Have you ever used Situational Leadership?
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In the simplest sense, Situational Leadership is a leadership technique that can help you modify your leadership style depending on the individual and the task that they are doing. There are many nuances to this leadership style, but let us start with the history.
What is Situational Leadership
Situational Leadership is a leadership model created by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, developed while working on Management of Organisational Behaviour. The theory was first introduced in 1969 as the "life cycle theory of leadership". While in it's purest form, it is a very powerful leadership technique, it can also be extended to improve collaboration amongst team members.
The model consists of 4 quadrants that help a manager determine the level of directive behaviour and the level of supportive behaviour to provide towards a direct report depending on their competence and commitment for a task.
Now that we have a base understanding of the model, let's look at how Situational Leadership can improve individuals, teams and organisations from the following contexts:
The manager's context
The direct report's context
The organisation's context
The Manager's Context
An understanding of Situational Leadership and how to use it can help take a manager's people management skills to new levels. Imagine, knowing when to provide direction to a new member that has joined the team, or knowing when to provide support to a more experienced team member. By paying attention to, and reading some pointers about the individual and the task they are performing, you can know what type and the level of support to provide your individual contributor.
It is equivalent to being able to step into a quadrant on-demand and then knowing when to navigate from there as the individual contributor develops competence and commitment towards the task. One of the primary complaints that individual contributors have is that their manager 'never knows how to lead and support them'. After all, providing highly directive leadership to someone who is an expert in a task is only going to cause conflict and a feeling of distrust.
The Situational Leadership tool can thus help a manager find the right balance between directive and supportive leadership style depending on the individual contributor and the task that they are performing.
The Direct Report's Context
Now let us look at it from the perspective of the person doing the task. The direct report is always looking for guidance from their manager. After all inherently, she/ he wants to do their best at work. In order to do so, the direct report is looking towards their manager to provide the right level of balance between direction and support depending on their competence and commitment towards a task.
When a manager starts providing a high level of direction to a direct report that is an expert at a particular task, the later starts to see it as a lack of trust on the part of the manager. The direct report is in fact looking for supportive behaviour from the manager and not direction.
Without this tool, there would be many instances of conflict between the manager and their direct report and a break down of trust. This also leads to micro management and hence a negative work environment.
The Organisation's Context
Finally, let's look at Situational Leadership from the organisation context. When this tool is used across the organisation, all employees will see consistency from their managers, irrespective which team they sit in. This will also promote a healthy culture of lateral movement across the organisation because direct reports will be comfortable with the consistent leadership methodology used. This will help avoid instances of direct reports asking for lateral movements to get away from a "difficult manager".
Implementing this tool organisation wide will also help create a positive environment for everyone and ensure that the managers are comfortable with people management.
At Unlock More we run various training programs on Situational Leadership helping leaders and helping teams create a positive work environment.
