Effect of Project Management Leadership on Project Performance, a Case of Strengthening Child Protection and SRHR Project in Bugesera District, Rwanda

This study intended to establish the effect of project management leadership on project performance of Strengthening Child Protection and SRHR Project in Bugesera district, Rwanda. The study was built on the following specific objectives; to find out the effect of leadership skills performance of SCP and SRHR Project; to institute the effect of leadership experience performance of SCP and SRHR Project; to determine the effect of leadership control on performance of SCP and SRHR Project; and to establish the effect of leadership style performance of SCP and SRHR Project. In addition, for the study to realize the accomplishment of the above objectives, a combination of questionnaires, interviews, documentary reviews and other reports were used. The target population of the study had been 537 employees and project beneficiaries but the considered a sample size of 84 respondents SCP and SRHR in Rwanda Project in Bugesera district and these comprised of they included 73 project beneficiaries and 11 project’s staff. To select this study’s respondents, the researcher used universal and random stratified sampling techniques for staff and beneficiaries respectively. The study adopted descriptive and inferential statistics whereby correlational and regression analyses were recognized. Findings revealed that the leadership skills help project leaders to have effective and efficient communication strategies and this was supported by 95.2% of the respondents. Secondly, it was learnt that 97.2% of the respondents strongly agreed that project leaders apply leadership experience to plan project effectively. Thirdly, the research results revealed that 96.4% revealed that with leadership communication, there’s effective and efficient utilization of project resources. Lastly, in line with leadership style, 89.3% revealed that leadership style supports projects and provides the guidance. As per the results discovered by the help of the SPSS spearman correlation analysis as indicated in the table above, the value of rs=0.775 and p=0.001 which explains that there was a strong, positive monotonic correlation between project management leadership and the performance of SCP and SRHR in Rwanda Project in Bugesera District. From the regression equation, it was revealed that holding term leadership skills, leadership experience, leadership communication and leadership style to a constant zero, performance of SCP and SRHR in Rwanda Project in Bugesera District would be 0.252. Based on these results which each component of project leadership management would improve performance by a big range, this evidences that all the variables were statistically significant in contributing to performance of SCP and SRHR in Rwanda Project. Hence, the null hypotheses were rejected. Based on the findings, the following are the recommendations: concerning the leadership skills, the project staff and management ought to undergo trainings before they begin operations. In addition, the project leaders and management should always be put in place based on their leadership skills related to the project activities. As regards to leadership communication, respondents cited less awareness on the project and participation in the implementation of project’s activities.