Situational Leadership

Revision as of 22:11, 9 April 2023

Abstract

One of the four perspectives that comprise a project according to ^[1] is people. People are a valuable resource inside the project and an external factor that can influence a smooth and successful management. Leadership can extract the most value of this resource and steer how the team will work together. Furthermore, being a leader, it is a broad concept and can be exercised by many functions, not only by management, although good leadership in management positions will cause a positive and more noticeably impact in the organization. Situational Leadership is a process that can enhance the impact that leaders have on others. It is based on a flexible style of leadership in function of the person development. Thus, this methodology will provide guidelines about approaches for different types of team members. Inside a project, having a good leadership can be essential for a healthy environment and the success of the endeavor. The classical organizations and hierarchical chains created a centralized way for decision-making which further influenced how superiors would leader their team, with top-bottom approaches that often would be exercised through micro-management and lack of trust in the employee. With the development of organizational studies and with the companies realizing the importance of creating a safe environment for the team to prosper and succeed in projects, a methodology of leading the team was needed. Thus, the so-called Situational Leadership was then developed by Hersey and Blanchard. Furthermore, this methodology was concerned about the amount of the development of the employee, considering its personality, behavior and past experiences.

Leadership is a the tool that can create empowerment inside the organization. Being important for leaders and also among the employers as self leadership is a point that needs to be developed ^[2]. Situational Leadership is a tool that uses different types of leadership styles to be able to match the employee stage of development. This matching will produce a more natural and safe environment for the employee to produce and to grow. There are 4 styles of leaderships and 4 stages of development, each one of them can be seen below.

Big Idea

Project Management Institute defines leadership as one of the core skills of a successful project manager ^[3]. One of the project management pillars explained by ^[1] is people. Motivation inside the project team and stakeholders’ management are areas that will steer the management of a project and sometimes increase the likelihood of success. Situational Leadership has been applied in different projects as will be discussed in further sections and can be a powerful tool to boost one of the most important resources in project management: People.^[4] suggested that stakeholder management can make an organization outperform another. Some of the stakeholders inside a project that can be mentioned are: Project team, consultant team (participating in the project) and internal stakeholders (higher management and different departments). And those are stakeholders that are often being coordinated by different project managers and supervisors, which will impact their performance. ^[5] supports the idea that mutual trust relationship is a strong foundation for a successful stakeholder management, and that shows that being a good leader and earning the confidence and respect of your employee as well as creating a healthy environment can definitely increase the productivity of your organization or your project when discussing a project management role. This is why the study of applications and theory of this methodology is directly related to the study of Project and portfolio management.

Application

Here how to apply the methodology will be explained. The idea is to explain how to: identify the development process of the employee, match with the leadership style and adapt (use mixed styles) if needed. The development history will be presented.

Situational Leadership I

Situational Leadership is a methodology that was born in the Management of Organizational Behavior field, and it was first introduced as “life cycle theory of leadership” in 1969 by ^[6] Initially this work was intended for families in the process of raising their kid, by having different parenting styles through the different stages of growth (infancy, adolescence, and adulthood). Eventually the methodology evolved to be applied in managing employees in a workplace, especially in a classical vertical hierarchy structure. In 1996 the Life cycle theory of Leadership finally received the name of Situational Leadership and the authors suggested that this methodology would provide a managing and leadership style designed for people. This methodology is based on two variables: leadership styles and development stages. The leadership styles rely on task behavior and relationship behavior styles. This approach considers how that specific person will react to performing tasks and how it will react with the task handover and is measured to a high support or low support interaction with the employee, so the amount of direct help and effort from the leader. The development stage relates to the maturity of the employee and the skills acquired over the years. So, the theory explains leadership styles combining the task behavior and relationship behavior and then links this style to a maturity level (development stage) that represents level of knowledge, skill and confidence of the person being lead. The leadership styles and development stages on the first work of situational leadership can be seen in Figure 1 and in Figure 2 respectively.

In the theory Hersey and Blanchard suggest that no leadership style is an optimum style to be always used but are guidelines that the leader can base on his leadership style and adapt depending on the situation and its own experience. The methodology then recommends a leadership style for each maturity level which highly correlates to the type of task that is being performed, meaning that if a task is highly complex but that has been done before, a more experienced skilled person would feel more comfortable doing it, and it would feel more comfortable with more freedom, while a person with less experience would need more guidance a management. Figure 3 can show the progress of leadership styles correlated with the development.

