Leadership necessity in construction projects

Abstract

This research is conducted to study the necessity and the importance of leadership in the construction projects. There is no such thing as poor engineers or scientist, only poor leaders. If leaders have good resources however, badly managed, they will get only poor outcomes. The main objectives of this study is to identify the important leadership skills, determine the behavior of a good leader from employee’s perspective, and analyze the behavior of a good leader from their own perspective. This research used quantitative research method. 200 questionnaires were sent to leaders from different countries, 50 respondents have answered the questionnaires. The software Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data collected, descriptive and inferential statistics. This study discovered four main problems which are the misunderstanding between management skills and leadership skills, leading to low qualities of leadership skills, hence incompetent leaders, and therefore unsuccessful project. It is found that leadership competencies have a strong relationship with the project performance, and that leadership skills differ from leader to other, and each leader has its own method of leading the project. This study have defined the different leadership skills, and the behavior of a good leader from both perspectives of employees and employers. It has also highlighted the leadership behavior and skills that are principal for leaders. It is found that there is a strong relationship between leader’s behaviors and skills and the level of project performance. Therefore these leadership behaviors and skills can have significant impact that influence the project performance either to its success or to failure.