Bringing a team together towards a common goal can be a difficult job for a person without leadership qualities. To be a successful architects in Michigan, the ideas need to be executed as cleanly and accurately as possible. Prospering Architects in Michigan have many people who assume roles of leadership. They do this by building moral in the office and creating self-confidence in their co-workers, by providing guidance to others when they need help and motivating them in the right way, and by coordinating people and tasks and taking action. How does a person become a leader? Is a person born a certain way or can he or she become one? If so how? These questions are the foundation for many leadership theories. In the professional world, the quality of good leadership is extremely desirable. The boss should be able to motivate his or her employees and co-workers should have some leadership qualities in order to get each task done within the desired length of time. Each leadership theory can relate to the position of Project Manager. The various theories can lead to different types of project managers and their design team. While looking at these leadership theories in the context of a design team, it will be interesting how each affects the team in various ways and how the team is handled by the PM. So which leadership theory has the ability to produce the most effective team?
One of the most common theories on what makes a good leader, is the Trait theory in the 1930’s. These are the people that posses the correct traits and qualities which are best suited for leadership positions. This theory is based on traits of effective leaders over the past two centuries and is used to predict a leader’s effectiveness. With this, research studies found these core traits: achievement drive, leadership motivation, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, Cognitive ability, knowledge of business, emotional maturity, charisma, creativity and flexibility. These are just a handful of the found traits in effective leaders and there are hundreds more. The difficulty with this theory and applying this idea to the workplace is the theory does not show which traits are most important, or least important. If the PM has the most honesty and integrity is that more important than his or her self-confidence when it comes to leading the design team? There are many of these core traits that are learned, but some that people are born with, do leaders stand a chance of being great if they were not born with the trait of flexibility? If someone has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, will that make her incapable of becoming an effective leader? In the office, an eye for that amount of detail could be very rewarding when it comes to quality checks and the rigor it might take to do the drawings as perfect as possible would not be a bad trait to have in an architects in Michigan office. The Trait Theory is a great way for a person to asses themselves. If a person does some self-reflecting and realizes she does not have two or three traits from the core list, it can give her something to work towards. Maybe a younger PM has most of the core traits but lacks some emotional maturity, and leadership motivation, it can work out better for him to narrow down how he could improve himself and therefore the design team. Great architects in Michigan have firms with great leadership. If you do not have great leadership you will not have employees who are satisfied with their job at your firm. Good leadership will sustain your employees but great leadership will make your employees happier, more accountable and their moral will be higher than without good firm leadership. Great leadership will also impact the business in a positive way when your clients see this leadership being utilized on their projects and the communication that comes along with all architectural projects.
The Path Goal Theory introduced by Martin Evans in 1970 and further developed by Robert House in 1971, looks at the relationship between an employer and a boss, or a design team member and the PM. A key factor this theory relies on is the concept of motivation. Without motivating subordinates, they would be no outcomes to see the success of the leader. The PM should be clearing obstacles away so the Architects in Michigan team members can achieve their goals for the good of the group. PMs would do this by providing information and other resources to the team members, they need good communication skills. This theory measures the accomplishment of the leader by looking at the achievements of the subordinates, outside factors and their leadership styles. There are four leadership styles associated with this theory: supportive, participative, directive and achievement oriented. The supportive style shows care for the employees’ well-being and is friendly towards them. The participative style is group-oriented. The PM would share information in meeting settings, with architects in Michigan and talk together about solutions. The directive style is very hands-on with each individual, the PM will let the team member know what is expected of her and what consequences there are if the expectations are not met. The achievement style is when a PM sets goals and encourages and expects the team members to be able to meet those goals. This theory really focuses on the outcomes of great leadership to prove the person has leadership skills, rather than telling a person they should be a great leader because they have all these wonderful leader traits.
Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid in the 1960’s uses a grid that focuses on two dimensions of leader behavior, the concern for people and the concern for production. Each of these is on the x or y axis and they each go from 1-9. This creates 81 boxes in the leadership grid. From this grid, Blake and Mouton identified 5 different types of leaders.