all right today we are going to be talking about situational leadership and it's kind of the next step in the evolution of this behavioral approach that we started to talk about last week i was originally created and developed primarily by a leadership expert named ken blanchard 1969 or so he initially initially put the theory forth and it's very much in practice today the most recent model the one we're going to take a look at here in just a moment is from 2013 and it's kind of the gold standard in this arena of what we call situational leadership now what is situational leadership it's really a prescriptive approach to leadership in that it suggests how a leader can be effective in really many types of leadership settings across across a wide range of organizational goals it's how a leader can be effective and it's a model that suggests to leaders that they should behave based on the demands of a particular situation hence situational leadership the situation dictates the leadership behavior and there's really two major pieces to it the first is the leadership style and when we refer to leadership style these are basically the behavior patterns of the person in leadership who's attempting to influence somebody else so the behavior patterns of the person who's doing the influencing and there's sort of two dimensions if you will to these leadership styles um it's directive and supportive directive behaviors and supportive behaviors directive behaviors are where we really the leader essentially gives directions you establish the goals you establish the method of evaluation you as the leader set the timelines you define the roles you share how the goals are to be met uh you clarify it oftentimes through a one-way communication what's to be done how it's to be done and who's responsible for getting it done it's directive you're directing you're setting the direction that is coming from the leader the other dimension the other type of behavior is what we call supportive and the supportive is going to help the individual and the group members start to maybe feel more comfortable about themselves comfortable at their co-workers comfortable about the work situation it typically involves two-way communication and responses that are going to show social support that are going to show emotional support this could include behaviors such as asking for input the leader is going to ask the followers hey guys what do you think hey what would you think would be the best way to do it so we would ask for input maybe solving the problems together with the leader bringing in the followers offering praise offering encouragement maybe sharing personal information along the way listening so it's more interpersonal skills it's less one-way directing traffic and more let's build a relationship and solve it there together now these two dimensions can be kind of coupled together and really create four styles that we're going to see in a grid here uh we have the supportive behavior going up and down over here we have the directive behaviors going left and right don't worry about the bottom just for a minute this is low this is high this corner is low and this corner is high so as we move in this direction we have more supportive behaviors we're increasing the leader is increasing those supportive two-way interactional behaviors as we move this way the leader is increasing the direction the sort of one-way here's what you need to do leadership in this corner we'll work our way around this in a counterclockwise manner in this one we have what we call s1 so s1 is going to be high in directive but low in supportive so it's very much the leader is giving instructions and then he's supervising toward results and this is what blanchard would call directing s1 directing high directive low support given directions telling them what to do and then supervising to make sure the work is accomplished as we move up this way into what we call s2 now you can see we're high directive because we're over this way we're high supportive because we're moving up in this direction this is what blanchard would refer to as coaching and in this one we're going to get some input from the follower but at the end of the day the leader is going to make the final decision so we have supportive behaviors hey what do you think hey guys what's going to be the most effective but at the end of the day the leaders call in the shot and is directing as we slide over this way to what we call s3 now we're high and supportive we're up high but we're moving back toward being low in directive high and supportive low in directive and this is what blanchard would refer to as supporting the leader is not necessarily maybe as focused on the goals as much as bringing out the followers skills bringing out the followers insights the follower in this level can decide sort of on the day-to-day but the leaders available to help them solve problems when we drop down here into s4 this is what blanchard would refer to as delegating the leader is offering low support and low directive low supportive behaviors and low directive and essentially what we have here is the leader is really offering kind of less of the goal input like hey this is what you need to do and they're offering less of the social support and really by this point you have facilitated the followers confidence and now the leader is essentially delegating responsibly you're capable of doing it so i'm going to get a little bit more hands off i'm not going to tell you exactly what you need to do and nor am i going to have to sit there and cheer you on to make you feel good about what you're doing now when you think of these leadership styles which is the best approach well it depends effectiveness leadership effectiveness in this situational leadership model effectiveness happens when the leader can match their style supportive directive or some combination of both to the commitment and the competence