Reflect on the following questions in a well-written post
on your Reflection Blog. Blanchard (2008) includes a leader’s directive and
supportive behaviors as the foundation of his situational leadership theory. Directive
behavior typically represents a one-way communication where the leader directs
the activity that the follower will complete. Supportive behaviors are
considered “two-way” where the responses exhibit emotional and social support
and the follower participates with the leader in the discussion. Consider some
of your roles (parent, child, friend, leader, follower, etc.) and provide
examples of how you use supportive and directive behaviors.
Situational leadership developed by Hersey and
Blanchard who are management experts that argue that when leadership style does
not match the with the team one is leading usually results in failure. The theory states that different situations
require a certain style of leadership.
From our studies of situation leadership, successful leaders are those
who change their leadership style based on the current situation or demand of
the people that one is leading.
Situational leadership is comprised of two dimensions: supportive dimension
is a style of leadership that used with followers who are highly skilled but
lack motivation to perform, they are people who want to be included in the decision-making process. Supportive approach is when the leader spend
more time focusing on how to bring out the skills
of his followers to accomplish the goal.
Directive leadership is about directing task and activities of
your followers. Accomplishing the goal or task becomes priority, and the
leaders spends less time on supportive style behavior. Leaders have to
determine what style should be used in any given situation as no one style can
be applied to every condition or conflict, therefore the leader must analyze
their followers to measure the maturity level and commitment to accomplishing
the task.
Working as a first line leader years ago, my
manager made the decision to send all the new incumbents to my shift. The new hires had completed their two weeks
of in-class training giving them a
baseline of knowledge to get started. All
of the new hires were in a state of (D1) low competence,
high commitment. Although they had the
training which was in a controlled environment, it was now time to hit the
floor to put that training to use. The new
guys struggled with locating information such as process specifications,
navigating through the electronic work instruction (EWI), and how to submit a
call for support. My role was more of a
coach or (S2) high directive and high supportive behavior. I would take the time to understand the issue
and then show them how to accomplish the task.
To improve his or her confidence, I would have them walk me through the
process before leaving them to go at it alone.
As time went on I could see that most of the team became confident in
their skill and required less coaching. The
team members knew how to accomplish their task, how to contact when assistance
were needed and made decisions. This
enhance level of competence, forced me to change my style of leadership (S3) which
mean I took a highly supportive and low directive approach to leading them.
Another example of
situational approach to leadership came while working as a project manager. Like many innovative and technical, companies,
we value the intellectual properties of the followers. At Lockheed, we have what is called council
meetings of performance management team which is composed of support staff,
leadership, and large number represented team members. The purpose of this forum is to bring continuous
improvement ideas centered around cost, schedule, delivery, safety, and moral
that would potentially yield a successful business outcome. The meetings are generally ran by a
supervisor, but I nurtured a represented team members through training to
become co-lead to which they now run and manage most of the meetings. My role initially started off as a (S2) high
directive and high supportive, to match their (D2) low competence with low commitment.
This was because the team had not yet bought into the concept of the meeting as
we were in the forming and storming phase.
As the co-leads became more competent on how to lead the meeting along
with proof that this process works my leadership style began to shift to (S3)
highly supportive with low directive.
The leads and co-lead along with the represented team members play a
active and vital role in the meetings and know who should carry assignments or
task that come out of the meetings.
Situational leadership is an effective approach to recognizing ones behavioral
style of leadership. I believe is it not
only strengthens the leaders ability to lead but also makes him or her more
agile to the team needs and their abilities
Reference:
Northouse, P. (2015). Leadership: Theory
and Practice 7th edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publishing.
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