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The differences between project leaders and team leaders can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 4-6 years to become both a project leader and a team leader. Additionally, a project leader has an average salary of $98,559, which is higher than the $68,817 average annual salary of a team leader.
The top three skills for a project leader include project management, work ethic and C++. The most important skills for a team leader are customer service, ladders, and patients.
| Project Leader | Team Leader | |
| Yearly salary | $98,559 | $68,817 |
| Hourly rate | $47.38 | $33.09 |
| Growth rate | 9% | 8% |
| Number of jobs | 221,165 | 197,336 |
| Job satisfaction | - | 5 |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 50% |
| Average age | 44 | 43 |
| Years of experience | 6 | 6 |
A project leader is responsible for supervising the team and managing the distribution of tasks to ensure the project's success with the highest efficiency and accuracy. Duties of a project leader include motivating the team, managing the team's needs and concerns, providing effective strategies to improve the team's performance, creating reports, monitoring the team's progress, and maintaining the coordination between team members. A project leader should have exceptional leadership skills to handle the team's operation and identify areas of improvement to deliver excellent results.
Team leaders are responsible for managing a team for a specific project or work component. They primarily guide the team members and ensure that they are still working towards the set goals. Team leaders create strategies to reach goals, cascade the goals and strategies to team members, assign tasks, conduct periodic check-ups on the roadmap towards the goals, foster an engaging work environment, motivate and coach team members, monitor team performance, evaluate the strategies and come up with mitigating plans as needed. They are also responsible for reporting the team's progress to higher management.
Project leaders and team leaders have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Project Leader | Team Leader | |
| Average salary | $98,559 | $68,817 |
| Salary range | Between $70,000 And $138,000 | Between $37,000 And $126,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | New York, NY |
| Highest paying state | California | Alaska |
| Best paying company | Boston Consulting Group | Ropes & Gray |
| Best paying industry | Professional | - |
There are a few differences between a project leader and a team leader in terms of educational background:
| Project Leader | Team Leader | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 50% |
| Most common major | Business | Business |
| Most common college | Stanford University | SUNY College of Technology at Delhi |
Here are the differences between project leaders' and team leaders' demographics:
| Project Leader | Team Leader | |
| Average age | 44 | 43 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 69.0% Female, 31.0% | Male, 55.0% Female, 45.0% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5% | Black or African American, 8.9% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 17.0% Asian, 7.2% White, 61.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.7% |
| LGBT Percentage | 11% | 9% |