Performance Management

Situational Leadership: Leadership Style (E)

What is the leadership style? What is the relation of leadership style and situational leadership?

Posted: Nov 2009

Based on late 40's publication of Ohio state university, the wide accepted model of describing of leaders behavior is based on two dimension: relation toward task and relation toward employee. The leadership style depends on current situation and individual.

Relation toward the task is dealing mostly with one-way communication, focused on telling and directing how the things should be done. On the other side, the relation toward the employee includes two way communication, encouragement, support, rewarding, discussion and assistance. Combined together these two relationships are creating the leadership matrix.

Four quadrants from this models shows leadership styles that leaders use. Style 1 is focused on directive approach and strict supervision. Style 2 has similarities with S1, but at same time the leader spend more time on conversation with employee. When in Style 3 the leader mostly listen, talk to and gives the support to follower. The Style 4 doesn’t involve leader much, but transfer the task completely to the follower ( delegation ).

During the initial research on the Ohio university, there was attempt to prove that S2 is the most effective. The study has shown that other three styles are effective as well. Therefore the leadership concept was expanded to application of all four styles, for every situation. Consequently, the concept was called the Situational leadership. Followers of this leadership approach tell that leaders should be able to perform a different leadership styles, according he situation. The decisive factor for application of a certain leadership style is the readiness (maturity) of the follower for the given task. The employees’ readiness is key factor.

Directive Style ( S1 ) has high level of relation to the task and low level toward employee. This style is defined as "Telling", since it mostly represents one-way communication where the manager is giving instructions to the employee.

Coaching Style ( S2 ) has the high level of relation to the task and high level of elation toward the employee. It is also defined as "Selling" since the manager is trying to give the most of the direction. But, contrary to S1, it has predominant two way communication with socio-emotional element.

Supporting Style ( S3 ) has the low level of relation toward the task and high level toward employee. It is also defined as "Participating" since both manager and employee are participating in decision-making through the two-way communication.

Delegation Style ( S4 ) has the low level of relation toward the task and low level toward the employee. It is also defined as "Trust-Delegating", since manager has passed completely the task to the employee.

Related Reading:

Situational Leadership: The Theory 
Situational Leadership: Blake And Mouton Managerial Grid 
Situational Leadership: Leadership Style 
Situational Leadership: Employee Readiness ( Maturity ) 
Situational Leadership: Balance Of Leadership Style And Readiness 
Situational Leadership: Modification Of Readiness Level