Leadership

PSYCH 485 blog

Situational Leadership in My Internship

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Before my role as a Talent Acquisition (TA) Intern, I had little experience being a leader in a workplace setting. Had I known about the situational approach, I would have likely avoided many of the mistakes I made. As PSU WC notes, the approach “tells us how leaders should adjust their behavior depending on the followers and the situations.” (PSU WC, 2023, para. 1). This would have been useful in providing me with direction, especially with the use of the Situational Leadership ® II model.  

The Situational Leadership ® II model was introduced by Harry and Blanchard (1969, as cited in PSU WC, 2023, para. 1) and allows users to determine which leadership style to use for their given scenario. To identify the leadership style to utilize, one can either determine the supportive behavior and directive behavior needed or the developmental level of followers. Once one is determined, the other can be as well by matching it with its match. Leadership style and developmental level are a 1:1 ratio (ex. S1:D1) and include the following as reported by Northouse (2022, p. 174): 

Leadership Styles 

  • Directing (S1): High Directive and Low Support 
  • Coaching (S2): High Directive and High Support 
  • Supportive (S3): Low Directive and High Support 
  • Delegating (S4): Low Directive and Low Support 

Developmental Levels 

  • Developmental level one (D1): The follower is unable but willing to perform the new task. 
  • Developmental level two (D2): The follower is unable and unwilling to perform the new task. 
  • Developmental level three (D3): The follower is able but unwilling to perform the new task. 
  • Developmental level four (D4): The follower is able and willing to perform the new task. 

Now knowing how to use the Situational Leadership ® II model, I will plan to utilize it once my employer’s summer intern program begins. Being the TA intern comes with the responsibility of assisting with intern onboarding, training, and monitoring of intern peer mentors. While I plan to incorporate the situational approach the next time I am faced with confusion about the leadership style I should use, I can utilize the approach to analyze my past leadership mistakes. While it may be difficult to partake in self-reflection, looking back on my missteps will help me in repeating them. 

Looking back at last summer when I first stepped into my leadership role in the intern program, I recognize many of my mistakes stemmed from mistaking follower development level as higher than it was. IMD (“The 15 genuine benefits”, 2023) put this into perspective by interchanging the terms maturity and development level (para. 18). I originally saw all incoming interns on the same developmental level when experience levels ranged from never having an internship to having multiple before and from undergraduates to law students. As a result, my leadership style was largely directing (S1) which was ineffective for those on a higher developmental level than one. For instance, when providing professional conduct training, I assumed all the interns needed guidelines reinforced when there was just a small group of them. This experience helped me realize that I must ensure my leadership style is appropriate for the entire audience, and if not, create stacked sessions to lead to more effective distribution. 

Overall, I will incorporate the situational approach when selecting my leadership style. Not only will I be more engaged in my personal leadership development, but I will also provide improved guidance to the 2023 summer interns. As I build on my leadership skills, I will keep the Situational Leadership ® II model close by since it only requires the details of your situation to provide direction. A key message I got upon researching the situational approach was that leaders must be flexible and adapt to the situation at hand. 

For supplemental reading on how to practice situational leadership, I encourage checking out Colin Baker’s article, “What is Situational Leadership, and How Do You Practice It?”. The article highlights the individual aspects of the approach and offers methods of incorporating it into your own life. I found the content especially helpful as it explains when and when not to use the situational approach (Baker, 2022, para. 25). 

Link to Colin Baker’s article: https://leaders.com/articles/leadership/situational-leadership/

References 

Baker, C. (2022, September 7). What is situational leadership, and how do you practice it? Leaders.com. Retrieved February 12, 2023, from https://leaders.com/articles/leadership/situational-leadership/ 

Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1969). Life-cycle theory of leadership. Training and Development Journal, 23, 26-34. 

Northouse, P. G. (2022). Leadership: Theory and practice (9th ed.). SAGE. 

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2023). PSYCH 485 Lesson 5: Introduction to Style and Situational Approaches. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2245314/modules/items/37104672 

The 15 genuine benefits of situational leadership in 2023. IMD business school for management and leadership courses. (2023, August). Retrieved February 9, 2023, from https://www.imd.org/reflections/situational-leadership/ 

Experiences with the Four Leadership Styles

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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. 

Grey Area

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One of the most popular television dramas on right now is the medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy (Rhimes, 2005).   The drama follows the doctors of Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital, formally, Seattle Grace, as they navigate through both personal and professional drama.  The show spans 15 seasons and follows several characters from their medical internship through getting their own attending positions.  Through all 15 seasons the viewer sees almost every style of leadership through the many attendings, and in several instances, the situational approach is apparent.

