| The success of a project is dependent in part on the skills, knowledge, and behavior of its leader, the project manager. Despite advances in project manager certifications and professional development, the aerospace and defense industry has continued to see highly visible and expensive project failures partially attributable to failures in leadership. Servant leadership is an emerging leadership theory whose practitioners embrace empowerment, authenticity, humility, accountability, forgiveness, courage, standing back, and stewardship, but has not yet been fully examined in the context of the project manager as leader. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between servant leadership behaviors demonstrated by aerospace and defense project managers and the resulting success of their projects. Study participants were drawn from aerospace and defense oriented affinity groups from the LinkedInRTM social media web system. The participants rated their project managers using a 30-item servant leadership scale, and rated the success of their project using a 12-item project success scale. One hundred and fifteen valid responses were analyzed from 231 collected samples from persons who had worked for a project manager on an aerospace and defense project within the past year. The results of the study demonstrated statistically significant levels of positive correlation to project success for all eight servant leadership factors independently evaluated. Using multiple linear regression methods, the servant leadership factors of empowerment and authenticity were determined to be substantial and statistically significant predictors of project success. The study results established the potential application of servant leadership as a valid approach for improving outcomes of projects. |
