The Situational Leadership^® Model

The Situational Leadership^® Model is a flexible framework that enables leaders to tailor their approach to the needs of their team or individual members. Developed by Paul Hersey in 1969, this model provides a repeatable process for matching leadership behaviors to the performance needs of those being influenced. Unlike other leadership models, the Situational Leadership^® Model recognizes that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, allowing leaders to adapt their behaviors to suit the unique needs of each situation.

A leader with a strong ability and natural inclination to influence others through a participative or collaborative approach notices that style has been relatively ineffective with a member of her team who is working on a high-visibility project with a tight timeline. The leader takes a thoughtful look at the skill this team member has been given responsibility to perform and breaks it down into sequential steps. Further, the leader examines the historical skill-specific experience this team member has demonstrated for this type of work and determines it to be low. Given those givens, the leader moves out of their personal leadership comfort zone and employs a far more structured approach, which winds up creating necessary movement on the project and is far better received by the team member.

There are three, highly interdependent skills, imbedded in the Situational Leadership^® approach:

1. Diagnose: Leaders are thoughtful people. They think before they do. In the context of the Situational Leadership^® Model, those leaders actively consider the skill that needs to be performed and the relative ability and willingness of the person performing it before taking any action.
2. Adapt: Leaders recognize it is up to them to adjust to the team member and the leadership circumstance they are attempting to influence. It is not about their personal level of comfort with one approach or another.
3. Communicate: Leaders recognize they have influence related strengths and areas for improvement. As such, they leverage their strengths when the situation aligns and work with intent to improve their effectiveness with the styles that don’t come naturally.

Not unlike mathematics is a language of physics and design, the Situational Leadership^® Model is a language of performance and change management with a big impact.

1. Performance management: This helps leaders play an appropriate role in the process of establishing goals and priorities (i.e., more directive with a novice, more empowering with an expert). Along the same lines, the Situational Leadership^® framework also informs the approach the leader should take when providing either formal, or informal, performance feedback.
2. Change management: When change hits, the readiness of individuals and teams to perform usually shifts with it. Simply stated, leadership can’t stay the same! It has to move and adjust to reflect the circumstances introduced by the change.

The Situational Leadership^® framework revolves around three, key elements:

• The work: Situational Leaders initiate with a thoughtful analysis of the work that needs to be accomplished and, in so doing, break down jobs and roles into incremental skills that need to be completed.
• The team member: Situational Leaders gain alignment with the individuals performing those skills on their skill-specific ability (knowledge, experience) and willingness (confidence, commitment, motivation).
• The leader: Situational Leaders provide a style or approach that has a high probability of helping the team member deliver the desired results.

Suffice to say, the Situational Leadership^® Model helps leaders form a relationship with team members around the work.

First, Situational Leaders are aware of themselves. They recognize their leadership-related strengths and weaknesses, and they intentionally make every effort to accentuate and continually improve both. Second, Situational Leaders are aware of others. They possess the ability to accurately discern confidence from insecurity and knowledge/understanding from skill. The resultant effect of that two-tiered awareness is that Situational Leaders consistently make and implement good decisions that are in the best interests of the organization they work for as well as the people they serve in that capacity.

The “best” leadership style is the one that most accurately and objectively responds to the nuances of the situation (defined by the skill at hand and the readiness of the person responsible for performing it). As such, every style “works”—and every style doesn’t! Empowerment is great, but can also be described as abandonment. Guidance can be the right thing at the right time unless it is perceived as micromanagement. The “best” leadership style … depends!

The Situational Leadership^® Model features four styles:

1. Directing: The leader makes decisions and closely supervises execution. This is a short-term approach intended to create movement.
2. Coaching: The leader still makes decisions but provides background and context and engages with the team member to reinforce buy-in and continued progress.
3. Collaborating: The team member makes decisions with support from the leader in an effort to instill and enhance skill mastery.
4. Empowering: The team member is trusted to not only make skill-related decisions but to suggest strategies for improvement and identify best practices.

Our founder at The Center for Leadership Studies (Dr. Paul Hersey) developed the Situational Leadership^® Model. In that capacity, he was passionate, consistent and crystal clear whenever he was asked about Situational Leadership^® Theory:

“There is no such thing as Situational Leadership^® Theory! A theory gives you something interesting to think about. Situational Leadership^® is a model. A model is a repeatable framework that provides you with a roadmap on what to do.”