In season 13 of Grey’s Anatomy in an episode titled Why Try to Change Me Now, we are introduced to a new Residency Director, Eliza Minnick (Rhimes, 2016).  Her style and approach are much different from the approach of the prior residency director who followed a static trajectory of learning for all residents.   Minnick seems to practice the situational approach with her residents, and it throws the hospital into upheaval.  The situational approach addresses both the leader and the follower and allows for a flexible leadership approach depending on the situation given.  This approach examines the competency and commitment of the follower and gives a directive for the leader in the given situation (Northouse, 2016, pg. 93).   Prior to Minnick, the residents were to be seen, not heard, and also were not allowed to participate in surgeries (Greys Anatomy, Rhimes, 2007).  Minnick addresses each resident and meets their educational experience wherever they were at.  The residents are all relatively new surgeons, so they lack competency, but have no limit on their commitment and excitement for the medical field.

A majority of the residents at this point are at the D1 level, or low in competence and high in commitment, and Minnick is required to lead at the S1 level, or high directive-low support level according to the SLII model (Northouse, 2016, pg. 94-96).  She begins in a later episode titled It Only Gets Much Worse by gathering information from the residents to gauge their competency and giving them directions on what the goals were for the near future.  The final goal of the program is to develop skilled surgeons prepared for the real world.  She shows the residents how to do simple procedures like doing sutures by explaining the goals and initiatives without a significant amount of support or independence for the residents (Grey’s Anatomy, Rhimes, 2016).  One of the residents, Stephanie, is more advanced that the other residents and falls into the D4, or high competency and high commitment quadrant of the SLII model developed by Hersey and Blanchard (Northouse, 2016, pg. 93-94).  Minnick then moves into the S4 style of leadership, or the low-supportive-low directive style, for Stephanie exclusively and allows Stephanie to perform her own solo surgery for the first time (Northouse, 2016, pg. 95).  Minnick has facilitated Stephanie’s confidence and motivation and has allowed her to independently achieve the goal with less support and goal input from Minnick (Northouse, 2016, pg. 95).

While many of her fellow attendings do not like her, Minnick has given the residents their best opportunity to learn yet and has also adapted her leadership style to the needs of each individual resident (Grey’s Anatomy, Rhimes, 2016).  Though the show is a dramatization of the real world, it does show a real world application of the SLII model and situational leadership as a whole.  Minnick allowed the residents to learn more in a month’s time, than they had learned throughout their entire residency up to that point by using Situational Leadership Theory and meeting her followers where they were at and adapting her leadership style to suit the situation.

 

Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc

Rhimes, S. (2005) Grey’s Anatomy. Seattle, WA. American Broadcasting Company.

The cyclic creation of Air Force servant leaders

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The military produces much more than death and destruction – it produces leaders – and it does so through the principles of servant leadership. Unlike many civilian industries, the “military industry” has a very defined career lifecycle. For all intents and purposes, this lifecycle only lasts about 6.7 years for enlisted service members and 10.9 years for officers, according to the Pew Research Center (2011). For the sake of ease, we will use the life cycle of an enlisted Air Force Airman for this discussion, since there are 251,310 total active, Air Force enlisted Airmen, who compromise about 79 percent of the total force, (Air Force Magazine, 2016).

Airmen enter basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. They will then move onto their technical school to learn their jobs. After graduation, they will move onto their first duty assignment, where they will receive on the job training. It is at this point the young Airmen enters into what can be considered the “servant leader lifecycle.” The goal of military leaders is to be as replaceable as possible. It’s woven into the fabric of their culture. If and when they are killed in battle, their subordinates must be trained and ready to pick up the flag and carry it to victory. Since military careers are so short (on average), the leadership development cycle must be short as well. So, over the years, the Air Force has become very adept at taking these young Airmen and turning them into leaders very quickly.

Today, Airmen are promoted to staff sergeant in about 4.39 years, on average (Bailey, 2017). This all means the Air Force will keep people as front line supervisors for about 2 years before they leave the service.  The result is a leadership machine capable of indoctrinating civilians and in 6.7 years outputting leaders – and doing so in the tens of thousands per year. This is not even touching on how many of these young men and women go straight from military service to post-high school education opportunities, which enhances their human capital even further.

