How Situational is Situational Leadership?

It is an axiomatic fact that the way leaders make decisions, behave and lead in the workplace has a powerful impact on employee engagement, motivation and ultimately retention. Leadership, by common consent, also considerably exerts a tremendous influence on business performance. The style leaders adopt to manage their teams should be hence regarded as a business issue, rather than as an HR whim; an organizational subject which HR, as it occurs in every people-related matter, should take charge of.

Albeit countless definitions of leadership have been provided over the years, the number of approaches developed to effectively and consistently manage it has been considerably smaller to date. Based on the findings of a number of studies conducted between 1911 and 1966, and on the widely-held belief that each individual is different from others, Hersey and Blanchard developed, in the late 1960s, the Situational Leadership model, also known as “organized common sense” (Leadership Studies, 2017). A flexible framework whose main aim is enable leaders to influence individual behaviour and motivate their followers, adopting a different approach according to each individual level of “performance readiness.”

The underpinning tenet, at the basis of the development of this framework, is that it does not indeed exist a wrong leadership style in that the right style, or rather, the most suitable approach, actually depends on the circumstances. Also in leadership thus the one size does not fit all. The model intends to help leaders assess every occurrence so as to identify the specific, proper amount of guidance to give each of their followers and of communication to establish with each of them, according to their “performance readiness”, that is, the combination of capability, eagerness and keenness expressed by each individual, under the specific environmental circumstances. The approach a leader must adopt should be hence matched up with each individual development level (Table 1).

  Table 1

This simple framework, essentially based on common sense, may appear extremely straightforward to apply and implement, but it actually requires leaders’ constant, careful attention.

The first pitfall leaders should definitely avoid to fall into is thinking to well know each member of their team and regard their level of performance readiness as invariably the same, regardless of the specific assignment or task they intend to assign them.

One of the most crucial phases for the identification of the suitable leadership style is “diagnosing.” This step is concerned with the assessment of the competencies an individual has already gained and his/her likely commitment to achieve that specific objective. Leaders should not be hence influenced by the level of commitment shown by their followers under other circumstances or by their skills at large, but focus on the competencies and eagerness these may have to perform that specific activity. Diagnosing is hence not about an overall assessment; it aims at determining an individual fit for a specific task.

The adoption of this approach may lead leaders to believe that they can assign an individual a project only and only whether this has already successfully managed and gained previous experience with similar projects. In this way, nevertheless, leaders would jeopardize individual growth and development, and would not put themselves in a position to assess their followers learning agility.

Diagnosing should not be used to prevent individual growth but to favour and sustain it over time. Understanding what a team member needs to properly perform a task or effectually contribute to a project, is necessary to make decisions on the type of support, guidance and direction an individual needs so as to take appropriate action to bridge the identified gap.

The pace change occurs nowadays is increasingly quickening and more often than not organizations and their leaders are prompted to take action as swiftly as they can. The fact an individual has not gained yet the full set of competencies this needs to carry out a given task, regardless of his/her eagerness and motivation to perform it, may prompt a leader to assign the activity to a different individual, who already has what it takes to effectually perform the task. Yet by reason of the lack of time to direct, support or coach their followers and of the typically strict projects timeline, leaders may find it preferable to assigning challenging tasks to more experienced individuals. Such an arguably justified leader behaviour, under the circumstances, would nonetheless fetter rather than favour individual growth. Worse still, whether a leader should not timely plan for their followers to gain the skills and experience necessary to properly perform more challenging tasks, before these have the chance to use these skills in a project, individuals would never be put in a position to develop, and will thus inexorably leave the organization, not to mention that they may stay and underperform.

Serious problems may also arise when leaders consider to assign a follower a project or task based on their willingness to perform it. A leader can ill afford to assign a follower a task only and only whether this is keen and eager to perform it. Genuine leaders should be able to motivate their followers to carry out tasks these may not be completely happy to perform, but that are important for the organization success. Henry S. Truman (US President 1945 – 1953) defined leadership as the “ability to get others to do what they don’t want to do and like it.” Good leaders should be able to provide their followers a clear-sighted vision of their company’s and of their own future, but also enthusiasm and sense of belonging so as to self-motivation and self-fulfilment to build up. Whether individuals have the competencies and skills to perform a task, conceivably just because their employer has heavily invested in their development and banks on them, leaders cannot fail to influence and persuade their followers of the importance of their contribution. It is hardly thinkable the paradigm “no willingness, no task performed.”