of the followers remember i told you there were two pieces to this first is the leadership style second are the is the development level of the follower and that has two components competence and commitment competence the the mastery of the skill commitment the mastery of the the attitude uh so when we think of competence particularly that is the skill level that's necessary relative to the task i want you to lead worship well i have no musical ability whatsoever low competence i want you to preach i've never done that before and don't know how okay so low competence competence is the skill necessary relative to the task commitment is the motivation level relative to the task do i have a positive attitude about it am i committed to it do i want to try right so some people have high competence they're very gifted communicators but when you ask them if they want to preach no no no i'm i'm too timid or i'm too nervous or or i don't want to or i think you're better and they defer right so we have a commitment level the motivation to do it the positive attitude to do it and we have competence level the skill necessary to do it now those two things competence and commitment can also come together and create kind of four development levels which we're going to see across the bottom d1 and by the way we're going to put this up larger so you can see the whole thing but i want to at least be able to point to it for here for a minute d1 is where we have low competence but high commitment so they don't know how to do it but they'd love to learn this is kind of kind of typical of a new hire right so somebody that's new to your organization man i'm so excited to be working at the church well what do you do i have no idea but now that i'm here i'm going to be excited to learn somebody who is a d1 is going to be best led by a style of s1 so that's why when i asked like what's most effective what's the best approach it depends i'm not going to we tend to want to think we'll delegate but if if the person has low competence they have no idea what they're doing i'm not gonna just turn them loose in fact what i'm gonna do with somebody with low competence but is engaged and wants to do well is i'm going to be very directive with them a d1 fits very well with that s1 style of leadership i'm going to be very directive here's how you do it here's exactly i'm going to work the steps here's the goals here's the steps here's the skill needed i'll be very hands-on i don't necessarily need to go man i'm so glad you're here gosh i'm you know and try to motivate them they're very motivated they just don't know how so i'm gonna use a directive approach uh when we slide over to d2 and this kind of combination of competence and commitment d2 i've got low to some competence i'm i'm starting to learn the skill but this would be somebody who maybe has a low commitment level um and they would fit well in an s to coaching which is high directive high supportive an example of this might be somebody who kind of sees their serving at your church or your ministry is sort of like what we have here at the church i lead a four-letter word that's a bad word a volunteer so i'm kind of doing you a favor by showing up and helping with the kids or oh we're doing a community project it's an outreach but okay i don't really want to come set up tables but i but i will i'm i'm capable it's not super like you know technical work and i come but it's not like you know i come or gosh we have here in the in the north america one of the things that happens a lot in our various states is sometimes to go to the university you can get discounts on going to the university if you have a number of community service hours so we'll have teenagers that will show up to serve the commitment is not necessary to the kingdom the commitment they may never even come to church they might not be a part of our youth group but our church is doing something and they'll show up because they need volunteer hours so it's kind of low commitment they have a different motivation it's not super skilled work those people need to be led highly directive and highly supportive so i'm coaching them okay i want you to roll the table out here and set it up and here's how you're going to decorate the table and when you're standing at the table i need you to smile and wave right we're directing exactly what we want to do and we sort of need to inject some motivation inject some positive attitude hey this is important for our project may not feel super important to you but it's important for our project because this is representing our god so we try to inject a little bit of inspiration inject a little bit of motivation we're we're fostering both because the competence may or may not necessarily be there but the commitment uh certainly isn't there we slide over here to what we call d3 and now we have a moderate to high level of commitment or i'm sorry moderate to high level of competence they're pretty darn good at what they do and their commitment is so-so it can vary a little bit d3 is going to slide up to s3 s3 is supporting it's low in the directive so they already have a pretty well developed skill set but their commitment as they could take it or leave it so i want to be more highly supportive behaviors which will affect their motivation this could be something gosh how many of us have had a church where somebody comes in who's maybe very very skilled as a sound technician we live here in orlando where there is so many different live venues between walt disney world and universal studios and theme parks and there are a lot of people with very technical skills of running sound or you know tons of live music venues they can run sound they can run light they may not be super committed to the church they may not be like oh man i'm going to use these gifts and skills that i have to the glory of god they might be willing to help you know sure and some days they're willing to jump