Situational Leadership II

There is a second iteration of the methodology developed by ^[2], called Situational Leadership II, where some of the academic work done about the previous theory was taken into consideration. This is the methodology widely used today and with trainings being applied. The main difference is on the development levels, where Blanchard describes the stage of development by competence and commitment, as being a combination of the skill acquired and the confidence in that development stage, in contrast the first theory talked about maturity and skill. Thus, that new branch suggested that more naïve professionals arrive with more motivation and commitment to learn, develop, and execute tasks, while a more experienced professional will display a higher competence still maintaining a high commitment. It also describes that the commitment is high in the beginning and will drop until the 4 stage is achieved. This methodology views the performance of a specific task or role with a progressive development where you start with no knowledge until you are a skilled one. The development stages of Situational Leadership II can be seen in Figure X. With those development stages Blanchard then uses the same leadership styles developed in the first methodology. So, it is the leader role to identify the stage and adapt the leadership style to it, as suggested in Figure 4.

Limitations and Reflections

Having such a static methodology can sometimes be a limitation, specially when people management is involved. Here the main discussion will go around the fact that different stages of development do not summarize the intricacies of one person and that employee. Its personality, family history and other social and psychological characteristics can influence the productivity and the style of leadership needed.

One of the main limitations of this methodology that has also been a topic in studies ^[7] is that is a theory that doesn’t have a lot of references or support research in its creation. Also, the further discussion of the combinations between leadership styles and development stages are not discussed in the development of the methodology. Meaning that all the 16 combinations of leadership and development are not discussed, and the application is not evaluated, which could be miss opportunity to increasing the efficiency of the methodology, as the methodology only discuss 4 combinations. Another limitation is that for academic purposes measuring the development stages and leadership styles even in a closed environment can be proven difficult and is something that has developed and changed over the years. The arguments above show that this methodology is not very supported inside academia, even though it is a methodology that had more than 3 million people trained.

Real Life examples

The study done in ^[7] is an evaluation with Australian managers that have been trained in SLII method and would give feedback and comments on how they applied the methodology in their work. With that the goal of the analysis is to elicit the main problems faced by the managers in applying the methodology. The authors conducted 45-minute interviews with the managers using a standardized interview guide. All the respondents were trained in the SLII methodology maximum 1 year ago. This was a qualitative study and had shown an interesting result. Out of 17 participants all of them answered the frequency of use from average to nearly all the time. Furthermore, six respondents answered to be using the methodology consciously and 8 to be using it unconsciously. In addition, in the comments sections most respondents. This shows that in a practical environment the methodology is well accepted, showing a contradictory opinion by the academia as discussed in the previous section. This article also had the opportunity to interview a Project Management with over 30 years of experience in to manage projects in different sectors, that have received training in Situational Leadership II. An interview structure was made, but some questions were also added during the interview as they fitted into the topic. The interview can be found in the Annex I. The interviewed was Annette Noe, who has around 30 years of experience in Project Management both as a project team member and a project management currently working for Bang and Olufsen as a Senior Project Manager.

The interview Annexed is a powerful tool to evaluate what a experienced project manager think and can comment on the application of Situational Leadership in the field. Annete, had training in Situational Leadership II, and that training was a result of her work to create and implement a project management methodology inside an IT organization. One of the tools she studied and use for that was the Situational Leadership methodology. This shows that even when creating standards and a Portfolio Management inside a development team the methodology in question can be a powerful tool. As one of the aspects she most like about the methodology is how it can guide her when motivating people in the beginning of a project. Creating a connection with your team member is the first step for success according to her, and the methodology can help understand how the person will deal with the project as well, according to its development stages. In contrast, to her the methodology lacked the influence of a person personality on the matching of the leadership styles. In addition the environment, the moment that the person lives and its past experiences will also determine how to better interact and lead that person, according to her. Which also is something that the authors itself tries to warn when they suggest that the methodology needs to be applied with a flexibility by the leaders. To conclude one of the most important points was how she correlated the improvement of a Project Management with this tool. One of her main example was when dealing with senior employees, which can be hard to motivate, so having a different approach, with less directive and task related approach can be way more beneficial, creating a sense of trust and even using them to help more inexperienced employees.

Annex I

Interview

Interviewed: Anette Noe Interviewer: Felipe Iglesias

1.How long have you worked in Project Management?

"Around 30 years of experience in Project Management. I have experience both as project team member and project manager. I managed IT implementation projects and cross functional program management and transformation projects. Both in consultancy company and in corporate companies."

2.Have you heard of Situational Leadership before?