There are indeed some additional risks associated with an inappropriate, rigid implementation of Situational Leadership. If leaders do not adopt it adding a further degree of flexibility, that is to say without adding flexibility to flexibility, these may hamper their followers learning agility and by showing a high degree of intolerance towards failure, prevent innovation to spread and flourish within the organization.

Whether leaders have no time to provide their followers the direction, support and coaching they need, and would be willing to assign individuals only the tasks these are confidently able to face, they will never be able to identify and sustain their learning agility level and development. In turn, individuals for fear of disappointing their leader by making mistakes, would invariably avert to innovate and change methods, processes and procedures, albeit this may be one of the objectives Situational Leadership would actually aim at achieving.

As Hamlet said (Act 5, Scene 2), referring to well different circumstances, “the readiness is all”, but readiness should be properly and consistently assessed. It is not only a matter of properly interpreting what should be meant by readiness from the leader point of view, but also to ascertain whether leader and follower agree on it. The risk being that rather than favouring people development and sustaining the pursuance of organizational strategy, Situational Leadership may cause some undesirable drawbacks and counter-effects.

Diagnosing is unquestionably a crucial stage of Situational Leadership implementation; leaders should invariably ensure to discuss openly and thoroughly with their followers their level of development and readiness to take a new challenge up.

Whether followers should disagree with their leaders on their readiness level, consequences can prove to be particularly detrimental. If followers, differently from their leaders, believe to be ready to perform a task, the circumstance their leader would not assign them that task would generate disappointment, distrust, dissatisfaction and a plunge in self-confidence. In the case of leaders overestimating their followers level of readiness, deeming their followers ready to face the new challenge, whereas these do not actually feel to be, the fact followers would not recognize to be unprepared so as not to disappoint their leader, is likely to produce negative effects upon both the successful completion of the project and the individual career.

The practical implementation of Situational Leadership should be hence preceded by the introduction of an objective, agreed “readiness” assessment method and some tailored tools. Both leaders and followers should be made aware of the procedure, variables and assessment methods used to identify each individual readiness level. A transparent, objectively supportable approach and a structured methodology would definitely ensure leaders avoid bias and enable them to properly assess their followers’ skills, based on specific values and competencies. A transparent method would also reassure followers that their level of readiness will be assessed objectively and consistently across the organization.

Despite the Situational Leadership model only refers to followers’ readiness, it may be argued that the difficult execution of this approach and the thorny issues it involves imply a high level of leaders’ readiness, too. Like their followers, leaders should indeed be eager and prepared to, and skilled at adopting this approach. The inconsistent, inappropriate implementation of Situational Leadership can in fact break rather than make employee engagement and performance, and hence organizational success. Employers aiming at introducing this approach should be aware of the drawbacks and threats it can potentially pose.

Situational Leadership can be regarded as an organization strategy to leadership, as such implementation may prove to be much more important than strategy itself. The distinctive features of Situational Leadership: flexibility, simplicity and the case-by-case consideration of individual development, account for this model to be relevant and useful. On the flip side, it does not appear to be far-sighted and neglects some significant factors which deserve more attention and consideration. It can be thus regarded as a basic, broad framework; to be implemented, nonetheless, the model should be complemented with several activities, tools and assessment methods, which may in some ways alter the model itself.

The conscious decision to adopt a specific leadership style, cannot be made disregarding the values and beliefs underpinning an organization culture.

Whether corporate culture should foster individual development, innovation and learning agility, for instance, situational leadership might be deemed by staff as inconsistent and unfit. Individual development would be only secured to those employees who have already gained a certain level of autonomy and expertise. Projects and significant tasks would be assigned to a limited number of individuals, whereas the others would be basically refused access to the opportunities enabling them to broaden their experience and reach higher level of competence. Not be put in a position to grow and develop, these individuals would consequently feel their job to essentially be a dead-end job and will either underperform or leave their employer. Ensure the cultural fit of a leadership approach is hence of paramount importance.

The concept of employee “readiness” is indeed very interesting, but more than a leadership style, it may show to better suit people development and succession planning practices. Whether employers identify the set of skills individuals should master, and the type of experience they must gain, to fill leadership and key roles within their organization, being able to assess individual readiness to fill those positions, would clearly enable them to confidently face the future organizational challenges.

