Facilities Management Leadership Approach

In today’s constant change and development in the practice of facilities management affect the widening and variety of scope that the facilities management practitioners need to take on. To take on these dynamic challenges and achieving the goals requires leadership.

There are as many ideas about leadership as there are writers, such as the Situational Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Task-Oriented Leadership, Servant Leadership, People-Oriented Leadership, so on and so forth. Each of the leadership approach works well, there is no one ideal leadership approach that will result well in the different situations. Likewise, the field of facilities management has its unique situation different from the others. In my opinion, in adopting the most effective facilities management leadership approach, you have to consider these four essential aspects of needs:

Needs of the Individual:

Good leaders develop the people they work with and bring out their leadership qualities. They pay attention to and respect their values.

Needs of the Team:

A leader continually aware of the needs of his people, to work together more productively. The leader should invest in relationship.

Needs of the Task:

The leader’s responsibility is to ensure that the task assigned is completed successfully. In doing do, the leader need to clearly defines the task.

Needs of Self:

The first person to lead is yourself. He first needs to cater his own needs, in order to support others’ need. An unresourceful leader is no good to anyone.

The facilities management leadership approach needs to be congruent to the four aspects of needs, and be flexible to adopt the appropriate techniques from the other leadership approaches to apply in the field of facilities management. I tend to subscribe to the quote, by Nelson Mandela, about what makes a leader.

“A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, where upon others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind.” – Nelson Mandela.

To your success in FM !

Steven Ee