Situational Leadership

These 'conversations' - in reality high quality, focused coaching sessions - place creative demands on both the leader and the report or team being coached. At best, they fizz with excitement and energy as new perspectives emerge. They focus on how to develop the skills that employees' overall competence level and contribution to the bottom line depends on.

This clarity of focus on context and competence has other benefits. Chiefly, the report feels valued and supported at critical moments. This helps to improve the commitment of individuals to the project, team, division and company: they feel valued and they know they will benefit - personally and professionally - by being developed as individuals.

That is an effective management strategy. Staff with real talent are retained and their skills, competences and capabilities are improved. They recognise their value is enhanced. They exercise more creativity.

A situational leader takes the responsibility to 'diagnose' what the individual team member needs. Situational leadership transcends sex, language, cultural and linguistic barriers. It responds to situations as and when they arise and demands that the leader behave appropriately for that specific situation at that particular point in time.

It's the antithesis of: "We do it this way around here because we've always done it that way here"!

Situational leadership coaching is an emotionally mature and empowering response to the complexity and uniqueness of rapidly unfolding events, uncertainty and unpredictability.

A situational leader is aware and responsive. Aware of the need and the opportunity. Responsive and effective in tuning in to the member of staff. The aim being to quickly open up a learning space where the report can decide and access whatever they need to be effective. That may be:

• Aims and outcomes
• Instructions
• Training
• Feedback
• Support
• Recognition
• And more ... What's on your list?

You can get a sense of the virtuous cycle that emerges. This is, above all, a very respectful process.

Situational Leadership: introductory video

This video begins by explaining simply the relationship between the two basic leader behaviors: supportive and directive. A grid of four leadership styles emerges.

Situational Leadership: the model explained

This second video reinforces these ideas and goes on to discuss them in a more detailed and systematic way, elaborating the map of the relationship between the capabilities of the report and the optimum behavior of the situational leader.

You can see the whole range of leadership interventions that may be required of the situational leader, depending on context and capability: the organizational context and follower capability (a combination of confidence, experience, knowledge, skills and personal qualities).

In this way, the situational leader helps individuals under their leadership develop their skills, confidence and motivation, making them more effective and committed workers. The organization with situational leaders benefits because they feel they are valued and understood. As a result, they feel empowered and they put energy into contributing their efforts to the team.

We've seen that situational leadership theory focuses on the importance of context. The approach of the leader has to be appropriate for a given specific situation in order to be effective. Leadership cannot be a 'one size fits all' kind of a deal.

Within situational leadership, there are several specific approaches. Let's have a look at some of those now:

Situational Leadership and Fiedler's Contingency Theory

This is one of the most well respected situational leadership theories. According to this perspective, leaders should take three contextual factors into consideration when they decide which of their team is best suited to a particular task:

1. Leader-member relations - which may be either good or poor.
2. Task structure - how prescribed/systematized is the action that the leader wants the staff member to take.
3. Leader positional power - the degree of authority that the leader has over staff members.

Research shows that this model of situational leadership explains leader effectiveness. Therefore Fiedler argues that leaders should be appointed according to the necessities of a particular situation. This matches their natural abilities to the situation, making it easier for them to excel in leadership. It is less onerous to learn to lead in a situation for which they are naturally fitted for leadership.

Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership Theory

This theory also supports the idea that certain leadership styles are more appropriate for some circumstances than they are others. Four leadership styles are identified:

Delegating - passing the work to other people without much consideration of either the task or the staff Supportive - motivating staff; bringing them on board in support of an idea without having to explain how to do it Directive - telling the staff what to do, regardless of the staff feelings Coaching - helping willing staff members to learn how to complete tasks

Summary:

Situational leadership theory states that leaders should change their style to suit a particular situation. They should be willing and able to adapt.

Caveat:

This makes intuitive sense. But I feel bound to point out that there is a real lack of empirical research findings in support of situational leadership approaches. Maybe that is because it relies on people really understanding their own strengths and weaknesses both as a manager and as a team member, and in communicating these to the team. It is not always to communicate so freely, especially in a pressurized work environment.

The leadership world needs a qualitative study of this approach to leadership development, preferably one that has the refining of situational leadership training as a specific research outcome.