Employee readiness should not represent the end itself, but the means to an end. Once employees have reached the professional and moral standards required by the organization to take up any given position, also by virtue of their learning agility, these should be able to confidently face all the challenges posed by these roles.

Individual readiness to fill leadership and key roles within an organization should clearly be professionally assessed adopting tried and tested, trusted methodologies and not exclusively relying on the leaders’ assessment of their followers.

Whereas it is broadly recognized that one of the distinctive characteristics of Situational Leadership is flexibility, its strict implementation may turn this approach into an extremely rigid one. The idea of “readiness” should be therefore interpreted with extreme care and regarded as a method to assess individual development in a much far-sighted, pragmatic fashion; not to make short-term decisions, but to make informed choices enabling employers to reap the benefits and attain tangible results both presently and in the future.

Longo, R., (2019), How Situational is Situational Leadership?; Milan: HR Professionals [online].

Has The Adage “Employees Leave Their Managers And Not Their Employers” Ever Held True?

It is a commonly held belief that line managers represent the main reason for employees leaving or wanting to leave their employer. This assumption, supported by the findings of several research studies, is underpinned by the idea that the person with whom employees mostly build, develop and maintain relationships within an organization is their direct manager, who is indeed in a position to strongly influence employee engagement and eagerness to go the extra mile and exercise discretionary effort.

This concept was firstly, aptly summarized by Buckingham and Coffman (2005) in the aphorism “Employees leave their managers and not their employers” and later reinforced by MacLeod and Clarke (2009), who suggested that “people join organisations, but they leave managers.”

Mismanagement, bias, lack of consideration and respect, the inability to inspire and empower individuals, effectively communicate them the business vision and provide clear direction are just some of the ingredients of the recipe for management failure. Inasmuch as the idea behind the dictum “Employees leave their managers and not their employers” is clear and worth being backed up, management is not the fruit of inheritance, nor is it bestowed for acts of great athleticism. Managers are appointed by their employers, who should offer management positions only to the individuals who have showed to really have the characteristics and exhibited the behaviour required to effectually fill this crucially significant role. Employers should hence take full responsibility for their management actions and behaviour. Depicting employers as the victims of their managers as if these have nothing to do with their identification and nomination, and therefore with what they do, would definitely represent a massive blunder.

More often than not, organizations appoint as managers individuals who possess superior technical skills and a considerable level of expertise in their field. Despite it is widely acknowledged that it cannot be established a causal relationship between technical expertise and management capability, to wit: an outstanding professional does not necessarily also is a good manager, employers seem to continue ignoring this circumstance. It can be thus argued that a knowing doing gap persists.

At the outset, individuals are lured by an employer brand, corporate culture, reputation and value proposition, but whether not supported by consistent appropriate management, the fascinating effects produced by these corporate features are soon drastically destined to vanish into thin air, overshadowed by the employee experience. Under such circumstances individuals would believe that the employer walks the walk, but doesn’t talk the talk.

When proposing the appointment of new managers, executives are clearly acting in good faith, but they might have not gained a thorough view and understanding of their nominees’ traits, capabilities and behaviour, especially under different circumstances and in a different environment. Most likely, they just appreciate these individuals for their technical knowledge and expertise, do not taking heed of the disastrous consequences the wrong appointment of a manager produces. All too often, employers, that is to say HR professionals, are then forced to hastily put in place a series of initiatives so as to put newly appointed managers in a position to carry out their new role. HR support in these cases is paramount, but its involvement in the process should invariably precede not follow the appointment of a new manager

The introduction of practices clearly establishing and outlining the path employees must follow to be appointed as managers and how this route interrelates and combines with the organization’s succession plan would clearly help to dramatically minimize at worst and avert at best the risk of appointing the wrong individual for the role of manager. At times, it may rather be a problem of appointing the right person at the wrong moment, that is to say the individual who has the potential to fill a management position, but who is not ready for that yet.

To keep pace with the incessant process of change nowadays affecting every organization, the need for talented individuals to take more responsibility may arise anytime and, worse still, suddenly. Whether individuals having the right traits and potential are not ready to take additional responsibility, the negative consequences will certainly make an impact on their direct reports, but also on themselves. Appoint managers and then try to put them in a position to properly and effectively play their role is not clearly a methodology likely to pay off. It is essentially a matter of timely planning; rather than a reactive a proactive approach should be hence definitely favoured.

