I want to focus on the four leadership styles in the situational approach. Directive and supportive behaviors are two aspects of leadership that I see in my life all the time. Both are either through myself when I am working as a Coach or through the people like my parents, friends and sometimes even the very kids that I coach. Basing this blog around figure 5.1 from the textbook, I will be going over each of the styles while doing my best to relate each style to certain situations in my life, covering each leadership situation and hopefully coming to a valid conclusion that it is important for leaders to recognize the needs of their followers
The directive style or S1 is a “high directive-low supportive style” (Northouse 2016). Personally, I have experienced this type of leadership style in the class room. Many of my teachers have had a leadership attitude where they focused more on “communication on goal achievement” (Northouse 2016). These teachers were a bit more authoritarian in their teaching styles. However, since they were strict us students got our assignments done more efficiently in class and outside of class. The only downside was that class was not as fun. Usually teachers that had a directing style of leadership had dull class rooms and a less humorous personality which made class less fun. Northouse writes that the leader gives instructions on how to achieve the goals then supervises them carefully (Northouse 2016). In high school, I took part in the International Baccalaureate Diploma (IB) program which is university level learning in the final two years of high school. Many of my teachers during this time were mostly focused on teaching us how to achieve certain goals such as test scores, passing IB papers and were very strict in the way they were done. To be fair, teaching IB level courses to high school kids is difficult given our attention spans and developing maturity.
The Coaching style or S2 approach is part of my job. The high directive-high supportive style is necessary especially dealing with teenagers. As a coach, “the leader focuses communication on both achieving goals and meeting followers’ socioemotional needs” (Northouse 2016). In my most recent season as the head JV Boys basketball coach there were many different instances where I had to be very directive and supportive at the same time. We did not win very much, often we lost by double digits and it was after the games I had to be directive in my coaching style, telling them what we need to work on, what our goals are and how we are going to work on achieving them. After each loss they were all down and it was up to me as a coach to be directive and stern in the way I tell them what we need to do all the while finding a balance in supporting their growth as athletes but more importantly young adults. This was the biggest challenge because a coach can yell at their players and tell them how much they suck but that ultimately does not get anywhere with the average player. At the developmental level, I learned that these are kids that need to understand their shortcomings and learn how to overcome them. This requires high directive and high supportive behavior as a leader.
I have experienced the supporting style or S3 approach with my close friends and the way we help each other facilitate problem solving. “The supportive style includes listening, praising, asking for input, and giving feedback.” (Northouse 2016). I have a handful of friends who are great at listening and giving feedback. I might not see them as being leaders, but they are exhibiting this leadership behavior. Often a close friend will ask for relationship advice and I’ll listen and help them with a different perspective on the issue or help them realize it was not an issue at all.
The delegating style or S4 approach is a low supportive and low directive approach. Interestingly, I have seen this style of leadership in certain coaches. One might think it is not an appropriate way to approach coaching athletes but, in some cases, it is very effective. From my experience, it is important though that the athletes being coached are experienced and have a high IQ in the sport. “This style lets followers take responsibility for getting the job done the way they see fit.” (Northouse 2016), my college basketball coach had this approach for a few practices after we lost a game or did not perform up to certain standard. It worked because it made us think about our mistakes and had a greater learning effect rather than having someone tell us what we did wrong. We figured it out on our own.
In conclusion, the four leadership styles discussed in the textbook all have a place and time for when it’s best to use those styles of leadership. From my experience, all four of these styles have been used by either myself of people in leadership positions that I was following. If there is one thing that I am certain of, it is that followers respond to the types of leadership approaches differently. People can either be receptive or not and it is up to the person in the position of leadership to recognize what strategy is best.
Northouse, P. (2016). Emotional Intelligence. In P. Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice (p. 27). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.
ama6306 says
mdh5581 –
I am glad you chose the situational approach to discuss for this blog as I think your examples are a great representation of the four styles that are involved with this approach to leadership. Being that there are both task (directive) behaviors and relationship (supportive) behaviors involved in this style, one could say that these would be successful depending on the situation you are in. For a lot of circumstances, it would depend on the subordinates involved in the situation and how dependent they are on having a leader’s support or not. For some followers, it is a matter of needing that support in order to feel appreciated or noticed. For others, it could be the opposite case where they prefer to have clear and concise instructions and just want to get the job done without interruption.
As we learned in Lesson 5, it is important for leaders to know where the followers are at on the developmental continuum and the difficulty of the task so that they can change their leadership styles based on the levels the subordinates fall on in order to be successful (Williams, 2019). Referring to your examples of your teachers, it does not sound like they took into consideration the different developmental levels of the students nor did they show any type of support which would cause some students to fall behind or not put forth their most effort. While it is true that these leadership styles vary, it is dependent not only on the situation but also the follower as to which styles the leader should be expressing. Certain styles, such as the supportive style, would be successful in most coaching instances, such as the one you explained with you as yourself being the coach. Falling in the category of high-directive, high-supportive seems as though it would be the perfect balance of leadership styles for a team to rely on from their coach.
In a perfect world, a leader would be capable of utilizing each of these styles when necessary and also be able to recognize when and where the different styles should be used. As you said, it is ultimately up to the leader to realize whether or not the followers are receptive and which style they should be using in each situation. After learning our most recent lesson, I made the connections between the situational approach and the contingency theory, both being situational-based circumstances. I think this approach to leadership is the most adaptable and can be learned and used by any leader, regardless of their experience.
At the end of the day, the goal of every leader should be to ensure the happiness of their followers in order to reach their common goal (which they usually cannot do without the followers hard work). Great job on this blog post! I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this interesting approach to leadership.
-Andrea A
Works Cited
Williams, J. (2019). PSYCH 485: Lessons 5 [Power Point]. Pennsylvania State University: World Campus. Retrieved from: https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1972967/modules/items/25704829