Ever since I was young, I have been inspired to be a good leader. There are probably many reasons for this, but I think that the biggest influence on that desire was how I always thought it was fascinating how leaders can inspire an entire room at once. Throughout my life I have tracked and followed many leaders in my life. I have found very inspirational people in different areas of my life. Some of these leaders were from school, some were from sports, and some where just people in my life that I thought were natural leaders. One trait that I thought was consistent among most of the leaders that have inspired me in my life, were their directive and supportive behaviors. Directive behaviors are how well a leader can delegate the responsibilities of an individual or a group (Blanchard, 2008). This includes explaining how, when, and who is to complete a certain task. When individuals and groups complete challenging tasks, they usually need support. This is where a leader’s supportive behaviors are measured. Supportive behaviors include “listening, encouraging, facilitating, clarifying, and giving emotional support” (Blanchard, 2008). However, researchers have not found a correlation between directive behaviors, supportive behaviors, and leadership success (Blanchard, 2008). This is because it has often been found that the effectiveness of these behaviors has been situational (Blanchard, 2008). Therefore, the situational approach has created a model that divides these behaviors in to four different leadership styles. These styles are the directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating types of leaders. In this blog post I have decided to speak about my own examples and experiences of each of these styles.
The “directing” style of leadership is a “high directive- low supportive style” where the leader commonly focuses on achieving goals but does not use many supportive behaviors (Blanchard, 2008). A directing style leader that came to my mind, was my English teacher in high school. What was different about her compared to other teachers that I had in high school, was that the directions that she gave us were outstanding. She gave us outlines, instructions, and advice on how to achieve certain grades. Still to this day, I do not believe I have had a teacher that has spent so much time and energy on making sure that her students knew exactly what was expected from them in her class. However, a common phrase that she used to say when someone was confused or had made mistakes was “you knew what was expected from this assignment”. I almost felt like she used her extremely well-constructed directions against us at times. Looking back at her leadership style, I liked the great instructions, but would personally try not to use good directions against my followers when they make mistakes. Regardless, I think she was a good example of the directing leadership style.
I have had quite a few “coaching” style leaders in my life, most of which were sports coaches. The coaching style is a “high directive- high supportive style” where the leader spends their focus on both goal achievement, and support for the followers (Blanchard, 2008). I am an ice hockey goalie, and I’ve played in goal since I was five years old. A few years ago, I played on a team in Chicago where I had my own goaltending coach that suited the coaching style of leadership. What is unique about a goaltending coach in ice hockey, is that they only have a few people to coach on a team. For my goaltending coach, this allowed him to spend a lot of his energy on only a few goalies. What I quickly noticed about him was how well he was able to spend some of his energy on mentally supporting us, and the rest of his energy on making clear goals and strategies how to achieve those goals. During my season in Chicago, I felt inspired going to the ice rink every single day. I believe that a big part of that was because of my goaltending coach. When I had a bad practice or a bad day in general, he knew when he needed to mentally support me. I also always knew what my next goal was and what I needed to be working on to achieve those goals. What I learned during that year, was that the “coaching leadership” style suits me the best.
The “supporting” leadership style is “high supportive- low directive”, where the leader emphasizes more on allowing their followers to make decisions and ask for their input than achieving goals (Blanchard, 2008). I ran into a supporting leadership style two summers ago when I worked as an assistant coach for an ice hockey camp. The children participating in the camp, were divided into four different groups. Each assistant coach was a helper for one of the groups. The man who oversaw the entire camp, focused very little on goals for the children. He did, however, give us assistant coaches the ability to make coaching decisions and constantly asked for our opinions on certain drills and the training schedules which is why I thought he matched the supporting leadership style. It was very cool for us assistant coaches, as he allowed us to have a bigger role than we had expected. Looking back at it, I would say that at times his reliability on us, made him seem a bit unprofessional. I remember one day showing up to camp, and him coming up to me and saying “make up a practice plan for today”. It was humbling that he assumed that I was capable of doing that, but like I said earlier, it made it seem like he had not put a lot of effort into planning the practice plans.
The last leadership style is the “delegating” style where a leader is “low supportive- low directive” (Blanchard, 2008). It is common for the delegating leadership style that the leader is not very involved in either goal achievement, or social support (Blanchard, 2008). In most cases, people would probably argue that the delegating leadership style is the worst out of the four. I would agree to a certain extent but would also argue that in some ways it teaches the followers to think and learn on their own. My freshman year in college I took a class where the professor suited the delegating style. I would not say that they were a bad professor, but I have seen better supportive professors as well as directive professors. What I quickly learned that semester, was that even though it was a challenge at times, it taught me how to stay on top of things, as well as how to communicate with my fellow students in a way that I had not done before. I also thought that because of the professors delegating leadership style, I put in more work to make sure that I was on the right track in the class. I am not sure if this was done on purpose by the professor or not, but at the end of the day I did well in the class and learned a lot.
These four leadership styles all differ in some ways, but I believe that they are all good in certain situations. There are times, when as followers, we need more support, and at times we need more direction. This is why the situational leadership approach is unique, since there is not one certain leadership style that works every time. People respond differently to leadership, and different situations require certain leadership styles. I believe that I personally responded the best to the coaching leadership style. However, I have seen all four throughout my life, and understand the benefit of all of them.
References:
Hamel, R. (2021). Lesson 5: Style and Situational Approaches.
Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Blanchard, K.H. (2008). Situational leadership. Leadership Excellence, 25(5). 19.