In short, nothing has changed! For over 55 years, the Situational Leadership^® Model has been helping leaders identify specific skills, assess Performance Readiness^® and implement an approach with the highest probability of success.

The Situational Leadership^® approach is anchored by Task or Directive Behavior on the horizontal continuum and Relationship or Supportive Behavior on the vertical continuum. Here are the operational definitions of both:

1. Task/Directive Behavior – The extent to which the leader makes decisions and tells the team member what to do, and how to do it
2. Relationship/Supportive Behavior – The extent to which the leader allows the team member to participate in or make decisions and engages in two-way communication and listening

The intersection of these dimensions identifies Four Primary Styles of Leadership (Guiding; Explaining; Collaborating; and Empowering).

There are four progressive steps leaders employ when they implement the Situational Leadership^® framework:

1. Identifying a specific skill or performance target
2. Assessing the team member’s skill specific Ability and Willingness to perform the skill:
   1. Ability – Knowledge, Experience and Skill
   2. Willingness – Confidence, Commitment and Motivation
3. Communicating with the team member in a manner that aligns with the assessment (highest probability approach)
   1. This includes recognizing there is no such thing as a “good” or “bad” leadership style (they all “work” … and they all “don’t”)
4. Monitoring progress and calibrating approach
   1. Situational Leaders recognize the job (of leadership) is never “over.” They continually reassess readiness and adjust their style as need be.

It has to be…right? How else could a model (or any product for that matter) remain relevant for over 55 years? And we wholeheartedly believe the essence of the effectiveness of the Situational Leadership^® Model over the years is a function of alignment.

The Situational Leadership^® Model helps leaders align their approach to the team member performing the skill. In that regard, it allows the leader and the team member to form a relationship around the work that needs to be done. The benefits of that aligned relationship are manifested in three, interdependent dimensions:

• Engagement – Leaders that align their approach to the performance needs of their team members enhance their confidence, commitment, and motivation.
• Productivity – Confident, committed, and motivated employees consistently deliver targeted results.
• Retention – Committed and motivated employees are less likely to seek employment elsewhere.

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of documented definitions of leadership. By design, we at The Center for Leadership Studies have adopted one that is all-encompassing:

Leadership … is an attempt to influence!

So, any time you as a manger are attempting to influence the behavior of anyone on your team, you are (by definition) leading!

In more specific terms, a Situational Approach to Leadership will be helpful if:

• Your team is struggling and needs the benefit of your experience to get on track
• Your team is excelling and needs autonomy to continue pursuing mastery
• Your team is learning and needs someone to discuss next steps with

The Situational Leadership^® approach is effective because (if properly employed) the approach of the leader is aligned with the performance needs of the team member. That typically take the form of:

• A team member who doesn’t know what to do (or how to do it) with a leader that provides necessary direction and close supervision
• A team member who can consistently perform a skill at a sustained and acceptable standard (and loves to do so) with a leader that provides both space and autonomy
• A team member who is developing expertise with a leader who provides feedback, recognition on progress made and a sounding board for upcoming decisions

The success of the Situational Leadership^® framework is a function of the communication and trust, between the leader and the team member, that are in the process of forming a relationship around the skill to be accomplished.

In that regard, it is important to note that “people” do not “fit into boxes.” Conversely, they fall into one level or another of Performance Readiness^®, based on the skill at hand. Leaders and team members need to be able to transparently discuss the skill, along with the ability and willingness of the team member to perform it, in order to align on the approach the leader will employ moving forward.

Short answer, yes!  And the primary scenario that comes to mind revolves around the distinction between a “skill” and a “condition of employment.”

A skill is an element of an employee’s role that they need to learn how to perform at a sustained and acceptable level of proficiency. The process for that development is usually iterative, takes time and features well-intended setbacks as part of the learning curve. The Situational Leadership^® Model makes so much sense here!

On the other hand, a condition of employment … is just that! You are employed “here” on the condition that you comply from Day 1 (and moment 1) with rules we have established around things like stealing company assets, creating or contributing to a hostile workplace, misrepresenting the company in commercial negotiation, etc. The Situational Leadership^® approach does not align here.