MGT 424 Module 2 Traits and Skills of Leaders Example

The Confident Candidate and the Quiet One: Traits, Skills and the Choice of a Construction Site Superintendent

Student Name

Business Administration Program, Aspen University

MGT 424: Leadership

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

The Confident Candidate and the Quiet One: Traits, Skills and the Choice of a Construction Site Superintendent

Pinecrest Builders, a composite commercial construction firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, has won a contract to build a $38 million medical office building over two years. The site superintendent will lead the work on site, coordinating about 14 subcontractors, managing the schedule, enforcing safety and working with the owner's representative. A late or unsafe project would damage the firm's reputation with a health system that plans more buildings. Three finalists remain after interviews. This paper uses trait and skills research to compare them and recommend a choice.

The Finalists

The first finalist, from a competing firm, impressed the interview panel with energy, confidence and ready answers. The second, an assistant superintendent at Pinecrest for seven years, was quieter in the interview but has run two smaller projects to completion. The third has fifteen years as a superintendent with a residential builder and is moving into commercial work.

What Trait Research Shows

Judge et al. (2002) pooled 222 correlations from 73 samples relating the five-factor model of personality to leadership. Of the five, extraversion tracked leadership most closely and most reliably across settings. Conscientiousness and openness came next, neuroticism pointed the other way and agreeableness barely registered. Taken together, the five factors had a multiple correlation of about .48 with leadership. Importantly, the relationships were generally stronger for leader emergence, meaning whether others start treating someone as the person in charge, than for leader effectiveness, meaning whether that person's group actually does well. An energetic, outgoing candidate is likely to look like a leader in an interview; whether that candidate will run a site well is a separate question.

What Skills Research Shows

Mumford et al. (2000) proposed that leader performance rests on skills rather than fixed traits. Their model emphasizes complex problem-solving skills, the ability to define unusual problems and develop solutions; social judgment skills, including perspective taking and understanding how a plan will play out among the people involved; and knowledge. These skills develop over a career through experience and challenge, which is why seasoned leaders often outperform gifted beginners. For a superintendent, they appear in concrete forms: solving sequencing problems when a delivery is late, judging how subcontractors will react to a schedule change and knowing commercial building systems.

Emotional Intelligence

Goleman (1998) argued that effective leaders are distinguished by emotional intelligence, made up of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill. The concept has been criticized because measures vary, but its elements describe real demands on a superintendent, who must stay calm when an inspection fails and read whether a subcontractor's foreman is overloaded or simply unwilling.

Comparing the Finalists

How the Interview Was Run

Part of the problem lies in how Pinecrest interviews. Each finalist met a panel of three for an hour of open conversation, and panel members rated candidates afterward on a single overall score. Such a format rewards fluency and confidence, the qualities associated with extraversion, and gives little room for evidence of skills. The panel never asked candidates to walk through a real scheduling problem or to describe a conflict with a subcontractor in detail. Two panel members admitted their scores were formed in the first few minutes.

Checking the Evidence

To compare the finalists fairly, the firm gathered three kinds of evidence after the interviews. It asked each candidate to sequence a set of trades for a two-story medical building with a late steel delivery, a short exercise that revealed problem-solving and knowledge. It called at least three subcontractors who had worked with each candidate, asking the same questions about communication and fairness. And it reviewed safety and schedule records from past projects. This evidence, rather than the interview scores, fills the comparison table.

Recommendation

Pinecrest should select the internal assistant superintendent. The trait research explains why the external candidate impressed the panel, but the skills research and the evidence point to the internal candidate, who has solved the kinds of problems this job requires and is respected by subcontractors. Her gap is communication with the owner's representative and architect, where she tends to defer.

Developing the Gap

She will be paired with the firm's senior project manager as a mentor for the first six months, attending owner meetings together, and will lead the weekly owner update from the second month with feedback after each. Goleman's view that social skill can be developed supports this approach.

Weighing the Residential Candidate

The third finalist deserves a fair hearing. Fifteen years of running residential sites have built strong problem-solving and social judgment, and subcontractors praise his calm. But commercial medical buildings involve systems, such as medical gas, heavy mechanical work and strict inspection sequences, that he has not managed. The skills model holds that knowledge is one of the three pillars of leader performance, and on a two-year, $38 million project his learning curve would carry too much risk. He would be a strong candidate for a smaller commercial job first.

Limits of This Analysis

Evidence about the external candidate is thinner because Pinecrest has not worked with him. His single commercial project ran late for reasons he attributed to the owner, which may be true. The firm should keep him in mind for a future role after checking references more fully.

Changing How Superintendents Are Chosen

The experience suggests a better process for future openings. Pinecrest will move to a structured format, putting an identical set of real site problems to each finalist and scoring answers against a rubric drawn from the skills model, add the sequencing exercise and require reference calls to subcontractors before the panel meets. This keeps traits in view without letting first impressions decide.

Conclusion

Trait research helps explain first impressions, and its finding that traits predict emergence more than effectiveness is a warning against hiring on them alone. The skills model directs attention to evidence that can be checked, and emotional intelligence describes the self-control and empathy the role requires. Weighing that evidence, the quieter internal candidate is the stronger choice, with focused development on the one skill she still needs.

References

Goleman, D. (1998). What makes a leader? Harvard Business Review, 76(6), 93-102.

Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 765-780. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.765

Mumford, M. D., Zaccaro, S. J., Harding, F. D., Jacobs, T. O., & Fleishman, E. A. (2000). Leadership skills for a changing world: Solving complex social problems. The Leadership Quarterly, 11(1), 11-35. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(99)00041-7