Situational Leadership Style Paper

As complex leaders, healthcare administrators need to develop competencies in initiating three fundamental activities that enable managing turbulence in a nonequilibrium environment:

Situational leadership theory is when a leader adapt’s to the situation and the management styles to the behavioral needs of the individual or group. Trait approach leadership gives more credence to the qualities and traits that people are born with that make them natural born leaders.

All situations are different and a leadership style applied in one situation will not always work in another. A leader must use judgement to decide the most appropriate style needed for each situation. The ‘Situational Approach’ to leadership identifies four leadership styles which are;

The leader gives projects, tasks and support and the team should be able to operate on its own.

“Leadership is the ability to maximize the activities of team members by ensuring that team actions are understood, changes in information are shared, and team members have the necessary resources (>>>>)”. A team leader has the ability to form a team, distribute responsibilities and establish well-defined goals. It is up to the leader to make sure all members within the team understand and agree to the goals and responsibility, have an adequate staff and resources to implement. The leader is skillful at conflict resolution and is ready for any foreseeable problems that may arise. In problem solving a leader maintains aware of the situation at all times while anticipating a sequel of events to improve the outcomes. A important duty of a leader is to promote and facilitate good teamwork. The overall roles of leadership is to asses the necessities of the organization and determine the appropriate interventions accordingly to enhance patient

The leader needs to take care, that his whole group/team works together. If he does not take care of that the group could have problems in certain scenarios. For example if a group is on a bushwalking trip, they need to work together by arranging who brings along what so they are not missing anything they would need. Another example is, if the group would be in a situation, as described above and someone in their group has been bitten by a snake, the team and the leader need to work together as a group to help the injured as best as

This situational leadership theory is a great assessment to evaluate how people respond to working and being led in groups. The four situational leadership theory are telling, selling, participating, and delegating (Northouse, 2013).

The four styles within the situational leadership mode are directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. Once a leader has put together the most qualified team for the goals, directing comes in to learn how each member will be the most productive in the task assigned. A leader has to make sure that a task is assigned to the person who will enjoy achieving the task. If not, this could lead to low motivation and low morale, with a chance of failing the task at hand (Griffith & Dunham, 2015). Being a leader means having knowledge in all aspects of the tasks that needs to be done to reach the end goal successful. The leader has to coach each individual to make sure each task is being done correctly. The leader needs to be involved in all

Situational leadership, developed by professor Paul Hersey and author and consultant Ken Blanchard. Their approach was based off of a 1967 article by W.J. Reddin called The 3-D Management Style Theory. In his article, Reddin discusses the need to have different styles based on the demands of the leader. A leader needs to be flexible in their approach to meet the needs of the job, their superior and their subordinates (1967). Hersey and Blanchard progressed this theory by introducing the Situational Leadership II model. Their model breaks leadership into four different styles, and how a leader must alter their approach in supporting and directing their subordinates based on a given situation. These styles are directing (S1), coaching (S2), supporting (S3) and delegating (S4). The model also focuses on the development level of the subordinates by categorizing them between low (D1), moderate (D2 and D3) and

Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory (SLT) asserts that a leader’s effectiveness is dependent upon the readiness, or ability and willingness, of the leader’s followers to complete a task. This leadership style is an amalgamation of task-oriented and relationship-oriented characteristics that are employed depending upon the situation and the followers involved. According to the SLT, as followers increase in readiness the leader’s style is to adapt accordingly (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009).

Intervention was deemed necessary at a local school pertaining to the initial class, which students were failing. The department head identified that the change in direction required new textbooks, altered assessments, and increased student participation to be successful. The department head first had to identify his/her situational leadership style to effectively implement changes to improving the class while gaining buy-in from faculty and students. The premise for change existed because of the failing scores. The flexibility of the department head was imperative in the success of the change; the skill levels and attitudes of the students and faculty were a consideration in deciding the best style the department head

Motivates and lead the team to accomplish goals without direct authority over team members. ​

The Situational Approach is a leadership style that essentially focuses on leadership in different situations. "The premise of the theory is that different situations demand different kinds of leadership" (Northouse, 2015, p. 92). The idea is that in order for a manager to be successful in all situations, he or she must be able to adapt. "Effective [situational leadership} managers provide individual followers with differing amounts of direction and support on different tasks and goals, depending on the follower 's developmental level" (Avery & Ryan, 2002, para. 5). Situational leadership can be broken down into four categories that combine supportive and directive behaviors. They are a high directive-low supportive style (directing approach), high directive-high supportive style (coaching approach), high supportive-low directive style (supportive approach), and low supportive-low directive style (delegating approach) (Northouse, p. 94-95, 2015).

The first leadership style is the Directing style (S1), this is where the leader provides direction to their members who are committed to doing a specific task but lack the necessary abilities to do so. This type of leadership style is more of a one way communication from the leader to his/her members. The focus of this style is more on getting the task done rather than building a relationship. The second leadership style is the Coaching style (S2), under this style the leader still need to direct his/her members but not as much as the directing style. This style will help the members develop skills and a sense of reasoning by encouraging them to share ideas and suggestions rather than the leader directing and tell the members what should be done. The leader will focus on both the task and relationship which can help boast both employee’s performance and self-esteem. The third leadership style is the Supporting style (S3), in this style the leader is more of a democratic leader and focuses more on building relationships and less on the task to be done. The leader encourages and work together with his/her members to create their goals and also ask their members for advice on the best way to approach a task. With this style, the leader will provide positive feedback and involve their members in decision making to help improve their performance and skills. The final leadership style under the situational leadership model is the Delegating style (S4), the leader gives

The situational leadership model was proposed by its two authors, Ken Blanchard, and Paul Hersey in the year 1969. These authors based this model on the notion that leadership should adapt to different management practices and approaches to fit different situations and surpass any diversity of their encounters (Lussier & Achua, 2010). In particular, this model provides guidance on how to analyze a situation, choose effaceable strategies and adopt the most appropriate leadership style. Apparently, the two developers of the model researched and found that, given some case, leadership may fail to accomplish some goals due to adopting single incompatible and