Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership

The general way of leading people can vary greatly between countries, cultures and industries, and has changed significantly over the last decades. The classic way of leading people was with a centralized decision-making in a top-to-bottom-approach. Here the management settled upon a direction, in which the people on the floor was commanded to follow. Today the general model of leading has been turned upside down, and now has the bottom-to-top approach, where employees to a greater extent are allowed to make decisions them selves, and are now recognized for their competences.

As a project manager, one of the key roles when facilitating a project is to lead people in the wanted direction, and to help the project team to utilize and improve their core competences, whilst developing and supporting their weaker points, which can be challenging. Leadership is an art form in itself, and there are about as many ways of leading people, as there are leaders. One way of doing it, can be though an adaptive leadership style where each person are being lead in a way adjusted to their persona.

This form of leadership is called 'Situational Leadership' (SL), and will be explained throughout this article.

Key point to note: most effective style of leadership is dependent on the situation you find yourself in in that moment of time - which will change over time, and you will therefore need to adapt to this

- Framework that states that the best leadership style will vary depending on your situation - Model proposes four different styles of leadership; each appropriate at a different stage of subordinate development (directing, coaching, supporting, delegating)

About Situational Leadership

In the 1960'es, two American psychologists named Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard came up with the theory of SL in their publishing of a book called “Management of Organizational Behavior.” In this SL was introduced which denotes a way of adapting the style of leadership to the individual in four different ways. OVERGANG FOR MEDARBEJDERE MED UDGANGSPUNKT I HVOR I FIGUREN DE BEFINDER SIG NU

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