Situational Leadership, Project Management in Construction - Essay Example

Running head:LEADERSHIP Situational Leadership (Project Management in Construction) __________ ________________________ ________________ Introduction Situational Leadership (Project Management in Construction) Project management in construction activity has been an area where critical managerial inputs are required. Since projects tasks, processes and their sequences of steps are growing complex with heightened budgets and global dimensions there has been a felt need to review the various important inputs to any construction project management task. This paper poses a set of issues that arise as problems in any construction project milieu and attempts at offering solution to them through various project management tools and management concepts that have been long developed for the purpose but were not used for want of adequate foresight, planning and management control. Leadership versus Management Leadership, management, power and authority are all closely related terms and sometimes are difficult to separate and understand individually. A leader is someone who exercises influence over others. In a group, it is the performances of those acts which help the group achieve its preferred outcomes. (Cartwright & Zander, 1968)A view holds that leaders are people oriented and their main task is to inspire people. Their primary functional output is a change (Veal, 2004) and their capabilities are assessed in terms of controlling the process of this change. That is to mould and control change to suit project's objectives. Bryman (1986) offers somewhat similar views when he opines that leadership is," the creation of a vision about a desired future state which seeks to enmesh all members of an organisation in its net".Whereas managers are task and process oriented and their main task is to organize such tasks and processes. Management's main output is task done in target time at target cost. In plain language Management is assigned the task of producing and maintaining a degree of predictability & order (Veal, 2004). Leadership on the other hand assumes the function of producing change under a constantly updated schemata of direction and vision. Leadership is the process of motivating others to work to meet specific goals and objectives. Leadership is deliberately causing people-driven actions in a planned fashion for the purpose of accomplishing the leader's agenda. Qualities of a Good Leader Subsequent to identification of role of leadership in project management it is clear that leadership physically comprises of an individual or set of individuals acting on common concert and vision. A set of qualities are generally stated in support of good leadership. Such qualities helps in execution of the agenda of leadership as defined above. These qualities are stated below corresponding to their importance in an information system project: (a) A project leader must have the capability to nurture and develop a vision and a concrete sense of direction in which to lead the team on. He must make the entire team convinced of his stance of an inspired shared vision. At least he should be able to convey his vision to critical members of the project team. "Visionary leaders enable people to feel they have a real stake in the project. They empower people to experience the vision on their own (Barry, Top). Bennis explains about the leaders that "They offer people opportunities to create their own vision, to explore what the vision will mean to their jobs and lives, and to envision their future as part of the vision for the organization," (Bennis, 1997). (b) A project leader is expected to have high level of problem solving skills (Barry, Top). He may share problem-solving responsibilities with the team .As Kouzes says that a leader must have a "fresh, creative response to here-and-now opportunities," and not much concern with how others have performed them. (Kouzes, 1987).Thus he would be capable of giving new solutions to complicated problems and lead in dead ends. (c) A project leader must exercise a lot of empathy. There is vast amount of difference between empathy and sympathy (Barry, Top). Although the words rhyme, they, in fact have widely different meanings. According to Norman Paul, in sympathy the subject is principally absorbed in his or her own feelings as they are projected into the object and has little concern for the reality and validity of the object's special experience. Empathy, on the other hand, presupposes the existence of the object as a separate individual, entitled to his or her own feelings, ideas and emotional history (Paul, 1970). Ability to put oneself in other's shoes and appreciate situation from his angle helps critically in any situation analysis. Some views have even expressed the view that more empathy ensures greater identification with the vision of the leader as empathy extended results in empathy received. (d) A project leader must be competent. While technical competence of highest order is not expected of a leader he must nevertheless have a good inkling of the tasks his group members are attending to. Perhaps only then he will be able to nurture a vision. For example until unless the leader understands the net work security lapses in current system he would not be able to source or order newer solutions. Barry has the opinion that," The most important quality is his ability to lead and complete projects. Past records often serve as an important surrogate of project management competence for a leader. The ability to challenge, inspire, enable, change and modify must be demonstrated if leaders are to be seen as capable and competent "(Barry, Top). Above stated can be considered as core or essential qualities. There are numerous other qualities which contribute to above qualities and to the direct task of applied project management. Some of these are specific to the leader's physical personality and they can be listed as: Integrity/Honesty Intellectually Stimulating Energetic/Enthusiastic Self-Confident/Cool under Pressures Charismatic These traits evidently would further improve the quality of his interactions with the