day Project Leadership Action Plan and receive instructor and peer challenge on stakeholder, team, and implementation risks.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Project, Jira, Microsoft Teams, PMI PMBOK Guide

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions