Interpersonal Skills, Leadership Styles, and Team Performance across Key Roles in Indonesian Building Construction Projects

Abstract

Building construction projects in Indonesia depend on technical competence and funding, but they also depend on the human factors that govern daily coordination among project actors. Poor communication, unbalanced leadership, and weak collaboration are still reported as causes of rework, delay, and interpersonal tension. This study assessed interpersonal skills, leadership styles, and team performance in four stakeholder roles in Indonesian building construction: the team leader of construction management (CM) consultants, the contract signing officer (PPK), the team leader of design consultants, and the contractor's project manager (PM). It also examined how the two human-factor variables relate to team performance. The study used a descriptive mixed-methods design. A five-point Likert questionnaire was given to 26 professionals selected purposively from the four roles; it contained ten interpersonal-skill items, ten leadership-style items, and twelve team-performance items. In-depth interviews with four key informants, one from each role, were analysed thematically. Interpersonal skills were rated high in every role, with mean scores of 4.7 for contractor PMs, 4.4 for PPKs, 4.1 for CM consultant team leaders, and 4.0 for design consultant team leaders. Respondents described leadership that mixed transformational and transactional behaviour, and role means ranged from 3.9 (CM consultant team leaders) to 4.6 (contractor PMs). Team performance scores ran from good (3.7) to very good (4.8) and followed the same order of roles. In the interviews, strong team performance was most often linked to structured communication, conflict resolution based on the contract, and adaptive, participative leadership. Because the three constructs rank the roles in the same order, interpersonal skills and leadership appear to work together as one human-factor system that shapes team performance. Human-factor training in Indonesian building construction should therefore be designed for each role rather than applied uniformly.