Leadership Styles: Fid-Bau Portal

Leadership Styles

Smith, Ryan E. / Carraher, Erin / DeLisle, Peter

This chapter describes a leadership style as the approach leaders take when providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. When using the authoritarian style, leaders can make quick decisions without spending time engaging others in discussion. The participative or democratic leadership style is one in which a leader involves one or more team members in the decision‐making process. The addition of outside perspectives helps a leader understand all relevant considerations and potential implications regarding decisions to the project or team. A leader may use a delegative style with the project team when the team is more knowledgeable about an issue than the leader, while still maintaining stewardship over the project as a whole. Positive approaches to reinforcement build on the collective intelligence of the group. These styles build up the team, encourage it to perform at a high level, and leave individuals more developed professionally, personally, and emotionally. Positive reinforcement leads to engagement, which is a key leadership practice needed to address contemporary complex tasks such as project delivery. The chapter also presents views of CEO Fred Perpall and Chief Design Officer Rick del Monte, on integrated design, construction, and development services, and their respective paths to becoming leaders in the firm and their organization's innovative leadership development program.