Chapter 5 – Situational Approach

“Leaders match their style to the competence and commitment of subordinates”

Perspective

• Focuses on leadership in situations

• Emphasizes adapting style - different situations demand different kinds of leadership

• Used extensively in organizational leadership training and development

- It is about the type of followers you have in your group.

- Leader should diagnose the type of followers they have and adapt their behaviour so it fits the follower

Using SLII model – In any given situation the Leader has 2 tasks:

1st Task: Diagnose the Situation

Identify the developmental level of employee

Ask questions like:

• What is the task subordinates are being asked to perform?

• How complicated is it?

• What is their skill set?

• Do they have the desire to complete the job?

2nd Task: Adapt their Style

To prescribed Leadership style in the SLII model

• Leadership style must correspond to the employee’s development level

Definition

Comprised of both a directive dimension & supportive dimension:

• Each dimension must be applied appropriately in a given situation

• Leaders evaluate employees to assess their competence and commitment to perform a given task

Definition

Leadership style - the behavior pattern of an individual who attempts to influence others

It includes both:

• Directive (task) behaviors

• Supportive (relationship) behaviors

Directive behaviors - Help group members in goal achievement via one-way communication through:

• Giving directions

• Establishing goals & how to achieve them

• Methods of evaluation & time lines

• Defining roles

Supportive behaviors - Assist group members via two-way communication in feeling comfortable with themselves, co-workers, and situation

• Asking for input

• Problem solving

• Praising, listening

D1 = Task support

D2 = Coaching

D3 = Supporting (in Theory before: Country Club Manager)

D4 = Deligating (in Theory before: Impoverish Management)

-> Deligating means in-action / no action which is not bad management – action bias

Good leaders delegate in the right moment

• Lack of an empirical foundation raises theoretical considerations regarding the validity of the approach.

• Further research is required to determine how commitment and competence are conceptualized for each developmental level.

• Conceptualization of commitment itself and why it varies is very unclear.

• Replication studies fail to support basic prescriptions of situational leadership model.

• Does not account for how particular demographics influence the leader-subordinate prescriptions of the model

• Fails to adequately address the issue of one-to-one versus group leadership in an organizational setting and the situations in which the task doesn’t change

• Questionnaires are biased in favor of situational leadership

- Not all subordinates develop in this manner from D1 to D4

- Some people stay at the same level of competence and commitment e.g. doing a monotounos task ->they do not explain the differences of the labels (what is high compared to moderatly high, what is the difference)

- It treats all the followers / suboridnates as they are the same – it does not take into account that it is a 1:1 and not 1:many -> as a leader you have to adapt to every singel person in a different way, most of the time there are no monotonous groups e.g. teaching undergraduates from different countries = different work experience (some can not relate to examples based on experience)

• Often used in consulting because it’s easy to conceptualize and apply

• Straightforward nature makes it practical for managers to apply

• Breadth of situational approach facilitates its applicability in virtually all types of organizations and levels of management in organizations

Set of skills or actions leader might perform to improve task performance:

• Goal focusing (clarifying, gaining agreement)

• Structuring for results (planning, visioning, organizing, clarifying roles, delegating)

• Facilitating decision making (informing, controlling, coordinating, mediating, synthesizing, issue focusing)

• Training team members in task skills (educating, developing)

• Maintaining standards of excellence (assessing team and individual performance, confronting inadequate performance)

Set of actions leader needs to implement to improve team relationships:

• Coaching team members in interpersonal skills

• Collaborating (including, involving)

• Managing conflict and power issues (avoiding confrontation, questioning ideas)

• Building commitment and esprit de corps (being optimistic, innovating, envisioning, socializing, rewarding, recognizing)

• Satisfying individual member needs (trusting, supporting, advocating)

• Modeling ethical and principled practices (fair, consistent, normative)

Set of skills or behaviors leader needs to implement to improve environmental interface with team:

• Networking and forming alliances in environment (gather information, increase influence)

• Advocating and representing team to environment

• Negotiating upward to secure necessary resources, support, and recognition for team

• Buffering team members from environmental distractions

• Assessing environmental indicators of team’s effectiveness (surveys, evaluations, performance indicators)

• Sharing relevant environmental information with tea

• We need to take the context into account when talking about leadership (company, market, etc.)

  -> because your team is part of a whole bigger thing (company, environment)

  -> your team is competing for resources against other teams in the company / environment

  = do not only take your team into account, but also external things (internal + external)

• Leadership as a time space theory: great leaders monitor, take actions at the right timing and know where to act (internal or external)

  -> choosing the right time for action makes a good leader

• Left side of the model we saw before in other theories, external leadership actions are new

• Buffering: leader shields, planning in a buffer for unexpected things —> e.g. Mail Elon Musk to US offices

• Teamleadership: Perspective approach = when I have this type of follower I need this behaviour

• Two dimensions: level of competence and comittment of follower -> depending on it you show matching behaviour

• Example:

  • Low commitment -> support emotionally

  • Low competence -> support technically

  • High in commitment and competence -> impoverish management (no support)

• Leadership is about time and space

  • time - leader needs to decide how long he monitors before leader takes action

  • space - outside the team

  —> understand internal and external environment and knows when to monitor and when to take action