Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership

The way of leading people can vary greatly between countries, cultures and industries, and has changed significantly over the last decades. The classic way of being a leader 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.

A modern leader helps the employees 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.

About Situational Leadership

In the 1960'es, two american psychologists named Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard came up with the theory of SL.

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