situational leadership model: how to move from telling to delegating a follower

     Author: Iloka Benneth Chienelie

     Published: 1st of June 2014

     Introduction

The most important contingency factor in development of followers, and tis involves developing followers’ capabilities for the present as well as enhancing these capabilities for future use when the need for such arises. Thus, this paper seeks to understand the development process for followers and how these followers can be made more effective.

2.      Lining the four leadership styles of the situational leadership model with the leader behaviours.

Development revolves around the idea of current follower capabilities or readiness. The idea of readiness is conceptualized from situational leadership model. (Hersey et al., 2001). The situational leadership model does offer four leadership styles that are influenced by differences in the volume of designated tasks and relationship behavior. These four constructs include telling (characterized by high task on the side of leader and low level of relationship with followers), participating (characterized by low task from the side of leader and high relationship with followers), selling (characterized by high task from the side of the leader and high relationship with followers), and delegating (characterized by low task from the side of the leader and low level of relationship with the followers). Thus, it as a follower’s readiness increases from low to high, the leader’s task moves from telling to delegating (Hersey et al., 2001). This can be linked to leader behavior as:

1.      S1 (Directing style): in this type of leadership, the leader makes the whole command while the follower just acts. It is the same as telling in the situational leadership above. It is most appropriate in cases where the followers has low confidence with the task and needs extra hands to produce quality as needed.

2.      The S2 (Coaching style): in this type of leadership, the leader offer high support and collaboration with the follower and it is the same as selling as both the leader and follower work for common goal and follower’s confidence with designated task increases. This is most applicable for skills enhancement stages.

3.      S3 (Supporting style) as the follower becomes more advanced, the leader has little to do in this type of leadership and just provides support when needed by the follower. This is similar with participating in the situational leadership model above. This is more applicable in innovation and creativity.

4.      The S4 (Delegating style): this is the most advanced form of leadership as it features advancement in follower’s confidence to designated tasks, thus pushing the leader to allow him or her necessary freedom to undertake tasks as needed. This is most applicable in cases where followers are vast in experience with reference to their job.

3.      Influence of examining such leadership style better understanding of the interaction between leaders and followers

While criticism has been levelled on situational leadership model, it should be noted that it does influence the level of relationship between leaders and followers (e.g., Hambleton & Gumbert, 1982; Norris & Vecchio, 1992; Vecchio, 1987) by highlighting ready (confident) a follower is to work and how a leader can improve (enhance skills, features, traits etc.) such readiness to ensure increased productivity.

For instance, when I first got my job, I was put through the whole stages. Initially, my supervisor gave me a number of tasks (market development plan and business remodeling plan) and direct me on what to do (telling). After doing such, she also graded me in terms of how I performed and provided extra guidance on how to improve my performance (selling), then she worked with me on overtime for new projects to further enhance my skills and quality of the work (participating). Presently, I am at the delegating stake because I have grown in confidence to my work and now go through less supervision like I did during my early days as a new entrant in the job.

4.      Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be seen that leadership style does have influence on the development process of followers. Thus, in order to transform follower, a good leader must understand his leadership style as well as the characteristics of the follower in order to ensure shift from “telling” the follower what to do to “delegating” the follower on what to do. In the end success will bring about reduced work for the leader.

5.      Reference

Hersey, P., Blanchard, K.H., & Johnson, D. E. (2001). Management of organizational behavior: Leading human resources (8th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Hambleton, R. K., & Gumpert, R. (1982). The validity of Hershey and Blanchard’s theory of leader effectiveness. Group and Organization Studies, 7, 225-242.

Norris, W. R., & Vecchio, R. P. (1992). Situational leadership theory: A replication. Group and Organization Management, 17, 331-342.

Vecchio, R. P. (1987). Situational leadership theory: An evaluation of prescriptive theory. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 444-451.