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 can make decisions themselves, 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, and there are about as many ways of leading people, as there are leaders. One way of doing it, is through an 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 team’s 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 to accommodate these changes .

Throughout this article, the history of the SL-framework, the framework itself, and its 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

When being in charge of a project as a project leader, the work is balanced out onto three main skillsets: 'Technical Project Management', 'Strategic and Business Management' and 'Leadership', as stated in the PMI Talent Triangle. This article focuses on the leading-aspect of being a project leader, and this is done by both managing and leading a project team. The difference between these two words lies in their definitions, which respectively is by "Having executive control or authority" over someone, and to "Show (someone or something) the way to a destination by going in front of or beside them". Thus, leading and managing are vastly different approaches to running a project, and how these two factors are balanced, defines the style of leadership that is applied. Which style to apply will be dependent on the situation you find yourself in at that moment of time, and will therefore change. You will therefore constantly need to adapt to these changes, and a way of deciding upon the most fitting style, will be determined using SL to determine the level of the project team's maturity, and development.

The framework of SL was founded in the 1960'es by two American psychologists named Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard. They came up with the theory of SL, which at first was named the "Life cycle theory of leadership" while working on their book called “Management of Organizational Behavior” . This framework is up to this day applied globally with great success among its users, and builds upon a belief that leadership is the opposite of one-style-fits-all. A leader applying the situational leadership should adapt to the given circumstances in a team, and manage, lead, guide and support the team members in order to achieve success in a project . How the leader should adapt the style of leadership to a given team, is assessed based on two variables: the maturity, and the development of a team. These will be elaborated in the next section.

Applications

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

- Model proposes four different styles of leadership; each appropriate at a different stage of subordinate development (directing, coaching, supporting, delegating)

Limitations

Critically reflect on the tool, when possible, substantiate claims with litterature https://www.leadership-central.com/situational-leadership-theory.html

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