How to Apply Situational Leadership
Leadership means facilitating members of a group in the completion of a task or achievement of a goal. The difficulty is that each individual within the group will require different forms of facilitation. Some require each step to be dictated to them, while others thrive when given free reign. Some need the leader to be dispassionate and detached, and others need a empathetic human being. Situational leadership is a theory that covers every combination of these scenarios and how they are applied to individuals in their particular situation. Therefore, you will need to apply this process to each person on the team.
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Instructions
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Spend some time getting to know your team. Before you can properly facilitate the team, you need to find out what requirements they have as people. Find out how they like to stay organized, how they communicate the best, whether they need individualized lists of things to do and how they like to pick tasks from a master list themselves. This is some of the information you should know to find out as much as you can about your team.
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Break down all the tasks that each individual must complete. Keep the list simple and resist the urge to get too detailed by including small steps.
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Assign a "development level" for that individual on each item of their task list. There are four development levels:
D1--low competence and high commitment;
D2--some to low competence and low commitment;
D3--moderate to high competence and variable commitment;
D4--high competence and high commitment.
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Assign to yourself a leadership style that corresponds to the development level of each worker. This will be a guideline to how you should lead each individual in the completion of a particular task. The corresponding leadership styles are:
S1--telling/directing with a high task focus and low relationship focus;
S2--selling/coaching with a high task focus and high relationship focus;
S3--participating/supporting with a low task focus and high relationship focus;
S4--delegating with a low task focus and low relationship focus.
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Create a plan with the individual that accommodates their development level and your leadership style for each task.
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Schedule with yourself a day and time to follow-up with the individual. Review the plan and make changes if necessary. Changes may be required based on the individual's maturity level:
M1--low or no skill and unable or unwilling to complete the task;
M2--low or no skill but willing to attempt the task;
M3--high skill but low confidence;
M4--high skill and willing to take ownership of the task.
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Tips & Warnings
There are additional interpretations of situational leadership, such as Goleman's Model of Situational Leadership, that may be useful to your needs as a leader.
Even though the leadership style is supposed to correspond to the development level, this is only a guideline, and you should choose the leadership style that you feel is going to work the best for that particular situation.
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