Lidersheep

The review which I would like to present you is about the main issues of Facility Management and Leadership. There are as many theories of leadership as there are authors and business executives.The main topics of this event were what is leadership? What is Facility Management and its resources? What differentiates leaders in facility management? Also Drs have touched upon 3 main strategic Facility Management challenges, such as:

• What is the dominant orientation of your organization: enabling or making (facilitating or producing)?

• Did your FM make the step from supporting to enabling (from reactive to pro-active)?

• Did you make the next step in positioning FM: from facility management to enabling leadership (from marching along the chosen road to marking the shining path)

Dr. Jan Van Dalen and Dr. Roel Cremer shared ideas about this matter with students and gave their points of view. The discussion was set up in the recognition that the old scientific approach to management was only half the picture of what organizations needed to be successful: the passion, vision and drive that great leaders must always have. The best thinkers in the field such as Abraham Zaleznik (Harvard Business School) John P. Kotter and others have identified the main tasks of facility leaders and encouraged the continual development of the leadership.

It is necessary to add that nowadays the leader is not only a person in the field of politics, but in others spheres too. Here are some of the most important, and a brief description of how they apply to facility management.

• Leaders cope with change because of fierce global competition, corporations are focusing on factors like rapidly developing technology, speed to market, differentiation in the marketplace. As leaders, facility executives have to be able to adapt quickly information to make the right decision, to deploy the right strategies and resources as the business changes.

• Leaders set the direction. In facility management, to create the best future the leader has to gather and assimilate a wide range of data and look for patterns, relationships. This involves assessing the impact of corporate culture on business direction. It also requires facility executives to have the ability and willingness to take risks within the facility management organization.

• Leaders consolidate people in the organization. And here the role of the leader is very important. He must believe in what he says and must know how to persuade the team. His job is to get facility staff to move in the same direction, either to accommodate a stated direction or because change is needed. The task requires constant communication in terms of verbal messages, carefully selected symbols and feedback on success and shortcomings.

• Leaders motivate people. The facility management leader needs to enable the staff in the organization that they have the energy to overcome obstacles. A leader knows how to involve people in decisions and how to create groups that work together to solve problems or develop innovative approaches.

Taking in consideration the above we have come to the following conclusions:

• Leadership is about setting a new direction for a group and it means that a leader always has to be well-informed. Information is everything. The leader of the team has to gather and acquire a wide range of data, numbers and many things depends on him, I mean what information he has: the up-to-day or not relevant. The future of the project of the company may also place credit in his awareness.

• Not to be afraid to take creatively different decisions and to have fresh thinking of a problem. In other words you have to be out of the box thinker or leader. To be a self-confident and not to be frightened of failures.

• Always have leadership resources that are current news and shared knowledge:

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