project team in terms of improving communications and setting examples. In addition certain other qualities, stated as under, describe leadership's specific ways of behavior within the project team; Assertive Dominating Motivating A word of caution is in order here. Being assertive does not mean being over aggressive. Assertion must be good enough to allow leader a free movement within project domains so as to quickly preempt potential problems and nip them in bud. Similarly domination has to be only limited to establishing matrix authority for project objectives. Personal challenges must be separated out from professional challenges and dominating quality used for the better only in latter cases. A combination of assertion and domination qualities would help the project leader to delegate tasks and demand their expected executions. A leader with the above qualities is more likely to have a higher success ratio of project management than the one without or lesser degrees of such qualities. Theories of Leadership Literature review suggests that there are several theories or styles of leadership. It must be clarified right away that a project leader must not be over occupied with theories. He must be aware that these are mental constructs and can be used freely by him depending upon the project needs. He need not be fixated to one style or theory. However he can obviously decide to choose one style over other which has been successful given his leadership qualities/traits. Those who accept the verdict, that leaders are born and not made, maintain,"... that there are certain inborn qualities such as initiative, courage, intelligence and humor, which altogether pre-destine a man to be a leader ... the essential pattern is given at birth" (Adler, 1991). Two leadership theories based on this view are the Great man/woman and the Trait theories. The great man/great woman theory, accordingly to Wrightsman, involves its followers believing that major events, both nationally and internationally, are influenced by those persons in power." A sudden act by a great man could, according to this theory, change the fate of the nation" (Wrightsman, 1977). The trait theory expands further on this conjecture, by concentrating on the personal characteristics of the leader. The theory cited traits believed to be qualities of leaders to include all aspects of physical, personality and cognitive factors, including height, intelligence and communication skills. "The research on trait theories of leadership has shown that many other factors are important in determining leader success, and that not everyone who possesses these traits will be a leader" (Adler, 1991) As interest in the trait approach to leadership waned leading to new behaviorist theories. The most widely publicized exponent of this approach was the Managerial Grid, which explained that there, was one best style of leadership, by various combinations of two factors regarding a concern for production and people. The situational approach suggested that the traits required of a leader differed, according to varying situations. To put it simply, the leader was a person who was in the right place at the right time. "Rather than a great man causing a great event to happen, the situational approach claims that great events are the product of historical forces that are gong to happen whether specific leaders are present or not " (Adair, 1984). The interactionist theory proposed that both the characteristics of the individual, and the situation in which the group found itself, accounted for who would become the leader. Resulting from this theory was the view that leaders are both born and made. Thus, one can learn how to become what Cohen has called an "uncrowned leader," a person who exerts influence over others but lacks positional authority (Cohen, 1990). Motivation, Empowerment and Project Leadership Constructions projects are complex and getting more so. Capital outlays are increasing manifold and role of technology is increasing. Work automation is at its peak and use of computer aided design and control systems is turning invasive and pervasive. Additionally the skill markets attached to construction projects are becoming highly variegated and specialized. Concurrent to these practices, which only work to increase control and ensure top quality finish in promised time, the consumer requirements are becoming more demanding in terms of time and costs. The latter fact has resulted in intense competition in bidding for construction projects.However,one fact stands out tall even in such mechanized and computerized construction projects environment i.e. the construction activity is still predominantly a people activity. The involvement of staff, with above changes, has only become more highlighted with enhanced requirements of skilled and highly skilled staff. Due to nature of such projects several and hundreds of activities are run by staff concurrently against a time, resource and coordination challenge. In fact standalone and watertight situations abound in project scenarios where small group of workers face a challenge; they have their own leaders, immediate objectives and time and resource calls. Additionally they are accountable for their outputs in a value chain which runs right up to the top management of the project. Faced with so many challenges such staff is critical for the success of projects. Leaders and managers have to reckon this fact and ensure proper motivation of the staff. Theoretical constructs in motivation theory may not appear to be of much intent on the face of the issue; however their intricate knowledge is critical for looking into reasons of poor motivation amongst staff. These theoretical constructs help analysis of human problems at work and often give out solution that otherwise were not possible. Even if one of the construct was carefully applied to the work situation it may reap rich rewards. Take for instance Maslow's need hierarchy. It is a hierarchy of needs theory going from basic, low level, biological requirements of food, water and shelter through into the ever higher needs of safety, affiliation, knowing and understanding, aesthetics, self