An Investigation of the Leadership Style of Construction Managers in South Florida

One of the most important facets of managing a construction company is leadership. Although the issue of leadership has been widely covered in management or business school, little attention has been given to the study of managerial behavior or styles of leaders in construction projects (Bresnen et al., 1986). Few of the researches done in this area point out that construction managers are not perceived as leaders essentially due to the fact that these managers are involved only with the day-to-day execution of site work. This mindset of managers, as Toor and Ofori point out, makes them more product-oriented than relationship-oriented (Toor and Ofori, 2008). This paper looks at the different leadership styles in construction. The paper further investigates if there is any difference in the way the more experienced managers exhibit their leadership style as compared to the less experienced managers. From the data collected through selected project managers and construction professionals working in managerial capacity in South Florida, it was found that the leadership style exhibited is both high task and high employee relationship; which is the selling type. The research also found that there is no significant difference in the leadership orientation of well experienced managers and less experienced managers.