Running head: MODULE 3 PAPER 1

Module 3 Paper, Behaviors Influence on Leadership

Nicklaus Neff

OGL321

Arizona State University

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Module 3 Paper, Behaviors Influence on Leadership

Step 1

Behavioral Excellence

Behavioral excellence is a great chapter within the book ‘Project management best

practices’ by Harold Kerzner. The chapter gives a rundown on how behavior effects leadership

and how it is ultimately the greatest tool a project manager has. The chapter starts off talking

about some past thoughts on project failure, specifically how project failure was thought to be

cause solely by technical issues. Now of course, companies have realized that it is not due to a

lack of planning or scheduling that a project fails rather, it is caused by the loss of morale and

other human factors.

This chapter mainly focuses on behavior and how it affects situational leadership,

conflict, and group structure. Starting with situational leadership, it has been found that

leadership needs to grow and change as a person does and because everyone and every

organization is different there is no one size fits all type of leadership. This is what make

situational leadership special, it can change and adapt to situations as they arise. Behavior

heavily influences and effects this by blending with a person’s style of leadership to create their

own structure of situational leadership. Randy Coleman is cited early in the chapter and he brings

up the point of treating employees differently, while still treating them similarly. What is meant

by this is that certain employees must be lead in a particular manner, for him the younger

employees needed to be given more tolerance and management would have to ‘bend’ for them

more than the older workers. This created his own type of situational leadership that was fueled

by the personality of himself and his employees. One needs to realize that managers deal with

many people throughout their time working, and they are not able to deal with every person or
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group in the same way that they did another, this is the foundation of situational leadership and it

is why situational leadership is so important.

Conflict resolution is something that many managers and leaders can struggle with, but

they must realize that personality clashes and logistical challenges can and will pose problems, it

is up to the leaders to be prepared to deal with them. By understanding conflicts, managers are

better able to identify and prevent them form arising. An example used in the chapter is that of a

team not understanding how each member is contributing to the project. To avoid any issues

coming up, the manger developed a chart to describe each member’s role quickly and

definitively, therefore there would be no confusion and no conflict. Preparing and anticipating

conflict is difficult, but it is imperative that managers work to combat these issues before they

arise, or they risk running into larger issues. It is also important to understand how personalities

contribute to conflict. Every member will have their own opinions and biases, and it is the job of

the manager to prevent these ideologies and personalities from clashing. This can be done by

simply separating clashing personalities, or by forcing dialogues and collaboration. Conflict is a

natural part of work, but with some simple understanding and planning, many conflicts can be

avoided altogether.

Step 2

A Guide To Creative Operations Management

This article was based around the benefits that are seen from boosting the level of

creativity in the workplace. The content of the article and the benefits described were somewhat

similar to the section described in chapter 10 on situational leadership. Creativity is in fact part

of situational leadership as the solutions and methods created are only limited by a manager’s

level of creativity. Some of the benefits described in this article included boosted efficiency,
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greater accountability, and better consistency. The article also focuses on emphasizing the

difference between project management and creative operations. The difference is that creative

operations focus on streamlining and improving management while project management is a

general view of how to create and manage projects. I find this similar to situational leadership

because creative operations are described as being varied form organization to organization,

much like how situational leadership varies from person to person. Throughout the article there

are also several mentions of connections and how a manager needs to be connected to their

departments and teams to ensure success. While being involved was not specifically mentioned

earlier in the text, it does relate to some of the themes of personality and flexibility. I found it

interesting that personality while vaguely covered in the article, was not explicitly expanded on.

Overall, I found that this article was a good supplemental material to the text that was previously

covered and I feel that it offered some good benefits and insights to creativity that the text did

not specifically cover.

How Do You Handle Conflict in Project Management?

This article was a great pick as supplemental reading because it expands upon and covers

the topic of conflict and how managers should handle it. Conflict is generally defined, and some

examples are given at the start of the article and one factor I had not thought of based off of the

text from earlier was that of the stakeholders. Stakeholders hold as much weight and have as

much personality as your employees do, therefore it is equally as important to resolve conflict

with them as it is within the organization. The article focuses on specific ways of handling

conflict such as confrontation, compromise, accommodation, and authority. I feel that these were

generally covered in the chapter 10 text, specifically the use of compromise or win-win

solutions. Where this article differs is its use of supplemental tools to help avoid conflict within
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the workplace. Tools can be a useful way to deal with issues that arise in the workplace, but

ultimately conflict resolution skills should be held by the manager because there are a diverse

amount of situations that may arise in the workplace and a tool, while useful, is not a fix all.

Personal Management experience

My personal experience falls most in line with conflict resolution and situational

leadership. These both come from my schooling and my place of work. As I work with children

who have not yet discovered conflict resolution, a big part of my job is breaking up arguments

between elementary level children. While this sounds easy, I can assure you dealing with

irrational children is quite difficult and I feel that it has helped to prepare me for conflict between

irrational adults. In terms of situational leadership, in high school I was heavily involved in the

JROTC program and was even among the student leaders. My responsibilities included training a

variety of high school kids’ military discipline and drill. This again was not easy, and it was a

very harrowing experience as a young child to oversee a group of my peers. However, I quickly

learned that not every student learned the same and I quickly had to adapt to meet our goals.

These experiences have helped shape me into the leader I am today.

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References

A Guide To Creative Operations Management. (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2020,

from https://www.wrike.com/blog/creative-operations-maangement-guide/

How Do You Handle Conflict in Project Management? (n.d.). Retrieved September 10,

2020, from https://www.wrike.com/blog/how-handle-conflict-in-project-management/

Kerzner, H. (2010). Chapter 10 Behavioral Excellence. In Project management: Best

practices: Achieving global excellence. New York: J. Wiley & Sons.