Question

Think about a contemporary leadership situation that is familiar to you. Identify the development level and style demonstrated in the situation.

Support your position with specific examples. Explain whether the action taken was appropriate and effective.

Determine and discuss if the situational leadership approach would be useful in understanding the leadership applied to the situation.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Situational Leadership Style

Hearsay and Blanchard are of the opinion that a leadership would be successful only if the leader is ready to adjust his style to the prevailing situation and level of skills of the members. The leader has to lead the whole team through the stages given below.

1. Directing: At this starting stage, a leader will explain the team members what, where, how and why to do different tasks. This is the occasion to make the team members mingle and understand the capabilities and behaviour of one another. Leader has to move closely with each member for explaining the project and goals clearly.

2. Coaching: Once the members got the proper direction of the tasks and clarity about the goals to achieve, then the coaching on methods how to reach at goals starts. At this stage, identification and development of proper skills is the focus. Strong commitment is the key.

3. Supporting: Supporting phase is the phase naturally evolved in a good team. Many inconsistencies and deviations may occur for members at different time points. A leader has to monitor this and provide support to the member. He has to trigger constructive discussions and other members start helping to solve such situation. Mutual reinforcement of team members evolve.

Delegating: Highly motivated team with practiced skills takes up the goal themselves and strive to achieve it. All work together with synergy. Leader can focus on project completion task by coordinating with inside and outside agencies involved. He can relax and focus on progress monitoring. Team will complete the task without much help from the leader.

Example

All the above stages were visible while implementing 5S project in my company Modison Group. I was the team leader of a 12 member group.

At the Directing stage, we had many closed room meetings as well as walk through tours to explain the different stages of 5S (Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain). I had to call an expert to give an opening session and clarify doubts from many members of the group. The advantage of the project was explained to all people in the factory. Since all members were insiders of the organisation, then personal familiarity was not an issue. Detailed plan was discussed.

At the Coaching stage, each and every stages of the project has been discussed in detail. The necessary observation skills like 'dirty, cluttered and damaged surface and items are eye cachers' should be noted and how to identify unwanted items in own working area, etc were explained. The methods of standardisation and sustanance were trained by experts in the shop floor itself with live examples. My major observation was to ensure each member achieved the skill at required level and he is motivated to implement it.

Supporting stage was critical to inject confidence and point out deviations happening from the expected. Members acquired skills properly with the help of experts and started moving in the right direction. My involvement as a leader was to ensure the members getting proper guidance, facility and moral support from respective sources and other fellow members to some extend. Listening their complaints about other members and solving those was of high priority.

At Deligating stage, each team member was very clear about what, when, where and how to perform their tasks. They started coordinating with other members, finding out resources themselves and support other members. Motivational level was at peak. They themselves start operating feedback systems and corrections. Synergy was clearly seen at this stage. As a leader, I could concentrate much more on external project related activities.

Finally, we could achieve the expected level of quality results. The flexibility and ability to adopt to the prevailing environment of leaders play big role in the success of each such projects. Understanding the situation in deep is the success key to plan the style of leadership. The various styles are emerged by an experience leader as per the nature of project, people, resources, skill requirements etc.