The positive effects yielded by appropriately developed succession planning are indeed twofold – firstly, it enables employers to detect and classify the key and strategic roles existing in the organization, and secondly, it urges employers to timely identify potential successors. The identification of people who are deemed fit to fill strategic and management roles should be followed by a period of preparation, hopefully experiential learning, enabling these, the moment arrived, to be ready to take over management responsibility.

It clearly emerges that succession planning of its own does not suffice, it should be indeed conducted in combination with talent management and employee development practices. The identification of the potential successors in fact will not secure businesses the talent these require whether, once identified, individuals are not assessed, trained, prepared and tested on the roles these will be called to perform in the immediate, not-too-distant or distant future. The development path prepared for each individual will clearly be different according to the role each employee is due to fill, but organizations should never overlook the need for individuals to be prepared and able to carry out different roles and not necessarily a specific, identified role. The ever-quickening pace change occurs may indeed require sudden, unforeseen changes of programme. Talented individuals should hence be invariably ready to perform well and yield positive results under any circumstances including, of course, first time circumstances.

HR is growingly focusing on the idea of employee experience, but it is glaringly obvious that any employer efforts and bids to provide its staff an excellent employee experience is doomed to miserably fail whether not supported by the organization management. The underpinning component and funding pillar of employee experience practices in a business should be hence definitely represented by the quality of its management, which can clearly make or break individual engagement, motivation and sense of belonging.

Findings of a recent research study conducted by ADP UK, The Workforce View in Europe 2018 (ADP, 2018), reveal that bad management also produces disastrous effects upon employee productivity. In particular, the study found that only 23% of respondents believe that their work environment enables them to be productive “all the time”, 46% claimed this happens “most of the time”, 22% “some of the time” and 10% “rarely” or “never”; bad management (19%) was indeed cited as the main reason for employees failing to reach maximum productivity (followed by inefficient systems and processes – 18% and slow and inefficient technology – 15%).

Bad management can indeed be regarded not only as a direct, but also as an indirect cause for employees wanting to leave their organization. ADP’s study also suggested that 30% of employees feel so stressed in their workplace insofar as considering to seek a new job. Despite stress levels at work may be influenced by many variables, it cannot be denied that many of these variables, like workload, job design, task delegation, etc., actually depend on managers.

Individuals having problems with their managers will leave the organization by reason of their manager’s incapability to manage and lead, but it can be hardly contended that under such circumstances the employer could not be blamed.

HR can and should play a significant role in helping employers identify suitable individuals for leadership positions. As contended by Furnham (2018), in their talent acquisition process, employers should take heed not only of the traits, skills, competencies and behaviour regarded as necessary to fill a given role – selecting, but also of the undesirable traits and features, that is, of those qualities which candidates should not have or not have beyond a certain degree – screening or selecting-out. During the talent acquisition process, HR should thus also investigate and look for evidence of the traits and types of behaviour considered unacceptable by the employer and regard these as select-out factors.

The insights offered by Furnham (2018) into the talent acquisition process are indeed valuable and also relevant to the process used to identify future leaders within an organization. The prime objective is averting that talented individuals, who may have the competencies and ability to lead others, will not at some point “derail.” There are many components of a manager personality which may account for his/her derailment, but some factors can prove to be more significant than others. The most accurate predictors of an individual attitude to effectually fill a management role and avert failure are the individual:

• Disposition to develop and maintain good, long-term relationships with different types of people;
• Self-awareness;
• Ability to adapt and learn (Furnham, 2018).

Identifying the right individual for the right position and prepare this to effectually perform in the new role, represents a daunting task for any employer. Making choices carefully and plan in advance enable organizations to offer potential future leaders the opportunity to gain the capability and experience necessary to attain the desired standard before being appointed, enabling in turn the identified individuals to feel confident and self-assured in their new role. The adoption of this approach will benefit the organization in terms of employer brand, employee engagement and motivation, and ultimately productivity.

The adage “employees leave their managers and not their employers” might also prove to still hold true, but this has to be regarded as the tip of the iceberg and not as the root cause of the problem, whose responsibility to address invariably rests with employers.

Longo, R., (2017), Has The Adage “Employees Leave Their Managers And Not Their Employers” Ever Held True?; Milan: HR Professionals, [online].