Final assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Final - Assignment Example In doing so, analyses of the elements of leadership approach, leadership type I applied to manage the situation is also conducted and how I led the team towards successfully achieving the goal is laid down. Brief Overview of the Situation or the project at hand For most of my life I served in the Air Force and come from Fort Worth Texas. However I also designed houses for 15 years and during one of those assignments I came across a project that was challenging, tested my capabilities and arouse my creativity. The house was for an elderly couple who had certain specific needs to be catered, was budget conscious and with a tight schedule yet I was fascinated in designing that particular house because it was the first time I was designing a house that would be physically suitable for elderly couple. The house was to be built on a rocky land measuring 3000 Sq ft. in Fort Worth and I started designing the house in 2011 to be delivered by the end of 2012. I was the chief designer for the p roject responsible for making the house plan, getting approval from local agencies and heading a team consisting of building contractor who would be building the house and a team of supervisors and subcontractors for various works such as plumbing, electricians etc., I was in charge of designing the house plan according to the clients requirements and getting his approval and delivering to the building contractor for actually building the house according to the plan and monitoring whether the house is coming according to the plan and tackling any challenges or problems arising. It was my responsibility ultimately to see to it that the house is made perfectly according to the plans, under the budget and delivered on time. Leadership approach applied to the situation I applied the Fiedler’s contingency leadership approach for accomplishing this project. It is a leader-match theory that matches leaders with situations appropriate to them (Fielder, 1967; Fielder & Chemers, 1974). Contingency here suggests that effectiveness of a leader is dependent on the fitting of leadership style to the given situation. The three situational or contingency dimensions identified by Fielder are â€Å"Leader-member relationships, Task Structure and position power† (Robbins, 2012, p. 368). When the leader has more control the situation is deemed to be favourable and when he has little control then it is an unfavorable situation and leadership style needs to be applied accordingly. Control on the team is more when leader- member relations are better, jobs are highly structured, and position power is strong (Robbins, 2012). Contingency theory framework is mainly concerned with matching leadership styles with situations and two types of leadership styles emerge within the framework that are task oriented style and relationship motivated style (Northouse, 2013). In this project being the chief designer I faced both favorable and unfavorable situations. As leader member re lations with some team members were good and with others it was poor. Some tasks were highly structured as there was only one way of doing things, others were unstructured as many alternatives available for doing the task, as we were developing innovative design, team members were not familiar with it and there was no single best way of doing it. I enjoyed strong position power being the Chief designer of the