At first glance these two terms seem to be the same. Even my business cards use them interchangeably. On some I refer to myself as an IT Project Manager when summarizing my roles and on others I indicate Project Leader. This notion has led me to ask myself if there is a difference between project management and project leadership. Upon further thought, I came to realize that these two terms although seemingly intertwined are also somewhat different.
Project management specifically refers to the use of tools, knowledge, and techniques needed for defining, planning, organizing, controlling, leading, and closing a project. You might use Excel to manage the budget, Seavus Project Viewer to aid in managing and collaborating on the project schedule with your team and customer, and a number of other tools to capture and deliver requirements and various deliverable documents throughout the project. Project management helps define the processes and functions we go through to roll out a project.
One might think that project leadership, therefore, is a subset of project management or in other words just one function in the overall project management process. However, that is a shortsighted stance and a serious mistake. Project leadership is in no way secondary to project management. Project leadership is the only function that occurs throughout the project cycle. It is, in many ways, the glue that holds the other functions together. The output from defining, planning, organizing, controlling, and closing a project depends largely on how well project leadership is exhibited. Without solid leadership, performance of the other functions will be marginal at best.