Shifting Your Leadership Style to Meet Employee Needs

As a leader you can be challenged to develop your skills as a leader. How do you develop the skills to be an effective leader? The real challenge is: how to develop leadership that motivates staff to get their jobs done and with the quality of an owner.

One way to look at leadership is situational. The situational leadership model shifts the behavior of the leader as the employee's behavior or needs change. For a new employee, supervisor's behavior is very directive. We're in training mode; we give the employee lots of information and direction. Our goal is to move an employee to move to an empowered inspired employee At this point, the staff know their job and can do it in with minimal direction or intervention. But, we can't just jump from directive to coach. There are a couple of additional transition stages. After directing, the manager is still telling the employee what to do, but the level of telling and direction has decreased. The employee is able to do the task with some direction and feedback, versus total direction and feedback.

In the third transition stage, the leader is supportive and motivating. The employee can do the duty with little intervention from the supervisor. The last stage is the target, where the employee is fully capable and high performing to do their job with the support and mentorship of the supervisor. In this stage the manager is the cheerleader, acknowledging accomplishments and the motivator.

Although, it would be easy to have linear maps of human behavior, this again is not the case. As the supervisor, you will need to shift with ease through the different phases and be able to step back if an employee needs greater assistance at some point. You also will move back to directing when a new task or job duty is assigned that the employee has never done before. At this point, a new training and mentorship cycle is started. The manager's purpose is to give the direction needed to move successfully through each phase of developing competence to the final stage of empowered action, in which the employee is capable of doing high quality work.

This article is based upon Hershey and Blanchard's situational leadership model, from their book: Management of organizational behavior: Utilizing Human Resources. (1982, Prentice-Hall, Inc.)

Copyright: 2006

Reprint Permission: You may reprint this article with the copyright and Information box intact. You may not change the article in any way. Please notify the author of your use of the article at: dprice@compassroseconsulting.comDonna Price, President and Founder of Compass Rose Consulting, LLC. Donna works with business leaders and owners and their teams to be high performing and effective teams, closing the gap between the vision and implementation. Donna has vast background as a senior level administrator for 18+ years and team builder/developer. Donna is the creator of the business Builders Intensive? a comprehensive tele-series focused on building business success and coaching Staff For Success? a training program for managers to develop effective coaching skills for. Her innovative team development, coaching and other programs produce changes in business results. Contact Donna at www.compassroseconsulting.com; coachingstaffforsuccess.com; dprice@compassroseconsulting.com; 973-948-7673