General David Goldfein

The magic happens insides of the Air Force’s leadership machine though. General David Goldfein, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, discussed in his first letter to Airmen, how Airmen of all types are “absolutely committed to servant leadership” (Goldfein, 2016). He made servant leadership a regular point in his talks, when I worked on the Joint Staff and he was our director of staff. Servant leadership is key to airpower and the key to servant leadership is for leaders to commit to putting their followers first, and treating them fairly (Northouse, 2016, p. 239). As Northouse (2016), citing Liden, Wayne, Zhao, and Henderson discussed, servant leadership requires the right antecedent conditions, and leader behaviors to result in the right outcomes (p. 231).

Building and maintaining the right culture is a key antecedent condition, which is why Goldfein (2016) discusses the importance of re-invigorating the squadron, the foundational and cultural building block of the Air Force. He acknowledges the culture has weakened and has set the goal of improving it. Leader attributes and follower receptivity are also key antecedent conditions as well, which is why studying them is built into professional development courses required throughout an Airman’s career.

Servant leader behaviors are equally as important as the antecedent conditions. Northouse (2016) references seven, specifically: Conceptualization, emotional healing, putting followers first, helping followers grow and succeed, behaving ethically, empowering, and creating value for the community (p. 232). Although each of these behaviors deserves a blog all to itself, I will touch on four that are very applicable to the Air Force. Helping followers grow and succeed is a key component for Air Force leaders because as mentioned previously, it is their mission. Airmen are not in competition with one another, they are a team, and they are only as strong as the weakest link. For young Airmen to grow into competent sergeants, they must be trusted and empowered with responsibilities designed to stretch their limits to help them build the self-confidence required to lead and train others. This is the cyclical nature of military service. Ethical behavior is at the core of military service. Air Force Airmen are held to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which places restrictions on them above and beyond normal state and federal laws. Finally, community service is built into the foundation of Airmenship. Creating value for their communities does not stop at simply protecting freedoms, but includes leaving the base and volunteering.

The outcome of servant leadership does not only include improving the Airmen’s performance to positively impact organizational performance – but to improve society as a whole (Northouse, 2016, p. 236, 237). To succeed, the process needs to be self-replicating because the turnover of Airmen is so quick. The Air Force simply does not have the time to be patient with leadership development – and servant leadership exemplifies the environment and behaviors required to accomplishing this mission.

References
Bailey, K. (2017, August 24). Air Force releases staff sergeant 17E5 promotion cycle statistics. Air Force’s Personnel Center. Retrieved November 5, 2017 from https://goo.gl/Xjq7rQ
Goldfein, D. L. (2016, August 9). CSAF Letter to Airmen. United States Air Force. Retrieved November 5, 2017 from https://goo.gl/GeGMuT
Chapter 6: A Profile of the Modern Military. (2011, October 5). Pew Research Center. Retrieved November 5, 2017 from https://goo.gl/byTYCZ
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: theory and practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2017). PSYCH 485 Lesson 11: Servant leadership. Retrieved November 5, 2017 from https://goo.gl/cyBhDK
USAF Total Force. (2016, May). Air Force Magazine, 9(5). Retrieved November 5, 2017 from https://goo.gl/hTmRmj

Situational Approach; Fortune 500 Companies Use It, Should You?

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The situational approach to leadership has, since its conception in 1969, gained momentum to becoming a standard of practice when approaching leadership amongst most companies today. In fact, according to Northouse (2016), the situational approach has been “a factor in training programs in more than 400 of the Fortune 500 companies” (p. 98). This is understandable considering the many perceived benefits to the situational approach. Providing a dynamic method to approaching leadership that is prescriptive rather than descriptive gives users a playbook to address various situations as they arise (Northouse, 2016). Teaching would-be users not only what makes a good leader but also how to be an effective leader is understandably appealing and useful. However, there is one major flaw in this approach and that is a lack of empirical data to support it.

Developed in 1969 by Hersey and Blanchard, the situational approach was based on Reddin’s 3-D management style theory of 1967 (Northouse, 2016). Since then, the situational approach has seen several revisions to include Blanchard 1988, Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Zigarmi, 1985, Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Nelson, 1993 for example and most recently, Blanchard 2007 (as cited in Thompson & Vecchio, 2009). Its premise is based off of a bi-dimensional approach, which includes directive and supportive dimensions that must be “applied appropriately in a given situation” (Northouse, 2016, p. 93). Leadership styles combined with development levels are utilized to formulate a “playbook” for implementing the situational approach. Amongst the leadership styles are four categories; high directive-low supportive, high directive-high supportive, high supportive-low directive, and lastly low supportive-low directive, also referenced as directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating respectively (Northouse, 2016). Each category blends variant degrees of direction and support relative to levels of follower development, which range from low competence-high commitment, to high competence-high commitment. Essentially, the situational approach speaks to the idea that followers will change within a “developmental continuum” of competence and commitment and prescribes an appropriate leadership style accordingly (Northouse, 2016, p. 97).

