Framework library · Leadership, teams and culture

Situational leadership

Situational leadership holds that no single way of managing suits everyone, or even one person across all their work. The style should follow the person's competence and commitment on the task in hand: more direction where skill is low, more support where commitment or confidence is low, and less of both as they grow. The unit is a person on a task, not a person.

LevelFoundational
TimeTen minutes per person and task; revisit monthly while people are learning
Who to involveThe manager, ideally with each person in a one-to-one, because their own view of their competence and commitment is part of the evidence.
Also calledSituational Leadership model, Hersey-Blanchard model, SLII, life cycle theory of leadership, situational leadership theory

Use it when

  • Someone is new to a task, or a familiar task has changed (a new tool, a new customer, a promotion), and you need to decide how closely to manage it.
  • You manage a mixed team and suspect you use the same style with everyone, whether it fits or not.
  • A capable person's commitment has dropped on one piece of work and you want to respond without taking the work back.
  • You are planning which tasks to hand over and need to know who is ready for which.

Avoid it when

  • The problem is the task itself: unclear goals, missing tools or impossible deadlines. Fix the work first; no style makes up for it.
  • Performance has stayed below an agreed standard for months. That needs the performance management cycle, with evidence and a plan, not only a change of style.
  • You want to understand how a whole team is developing. Use Tuckman's stages for the group; this model works person by person.
  • The question is who decides what. Decision rights belong in a RACI matrix, or in the levels of authority of a delegation matrix.

How to run it

  1. List the people and the tasks that matter now

    One row per person per task. Someone can be expert at fault diagnosis and a beginner at running a shift, and needs a different style for each.

  2. Judge competence on the evidence

    Low: has not done it, or needs help each time. Some: does it with occasional help. High: does it well without help and could teach it. Use what you have seen, not grade or length of service.

  3. Judge commitment separately

    Commitment is confidence plus motivation for this task. High: keen and sure of themselves. Variable: willing on some days, hesitant on others. Low: unconvinced, discouraged or unsure. Ask them; the answer often surprises.

  4. Read the style the register suggests

    Competence sets the direction: low or some competence needs it. Commitment sets the support: low or variable commitment needs it. Telling is direction with little discussion, selling is direction with explanation and encouragement, participating is support while the person decides how, and delegating hands over both.

  5. Tell the person which style you are using and why

    Agree it with them. A style that is explained reads as help; one that is not can read as distrust or neglect.

  6. Set a date to look again

    As competence grows, step back on direction; as commitment rises, step back on support. A style that never changes means the person is not developing or you are not noticing.

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Mistakes to avoid

  • Rating the person instead of the task. The same engineer can need telling on one job and delegating on another, and one rating per person hides that.
  • Mistaking enthusiasm for competence. Keen beginners are often left alone too early and lose confidence when they fail.
  • Over-supervising experts because the task is high-stakes. Agree checkpoints and controls instead, and keep the style matched to the person.
  • Delegating to someone whose commitment has dropped, then taking the work back when it slips. Find out why commitment fell before handing work over.
  • Using the style names with people as verdicts. Talk about the help they need, not which box they are in.

Where it comes from

Paul Hersey and Kenneth H. Blanchard, "Life cycle theory of leadership", Training and Development Journal 23(5), 1969, later renamed Situational Leadership and developed in their textbook Management of Organizational Behavior. Blanchard's revised version, SLII, was set out with Patricia and Drea Zigarmi in Leadership and the One Minute Manager (1985). The rule the workbench uses to suggest a style is our own simplification, not either organisation's materials. Source.

Situational Leadership is a registered trademark of Leadership Studies, Inc. (Center for Leadership Studies), and SLII is a registered trademark of The Ken Blanchard Companies. This page describes the model independently and is not endorsed by either.

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