Balanced Leadership Case Studies

This book has presented a theory of project leadership from the perspective of balancing leadership between the project manager and horizontal leaders. The theory offers an explanation on how the shifting of leadership in projects between formally appointed leaders and project team members occurs, and how social and cognitive structures enable such shifts. This chapter draws on two Canadian case studies and applies the perspective of socio-cognitive space to understand how shifting of leadership was enabled. It shows the nature of the dimensions of socio-cognitive space; i.e., empowerment, efficacy, and shared mental models, how these processes evolve, and the role they play in supporting the dynamics of the shifting of leadership.