"Yes, when I was working in IT department, I had the responsibility to define and train the project management methodology. As part of my own development, I participated in a course about change management. I was surprised when the instructor for that course recommended that one of best skills to learn as project manager was Situational Leadership II I convinced my manager of the benefit so I did the Situational Leadership II training course (in 2007) which goes into detail about the methodology. After that, I managed to convince my manager to try out the methodology in our department. In that experience I realized how important it was to implement that in a team and in myself to understand my development stage and what was the leadership style that I used the most."

3.If yes which of the mainstream models have you heard Goleman or Blanchard and Hersey

"I have trained and worked with Blanchard and Hersey. So, Goleman is a new methodology for me, even though I heard about it before."

4. What do you like the most about this methodology?

"One of my first learning was to think about the situation you’re in. To be able inspire and motivate people from the beginning is a challenge, so identifying their development stage is essential to motivate your team. This was one of the main learning from the course and what I found in practice, that being able to understand and learn about the person you are working with is essential to success. Being able to support a person that for example thinks he/she is super experienced but also needs support or can support a lot of inexperienced teammates sometimes is a challenge and important. So, to supervise/leader someone is to identify what is the best approach for some people, for example there are people that when you supervise too closely, they get demotivated."

5. What do you think is lacking in Situational Leadership methodology?

"I think one of the things that the methodology does not consider (considering a leadership style perspective) is what type of personality is the leader and the employee. It is also hard to put someone in a specific box, people are hardly defined by one development stage and need one leadership style. A person grows up in a specific context, has feelings, experiences which creates the mix that a human is, and that may need different types of leadership style. Especially in project management because you are an informal leader without the “fire-hire” responsibility but the leader of a project team who together should achieve the project goals, there are other stakeholders that have more influence than you. Is not the project manager that decides the salary and your position in the organization, so you need to find other approaches that will help you gain their trust and motivation."

6. How do you gain their trust even though you are not the main stakeholder as a project management?

"I try to look how can I build a relation with the employee, and a good way is to figure out what do we have in common, maybe some similar experience in the organization or just a small talk with the employee and be friendly and build a connection. And make sure to establish that we are in the project together and be very patient with someone, slowly starts sometimes give great results. Sometimes unknown people just setup an informal talk to get to know them like in regular day life. And align that I want to know their difficulties and bad news and that I am are there for those moments to help as well."

7. What do you think Situational Leadership can improve in Project Management?

"If you have very senior people (which is the case in B&O) that must work with people that are not so senior, it’s hard to be a leader and motivate. An approach is to try to align how to connect those people and align how to work and help the project and the team. I am inspired by how we can do a strong combination between experienced people and combine that to support younger people. For that I use pictures of Legos and use the Lego bricks as analogy to show that you can always fit different pieces together and create new things. Using different types of leadership will get that Lego assembly and get the team motivated to reach the project’s goals."

8. Do you think the development stages are correlated to what you found in practice?

"Yes, to some extent they do but I also think it’s super simplified. The methodology itself is a very good way to guide yourself, but humans are complex and don’t fit into boxes. I think it’s great for a first approach and guiding, but don’t get fixed restrict your critical thinking in those styles, try to read the situation and people, so you can react to that. I am also not so strict to follow methodologies perfectly, so for me is always trying to adapt and deal with each situation now. For me also my experience helps a lot, some experiences from different projects even from many years ago sometimes pops up in my head to help me with a specific situation."

Annotated Bibliography

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Geraldi, Joana; Thuesen, Christian; Oehmen, Josef et al., Doing Projects. A Nordic Flavour to Managing Projects, (DS-handbook 185:2017).
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Blanchard, K., Zigrami, P., & Zigrami, D. (1985), Leadership and the One Minute Manager, (William Morrow & Company).
3. ↑ Project Management Institute, Inc.: Newtown Square, PA, USA. "Project management body of knowledge (PMBOK® guide)". PMI, P. (2017).
4. ↑ Wheeler, D., & Silanpaa, M. "The Stakeholder Corporation"(Pitman Publishing Washington. 1997).
5. ↑ Jones, T. M. (1995). "Instrumental Stakeholder Theory: A synthesis of Ethics and Economics". (Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 404-437)
6. ↑ Hersey, P. & Blanchard,K. (1969), "Life-cycle theory of leadership".(Training and development Journal, Vol 2, pp. 6-34.
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1} Avery, GC., Ryan, J. (2002), "Applying situational leadership in Australia".(Journal of Management Development).

[3] Avery, G. C., & Ryan, J. (2002). Applying situational leadership in Australia. Journal of Management Development, 21(4), 242-262.

[4] Nicholls, J. R. (1985). A new approach to situational leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.