What does situational theory of leadership emphasize

Schools of thought explaining how and why certain individuals become leaders

Índice Show

• Leadership at a Glance
• Key Leadership Theories
• Applying Leadership Theories at the Workplace
• Key Takeaways
• Related Readings
• The Situational Leadership Model by Blanchard & Hersey
• Maturity Levels  
• The Situational Leadership Theory by Daniel Goleman
• Goleman’s Six Leadership Styles
• Drivers of Climate Change
• Situational Leadership Examples
• Example 1: Situational Leadership During Times of Quick Change
• Example 2: Planning a Music Festival

Leadership theories are schools of thought brought forward to explain how and why certain individuals become leaders. The theories emphasize the traits and behaviors that individuals can adopt to boost their own leadership abilities.

Early studies on the psychology of leadership pointed to the fact that leadership skills are inherent abilities that people are born with. It was not until recently that formal leadership theories emerged, despite leadership becoming a concept of interest at the beginning of time.

Leadership at a Glance

A leader is crucial to the success of every team. Take an orchestra, for instance, one that consists of all the best musicians in the world but lacks a conductor. Even though every member of the orchestra can play perfectly by themselves, they will only produce an incompatible melody in the absence of a conductor. The same concept applies to communities, companies, and countries. Without a leader, nothing will ever run smoothly.

So, what makes leaders who they are? Why are some people elected as managers and presidents while the rest remain followers? Leadership theories were developed to find answers to these questions.

Key Leadership Theories

1. Great Man Theory

According to the Great Man Theory (which should perhaps be called the Great Person Theory), leaders are born with just the right traits and abilities for leading – charisma, intellect, confidence, communication skills, and social skills.

The theory suggests that the ability to lead is inherent – that the best leaders are born, not made. It defines leaders as valiant, mythic, and ordained to rise to leadership when the situation arises. The term “Great Man” was adopted at the time because leadership was reserved for males, particularly in military leadership.

2. Trait Theory

The Trait Theory is very similar to the Great Man Theory. It is founded on the characteristics of different leaders – both the successful and unsuccessful ones. The theory is used to predict effective leadership. Usually, the identified characteristics are compared to those of potential leaders to determine their likelihood of leading effectively.

Scholars researching the trait theory try to identify leadership characteristics from different perspectives. They focus on the physiological attributes such as appearance, weight, and height; demographics such as age, education, and familial background; and intelligence, which encompasses decisiveness, judgment, and knowledge.

3. Contingency Theory

The Contingency Theory emphasizes different variables in a specific setting that determine the style of leadership best suited for the said situation. It is founded on the principle that no one leadership style is applicable to all situations.

Renowned leadership researchers Hodgson and White believe that the best form of leadership is one that finds the perfect balance between behaviors, needs, and context. Good leaders not only possess the right qualities but they’re also able to evaluate the needs of their followers and the situation at hand. In summary, the contingency theory suggests that great leadership is a combination of many key variables.

4. Situational Theory

The Situational Theory is similar to the Contingency Theory as it also proposes that no one leadership style supersedes others. As its name suggests, the theory implies that leadership depends on the situation at hand. Put simply, leaders should always correspond their leadership to the respective situation by assessing certain variables such as the type of task, nature of followers, and more.

As proposed by US professor Paul Hersey and leadership guru Ken Blanchard, the situational theory blends two key elements: the leadership style and the followers’ maturity levels. Hersey and Blanchard classified maturity into four different degrees:

• M1 – Team members do not possess the motivation or tactical skills to complete necessary jobs.
• M2 – Team members are willing and ambitious to achieve something, but they lack the necessary ability.
• M3 – Team members possess the skills and capacity to accomplish tasks, but they’re not willing to take accountability.
• M4 – Team members possess all the right talents and are motivated to complete projects.

According to situational theory, a leader exercises a particular form of leadership based on the maturity level of his or her team.

5. Behavioral Theory

In Behavioral Theory, the focus is on the specific behaviors and actions of leaders rather than their traits or characteristics. The theory suggests that effective leadership is the result of many learned skills.

Individuals need three primary skills to lead their followers – technical, human, and conceptual skills. Technical skills refer to a leader’s knowledge of the process or technique; human skills means that one is able to interact with other individuals; while conceptual skills enable the leader to come up with ideas for running the organization or society smoothly.

Applying Leadership Theories at the Workplace

To a great extent, leadership theories have helped form and shape the kind of governance that exists today. Many aspects of these theories can be applied to help one improve his or her leadership skills.

