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, where 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 a given project team in the desired direction. This is done by utilizing and improving each team members core competences, whilst developing and supporting their weaker points, but this can be quite a challenge. 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, is through a adaptive leadership style, where the style of leadership is dependent on the given situation at the given time. This form of leadership is called 'Situational Leadership' (SL), and proposes four different leadership styles, that each are appropriate at different stages of the teams development:

• Directing
• Coaching
• Supporting
• Delegating

The stage of development in the team is very dynamic and will change over time. The style of leadership must therefore be adaptive in order to accommodate these changes (YouTube video).

Throughout this article, the SL-framework and its background and area of application will be explained. The statements will be supported with relevant examples, and there will furthermore be accounted for the limitations of the SL-framework.

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

describe the model, explain its purpose, should reflect the current state of the art on the topic

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)

Applications

Guidance on how to use the tool, and when it is applicable

Limitations

Critically reflect on the tool, when possible, substantiate claims with litterature

Annotated bibliography

Provide key references (3-10), where a reader can find additional information on the subject. Summarize and outline the relevance of eact reference to the topic (around 100 words pr. reference). Bibliography is not counted in the suggested 3000 word target length of the article