Overall, the situational approach appears to be an amazing tool for companies to utilize and implement within their leadership programs. As previously stated, even the majority of Fortune 500 companies incorporate the situational approach to leadership. Understandably, having a theory which unlike many theories spells out actions one can take dependent upon various scenarios is appealing when compared to being provided a laundry list of traits or skills recognized as being attributed to good leadership and left to change one’s abilities, behavior or personality accordingly. However, all is not necessarily as it seems. According to Northouse (2016), the situational approach doesn’t come without its flaws. Few research studies with regard to situational leadership have been conducted. There is no articulating how commitment, combined with competence, equates levels of development (used to determine corresponding leadership styles). Rationale for matching leadership styles with follower development levels is also lacking. Demographics to include gender, experience, age, and education are not addressed, and conditions between one-on-one versus one addressing a group of 20 are not individually prescribed (Northouse, 2016, p. 100-102). At first glance, the situational approach to leadership seemed to to be an all-inclusive answer to the challenges of leadership, however as we begin to look closer, we begin to see that may not necessarily be true.

Several attempts to test the situational approach empirically have been conducted, resulting in only a partial support of its validity (Northouse, 2016). Tests which have included several hundred high school teachers in 14 institutions (Vecchio, 1987), a group of nurses and their supervisors (Norris & Vecchio, 1992), University faculty and staff and their supervisors (Fernandez & Vecchio, 1997), examination of 860 military members of 86 squads (Vecchio, Bullis, & Brazil, 2006), and 357 banking employees and 80 supervisors, sampled from 10 Norwegian financial institutions to name a few (Thompson & Vecchio, 2009). More specifically, with regard to the situational approach predicting follower performance within these studies, only data that was partially valid was observed within the low and medium range of employee readiness and maturity (Thompson & Vecchio, 2009). Furthermore, according to Thompson and Vecchio (2009), within their study of the Norwegian bank employees, which examined three differing versions of the situational leadership theory to include the original theory of 1972, the revised of 2007 and an alternative statement of the theory’s “essential principle of differential follower response to autonomy afforded by the leader in conjunction with follower developmental level” (abstract section, para. 1), no clear support was ever observed. Essentially, significant data has not been observed during the testing of the situational approach to the extent of being conclusive. Some concepts of the theory have held true but not all and not in all situations (Thompson & Vecchio, 2009).

Although as stated by Northouse (2016), there are several criticisms of the situational approach to leadership, it still holds substantial recognition. Its uses seem to be applicable to a wide user base and variety of applications as it accounts for nearly any situation. Simply search situational leadership theory on Google and in .56 seconds you will have approximately 969,000 results. Situational leadership theory is often a staple of managerial courses and often included in the leadership section of management textbooks. Most Fortune 500 companies implement situational leadership and yet there still remains a lack of significant evidence supporting situational leadership theory (Thompson & Vecchio, 2009). With all of this said, it is interesting that there continues to be such recognition amongst organizations with regard to situational leadership. It’s principles seem sound and it makes sense, however why is it that research studies seem to come up short when attempting to prove its foundations? Should we be using a theory that is void of proof that it actually does what it says? Would you buy a ticket for a plane that does not fly or purchase a car that has never successfully driven just because it looks like it can? From a scientific perspective, if something is void of empirical proof, can it truly be a theory? When I began to write this blog, I started in a position of support to the situational approach to leadership. However upon closer examination, I was surprised to notice significantly more criticisms than strengths with regard to the situational leadership theory and approach to leadership. Initially, it seems to be an effective approach and in all honesty I wouldn’t say that I would shy away from its concepts completely, however at the same time, I think it noteworthy to consider the premise of most of its criticism, which generate primarily from its lack of supporting research attesting to its effectiveness. Situational approach to leadership; Fortune 500 companies use it, should you?

 

Resources:

Northouse, P. G. (2016).  Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Thompson, G., & Vecchio, R. P. (2009). Situational leadership theory: A test of three versions. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(5), 837-848. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.06.014

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