1. Maximize Your Strengths

As proposed by the Trait Theory, effective leadership depends on the traits that one possesses. Leaders should strive to focus on their strengths rather than their weaknesses. The strengths vary from one leader to another and may include:

• A strong will is crucial to staying resilient and seeing leaders through difficult times. No matter how challenging the situation may be, a strong-willed leader is able to find inner strength and carry on until he or she overcomes all challenges.
• A decisive nature is another strength that some leaders possess. Decisiveness means that when others may be perplexed, a leader can calmly assess the situation and choose one action to unite everyone. But, since they may not always make the right decisions, they must also be willing to learn from their mistakes.

2. Be Inclusive Leaders

Some of the more complex situational theories emphasize focusing on people. It means that they acknowledge individual people to be their greatest assets and not just mere numbers in their workforce. Being an inclusive leader requires that one constantly involves other people in their leadership, whether it is by always welcoming the feedback of others or delegating more responsibility to others than other forms of leadership.

Key Takeaways

There are numerous ways of defining leadership. Some leadership theories attempt to explain what differentiates a leader, while some explain how great leaders come to be. The Great Man Theory believes that the inherent traits that one is born with contribute to great leadership. Situational Theory recommends leaders to adopt a leadership style depending on the situation at hand, while the Behavioral Theory is all about the learning the skills necessary to become a good leader.

Leadership theories don’t only exist in history. They are concepts with actionable advice that can be adopted by many, from executive managers to community leaders and government officials.

Related Readings

Thank you for reading CFI’s guide on Leadership Theories. To keep learning and advancing your career, the following resources will be helpful:

Situational leadership is about adapting the style of leadership to employees involved, with an eye to the environment within which they operate. It is therefore more about a leader’s ability to adjust to the situation in front of her, than about personal leadership skills.

Situational leadership, in short, takes people in context seriously. The leader applies the leadership style that is best suited to the situation. The leader is agile.

Situational leadership is related to contingency theory therein they both view success as a result of matching leadership abilities and style with the situation. Yet, where contingency theory focuses on matching leadership style with the situation as such, situational leadership theory places a specific focus on matching leadership style with follower requirements.

This implies also that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’. You may say that situational leadership is flexible as it adapts to the needs of the followers in context.

During times of transition, situational leadership is key in keeping an organization afloat – swiftly implementing organizational change to match new markets and so forth – can be the difference between prosperity and bankruptcy.

The literature offers us mainly two theories of Situational Leadership

1. Situational Leadership according to Blanchard and Hersey
2. Situational Leadership according to Daniel Goleman

Let’s start out by looking at Blanchard and Hersey’s model.

The Situational Leadership Model by Blanchard & Hersey

Blanchard and Hersey connect four different styles of leadership with four different stages of employees’ development – here called Maturity Levels.

The situational leader will make an optimal match between leadership style and maturity level.

The four leadership styles, introduced by Blanchard & Hersey, are:

1. Telling (matching Maturity Level 1, see below). Use a telling leadership style when the team needs close supervision and guidance. Make decisions, create roles, objectives, and convey these to employees, who you expect to act accordingly. Works best during a crisis or when in need of repetitive results.

2. Selling (matching level 2). Use a selling leadership style when the commitment among employees is low. Explain and sell ideas and strategies to engage and motivate all involved. Communication is not entirely one-way as with the Telling leadership style; the leader is open to hearing ideas of the employees.

3. Participating (matching level 3). Use a participating leadership style when the team has a high level of competency and mainly needs a leader to facilitate the process. You may share your expertise, yet employees will likely make the final decisions.

4. Delegating (matching level 4). Use a delegating leadership style when you have confidence that the team has both the skill and motivation to problem solve on their own. You may stand by for questions, while your involvement is minimal.

No leadership style is to be viewed as better than the other. It is about matching leadership style with employees’ Maturity Levels – to ensure success.

To the question: Which leadership style is best? The answer is: that depends!

Let’s look at the four Maturity Levels

Maturity Levels  

Maturity Levels are also called Readiness levels or Stages of Employee Development:

Level M1: Low Competence: High Commitment

Level M2: Variable Competence: Low Commitment

Level M3: High Competence: Variable Commitment

Level M4: High Competence: High Commitment

To maximize success, the leader is to lead according to the style that matches employees’ Maturity Level best. Leadership style 1 (Telling) is suggested to best match Maturity Level 1. Leadership style 2 matching Maturity Level, 2, and so forth. Note that these will vary across team members and again: no one-size-fits-all!

Let’s move on to have a look at Daniel Goleman’s situational leadership theory.

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READ ALSO: Shift General Manager Leadership Styles to Drive Hotel Success

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The Situational Leadership Theory by Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman – the author of Emotional Intelligence – incorporates the concept of emotional intelligence into the theory of situational leadership.