actualisation, and finally into transcendence. It is argued that as each level is satisfied, we then move into the next higher level - and it is that level which then becomes our dominant motivator. This categorization of needs itself can solve several poor motivation problems. A leader and manager who is having a desirable possession of empathy would be ideally located to apply such a theory to his staff. Empowerment is reported to boost employee motivation by several notches. Empowerment of employees address those situations where employee potential is left unutilized for most part. Carver (1994) describes empowerment as," the method by which employees are encouraged to take responsibility for improving the way they do their jobs and to contribute to their organisations goals". Nesan & Holt (1999) recommend that empowerment techniques and practical steps prevalent in (other) manufacturing industries should be transferred to the Construction Industry to facilitate an industry seeking new manufacturing initiatives and new production technologies. They suggest that there is an increasing emphasis on construction organization to radically rethink and redesign their processes. Preferred style of leadership for Project Management in Construction Activity Based on the above theories various styles of leaderships have emerged. A typical construction project milieu and challenges have also been furnished above. The necessity for employee motivation and empowerment has also been stated with due emphasis. These styles essentially owe their names to dominance of certain leadership qualities. Project Management in construction activity has always been an involved and complicated task. A close view inside any organization - large, medium and small would reveal that various people, professional staff are actively engaged in carrying out a variety of projects either one at a time or many at a time. These normally include: service improvements, costs reduction, product development, staff development or improving sales. In all situations where someone or a team are engaged in delivering a change, then you have a clear project and need to apply project management principles. Projects form an inescapable activity of today's corporate environment, however not every corporate environment today is amenable to the effective running of projects. The project approach to delivering corporate objectives is no longer solely the domain of the construction or oil and gas sectors. The reality is the project approach is here to stay in virtually all fields of business and industry. The rate of high failure of projects is an evidence of a misalignment between the clients target and the project execution team. The problem is that project management is the hammer and the projects are the nails. Project management is not a one size fits all approach, but rather it should be tailored to fit each project situation. In other words, we need a more robust approach to project management; one that recognizes the project environment and adapts accordingly. The one act which makes for such robust practice is to recognize the fact that any project being multitasked, time and resource constrained, highly technical and dependent on multitude of skills cannot be run with just one leader ;it needs to have a number of leaders spread all over its work landscape. Moreover such leaders need to be competent, empathetic and interested in problem solving rather in maintaining bureaucratic positions of authority. This essentially implies that construction projects actually need leaders who are also adept managers. This brings about the concept of manager leaders. Such a concept would represent a movement from autocracy to trusteeship; with the compulsory control giving way to gain influence, voluntary co-operation, trust, respect, commitment; the management focus would move away from being scientific, determinist and mechanistic to be much more about building knowledge, people, teams, organisations that work well together, achieve their purpose, and provide fulfilment for those involved; new leaders would "assemble and maintain human organisations in sustainable organisational forms": this would imply deploying all the orchestration, nurturing, political and inter-personal skills and moral insight i.e. all those previously derided soft skills turn out to be valuable management and leadership tools; now team approach would be used from shop floor to top management and everyone, no matter how inexperienced, being treated with basic human respect as part of a team; the change would not be just about the changing nature and demystification of leadership but the leadership itself, would be devolved / dispersed to more people and finally, instead of looking for one super-manager, virtually everyone in the organisation would need to nurture these qualities. Thus there is a need for a situational manager who functions and doubles up as a leader without having to look up elsewhere. References Cartwright, D., and Zander, A.(eds.) Group Dynamics: Research and Theory. Tavistock. page 304.1968. Ruffin,Veal. Project Management and Leadership:Equal Partners for Project Success www.asapm.org. 2004. Bryman, A.Leadership and Organisations, Routledge.pg 6.1986. Barry, Timothy R. Top 10 Qualities of A Project Manager. Project Management Article. www.esi-europe.com. Bennis, W. Learning to Lead. MA:Addison-Wesley, 1997. Kouzes, J. M. The Leadership Challenge. CA :Jossey-Bass Publishers. 1987. Norman, Pual. Parental Empathy. Parenthood. NY: Little, Brown. 1970. Adler, R.B. &Adler, R.B. Rodman, G. Understanding Human Communication. Fort Worth, Texas :Holt Rhinehart & Winston. 1991. Wrightsman, L.S. Social Psychology.2nd Edn. Monteray, California :Brooks/Cole. 1977. Adair, J. The Skills of Leadership. England :Gower, Aldershot Kants. 1984. Cohen, W. A. The art of the leader. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1990. Carver ,Richard.in D. Clutterbuck, 1994, The power of empowerment: Release the hidden talents of your employees. Kogan Page.1994. Nesan, L.J., Holt, G.D. Empowerment in Construction: The way forward for performance improvement. Research Studies Press Ltd.1999. Read More