Three Leadership Styles for Denver Airport Project

#1 The three types of leadership styles that should be used for the Denver Airport Project are transformational, directive and empowering leadership. Transformational leadership should be used because the City of Denver seemed to have high expectations and this type of leadership motivates the team to work toward the goals and do more than expected. Issuing instructions and commands that align with the goals would include the use of Directive leadership. Lastly empowering leadership should be used as it encourages independent action, opportunity thinking, teamwork, self-development, self-reward and participate in goal setting.

Similar to what our book says about transformational leadership, it can be defined as “Transformational leadership is essentially leadership that motivates followers to transcend their self-interests for a collective purpose, vision, and/or mission. This form of leadership tends to foster trust and admiration toward the leader on the part of followers, and thus they may be inspired to do more than they were originally expected to do. ” The Denver Airport project can benefit from this type of leadership since the collective purpose is to complete the building of the airport to meet the needs of the City of Denver.

This type of leadership suggests that there is a consensus and collective mindset among team members. This type of leader demonstrates positive behaviors. The team members tend to perceive the goals and activities the same way as the leader. Everyone is on the same page and the tasks and goals can be completed successfully. “A transformational leader is one who should have been able to provide a consistent image to followers through his or her actions and behaviours and thereby create consensus among followers” (1). A directive leader issues instructions and commands based on the goals.

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This will help to keep all members of the team on track to complete the tasks of the entire Denver Airport Project. According to Bernard M Bass who developed this model, the directive leader tells his followers what to do, and how to do it exactly. He specifics standards required of his followers and exercise firm authority over them. (2) The last type of leadership that should be used is empowering leadership. According to our text, empowering leadership includes encouraging independent action, opportunity thinking, teamwork, self-development, self-reward and participates in goal setting.

They observe the team and behaviors they display. Based on these observations, they make the proper adjustments to get the work done. From my research, empowering leaders can’t rely on innate observation abilities. They need to hone their awareness to make their interpretations reliable guides for action. (3) This will be beneficial to the Denver Airport project to keep the employees engaged in what needs to get done as the project had many extensions added to get completed. Using these recommended types of leadership styles should set the Denver Airport Project up for success.

Hopefully, minimizing conflicts and providing the proper tools to overcome any obstacles along the way. The combination of these styles will provide the communication, teamwork and the completion of tasks to meet the goals of the project. Thompson, Leigh L. Making the Team; A Guide for Managers, 4th edition. Prentice Hall, 2011 (1) Feinberg, B. J. , Ostroff, C. , & W, W. B. (2005). The role of within-group agreement in understanding transformational leadership. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78, 471-488. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com/docview/199371433? accountid=44759 (2) Yihan, L. 2011). Five styles of leadership. Retrieved from http://www. leadership-with-you. com/directive-leadership. html (3) Derby, E. (2011, June 17). Empowering leadership. Retrieved from http://www. estherderby. com/2011/06/empowering-leadership. html #2 The traits of the leader and the type of team will display how confidence is managed based on the statement “When a project seems well within reach, dampening overconfidence can ensure that energy remains focused on achieving it; when it appears almost out of reach, encouraging greater confidence can ensure that the motivation remains focused on achieving it” (Useem, 1998, p. 22). The Denver Airport project encountered many delays in opening which could impact the performance of the team to get the tasks done to complete the project. According to our text, “Self-directed teams offer the most potential for innovation, enhance goal commitment and motivation and provide opportunity for organizational learning and change. (Thompson 9)”. This type of team would depend on each other to adjust confidence based on where the project is, within their reach or out of reach. 3M has proven that hanging to self-directed teams has increased productivity, the 3M Hutchinson facility increased production gains by 300 percent. “By backing self-directed work team efforts with effective training for both employees and management, 3M has developed a high-involvement work culture that contains multiskilled jobs, promotes empowerment, is customer-focused, has moved decision making to the lowest effective level and rewards group performance and continuous improvement”. (Williams, 1995) Communication of many different parts of the project (The City, UPS, the airlines) seemed to cause the delays in the Denver Airport project.

Communication between the different companies is crucial and can make or break a project. March 1993, October 1993 and March 1994 were all delays announced by the city, each blamed another part of the project for the delay. Scheel Construction states that communication is a critical component to failure or success of a project. Construction of the Denver Airport was obviously a big part of the project. “We must not allow distractions or pressures to meet deadlines detract from due diligence in setting up proper communication prior to beginning work. (Scheel) It seems as if proper communication was not setup before hand among all that were involved, The City, UPS and the different airline companies. The organizational structure can impact confidence and focus. It seems that the project management company for the Denver Airport Project was possibly using a functional structure, one manager who assigns and monitors their work. The disadvantage of this for this project was that nobody was knowledgeable about the baggage system (DCV system). They were already designing and building the terminals before a decision was made about the baggage system.

The matrix organizational structure may have been a better fit in this case. This type of structure works best for long term projects. This type of structure creates teams based on the skill set of the employee. Employees would be placed based on their skills and they can focus on that task and not be pulled in many directions or multiple tasks at one time. Communication will improve. Since employees have constant contact with members of different functional areas, the matrix structure allows for information and resources to travel more fluidly between those functional areas.

The collaboration between functional areas allows a project team to better handle complex challenges and objectives. ( Guzman, 2012) By utilizing self-directed teams, improved communication will enable the teams to achieve the proper confidence that is needed whether the project is well within reach or almost out of reach. Using the matrix type of structure will also enable the right employees to do the right job based on their skills. The proper information and resources provided to the employees will allow the project team to handle each situation to meet the project goals.

Thompson, Leigh L.. Making the Team: A Guide for Managers, 4th Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions. <vbk:9781256306429#outline(4. 4. 3)>. Williams, R. (1995, November). Quality digest. Retrieved from http://www. qualitydigest. com/nov95/html/self-dir. html Scheel. (n. d. ). Communication: Key to project success. Retrieved from http://www. scheelconstruction. com/communication-key-to-project-success/ Guzman, O. (2012). The advantages of matrix organizatoinal structure. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness. chron. com/advantages-matrix-organizational-structure-286. html

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