Goleman creates six categories of situational leadership styles, where he, for each leadership style, makes a suggestion for when it is best applied.

Let’s look at the six categories.

Goleman’s Six Leadership Styles

1. The coercive style – ‘Do what I say’ approach

• Effective in acute situations and for quick and effective turnarounds of situations. It is however inflexible and may reduce employee motivation. The coercive style proves to be the least effective in most situations.

2. The authoritative (visionary) style –  ‘Come with me’ approach

• The goal is called out, yet employees are largely free to pursue it the way they see as best fit. May work well for an organization that needs firm steering to get back-on-track, yet works less well with experts holding expertise beyond the level of the leader.

3. The affiliative style – People come first’ attitude

• Highly useful for building team harmony and increasing morale. However, an exclusive emphasis on praise may leave errors uncorrected and employees in need of direction and advice.

4. The democratic style – ”What do you think?’ approach

• Workers are included in decision making and thereby the leader builds organizational flexibility and responsibility. While the democratic leader takes into account employees’ ideas and input, it may well result in too many meetings where employees to a large extent feel like being without a leader.

5. The pacesetting style – ‘Do as I do now’ approach

• Workers who like a high pace will like pacesetting leaders, who set high-performance standards exemplified by their own practice. Others may be overwhelmed by the pace and ambition and so dislike this tendency to take control of situations.

6. The coaching style – ‘Try this’ attitude

• Personal development more than task completion is central to the coaching leader. It works well to collaborate with an employee about surpassing a recognized weakness. It reaches, however, a stalemate when the employee’s readiness for change is low.

Goleman emphasizes that the ability to master the individual leadership styles – and perhaps more importantly, the ability to shift among styles as conditions dictate – is the way to create a healthy organizational climate and optimize business performance (2000).

Drivers of Climate Change

Six factors influence an organizations’ working environment. Here they are in Goleman’s own words (2000):

1. Flexibility – how free employees feel to innovate -unencumbered by red tape
2. The sense of Responsibility – to the organization
3. The level of standards that people set
4. The sense of accuracy about performance feedback and aptness of awards
5. The clarity people have about mission and values
6. The level of commitment to a common purpose.

Research shows that leaders’ emotional intelligence does affect leadership style and the style affects in turn the respective employees’ feelings regarding organizational climate to various degrees (Maamari & Majdalani 2017: 1).

Organizational drivers can be viewed as management techniques that facilitate an understanding of the way workers view their working environment (Maamari & Majdalani 2017: 5).

Situational Leadership Examples

Example 1: Situational Leadership During Times of Quick Change

Let’s imagine a production company facing potential lock-down within the week – due to COVID-19.

In this situation, where a deadline has to be met within a week, a telling or coercive leadership style is appropriate. The reason is that there is no time to discuss a palette of possibilities for change. A democratic leadership style in this instance would be in dire risk of not meeting the one-week deadline.

Once the lock-down is a reality and all employees are working from home, then a selling leadership style is appropriate for those employees, who feel somewhat demotivated by the lock-down. On the other hand, those who are eager to keep a high pace and moreover have the competencies to do their work, need no telling or selling. Then a participating or delegating style fits better the maturity level of employees.

It’s important to embrace how a changing situation within days and sometimes even hours, may call for different leadership styles.

Example 2: Planning a Music Festival

In the initial phases, you want to hear and collect employees’ great ideas by using a participating and delegating leadership style. This is also what Goleman refers to as a democratic approach where all people are heard and involved in the decision making process.

As the day of the event comes closer, there is perhaps a need for speeding up processes and this dictates a pacesetting leadership style. The last days up to the event there is little room for new ideas as it will take to long to implement them. Instead, all involved must focus on getting things done as planned. Now it’s time perhaps to implement a vibrant and visionary authoritative (telling) leadership style that will ensure that all things are in place when the festival is set to begin.

Again – it all depends on the people and the situation you are working with. The message from Goleman is to expand your repertory to include all six leadership styles. To do that you must understand the underlying emotional intelligence competencies of the leadership styles you lack (Goleman 2000: 14).

If you are interested in learning in more detail about Daniel Goleman’s concepts of Emotional Intelligence, please go to the following article where the four pillars of Emotional Intelligence are explained:

Project Leadership: Moving from Project Management to Project Leadership (3/3)

References

Goleman, Daniel (2000). Leadership that Gets Results. In Harvard Business Review, March 2000.

Maamari, Bassem, and Joelle F. Majdalani (2017). Emotional intelligence, leadership style & organizational climate. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 25(2).