Abstract
Business organizational needs are met successfully when there are leaders in place who understand their people, industry, and societal concerns. Organizations inherently involve humans who must be managed and directed to varying degrees, and managing is not always as streamlined as some may wish. Understanding the needs and goals of each individual or group is paramount for a manager to elevate from daily management to ongoing leadership. A good manager/leader should strive to have personal knowledge of a collection of leadership theories and applications that would serve them in different situations. People are complex beings, and great leaders have the ability to appeal to the psychological aspects of how to lead particular groups of individuals. Through this framework, leaders can have a better understanding of how to manage when necessary, and managers can in turn begin to learn how to lead. This chapter offers insight to an audience who can begin to identify a core group of leadership competencies, theories, and qualities to synergize their personal preference.
TopBackground
Over several years of working in various business organizations and industries, the author came to realize that there has never appeared to be one way by which managers manage and leaders lead, regardless of stereotypes (Brescoll, 2016). Along with this understanding, various consulting models have attempted to insert psychological factors into the evaluations of managers and leaders depending on the type of organization and need. Jansen et al. (2016) highlighted sociopsychological factors such as team efficacy and cohesion. Efficacy and cohesion collectively denote a process that is inherently situated within behavioral science whereby positive individual and team behaviors are paramount to a successful outcome (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020).
As the author alludes to in the subsequent sections of this chapter, leadership practice and theory may have differing values in terms of utility depending on one’s interpretation. The author ascribes to a philosophy that sets his thinking process as a pragmatic social constructivist. With this mindset, the researcher remains open to practice ideals and theoretical constructs as they evolve. As such, he has initiated a model framework which he calls the AEC (i.e., architecture, engineering, and construction) management cybernetics model © (The MC model © or MCM ©). As an AEC practitioner, the author is developing this model to assist not only building science practitioners and academics, but diverse business organizations as well. According to Johnson (2020), the model—once complete—focuses on the following:
Key Terms in this Chapter
Model: A simplified representation of a system over some time period or spatial extent intended to promote understanding of the real system (Systems Thinking Handout, 2020).
Socioeconomics: Of, relating to, or involving a combination of social and economic factors (Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2020).
Managerial Psychology: The application of a knowledge of human behavior to issues that arise in the management of organizations, especially with regard to decision making, problem solving, leadership, and human relations in the workplace. Although often used synonymously with industrial and organizational psychology, the term suggests an approach that adopts the perspective of the employer. Also called management psychology (“Managerial psychology,” 2020).
Sociopsychology: Of, relating to, or involving a combination of social and psychological factors, or relating to social psychology (“Sociopsychological,” 2020).