in and other days we have to call them and say hey service starts in about an hour where are you right there their commitment is variable but their skill set they don't need me watching over telling them which dials to twist on the sound board so i'm less directive and in fact if i be more directive and they already have a well-developed skill set it's actually going to hurt their motivation because they're going to feel like i know what i'm doing like kind of give me some space my my leadership to them now has to be more helping them see the importance what can we do to support you do you do you need a ride is there you know when you arrive what if we have your favorite starbucks here like we're gonna start to address their motivation and be supportive on some of those attitudinal issues uh will be my leadership more than on their skill set when we slide over here to d4 you guessed it d4 goes with s4 our d4s are high competence high commitment they're good at what they do they understand why they do it they do it with a good attitude those are the kind of folks that i now can move into an s for delegating low supportive low directed they don't need me standing there cheering them on and motivating them other than thanking them periodically and being grateful that to jesus that they're in our church uh and i also don't need to necessarily sit around and monitor their skills and tell them exactly what to do i can in many ways sort of step back release them to do what they love to do and are passionate about and what they clearly have a skill set to do now i start to to delegate and release some ministry so which of these is best it depends and this is how this model works effective leadership occurs when the leader can effectively diagnose the development level of the follower in a certain situation and then exhibit the prescribed leadership that that fo that matches the follower and the situation the best coaches i ever played for when i was playing professional basketball were those who understood how to motivate each individual player and they understood the situation the worst coaches had one style and it usually involves screaming and yelling of us not trying hard enough so for example if i'm not scoring enough points i could either need to develop my competence my skill set on shooting for example uh or i could need to try harder in the game to get open and things like that well depending on the player kind of depended on what they needed some players were motivated but man they just that the technique wasn't there and they needed to be coached uh or they needed to be uh maybe directed like hey let's work on this specific skill development but the motivation was there they would come in and put in the work and and and once they knew what the work needed to be then there were other players that man they were super skilled they didn't actually need skill work they just weren't motivated and didn't put in the effort they needed their effort worked on their attitude worked on and the best coaches could look at each player and figure out who they were and which of these types of styles they needed to adapt to that situation so which of these is best which of these is the goal which of these do we want to to see happen depends depends on the situation if i'm developing leaders that i'm going to launch ministry with or hand off or send out or those kind of things i want to be working toward delegating developing people who have high competence and high commitment i want to be identifying them i want to be developing do they need more competence developed do we need more commitment developed do i need to bring directive behaviors do i need great to bring supportive behaviors and when i start to see competence and commitment emerge at a satisfactory level where they don't really need me directing them and they don't need me cheering them on in a perfect world this would be amazing i've developed a leader and i can start to delegate but sometimes the situation doesn't call for me developing high competence or high commitment sometimes i just need to get it done we had a an instance here where we had a a a a thank you breakfast for all of our volunteers and essentially what we did is man we cooked them breakfast and we thanked them and you know we got all dressed up and you know served them and we made the food and all of that what type of leadership would something like that require it would require directing in that i don't care if anybody on my staff who's serving our volunteers i don't care if they ever develop the skills of a chef in fact i'd rather they not waste their time learning to cook amazing food and i'm not getting around to where we can delegate meals to them we don't provide meals very often it was a one-time project everybody was excited to serve we were so i didn't need to go come on guys let's honor our volunteers let's honor our support let's honor our those who were giving of their time and our service teams we didn't we didn't need to do that our staff was already engaged but i also don't need to develop their skill set so so essentially the person in charge of the event was like hey fry some bacon hey scramble some eggs hey make some pancakes hey cook the toast hey set the table it's just telltale tell telltale one time event and directive directing style of leadership was actually appropriate given who we had none of us knew how to be great cooks and what we were trying to do a one-time event that was going to be celebratory and we were all motivated for it so the way this model really really works is i determine the task and i determine the type of people i have what does the task involve does it require a high level of competence does it require a high level of commitment what how do my people line up to what's required of the task are they compared to the nature of the task at hand and by the way some people are incredibly competent in some facets of ministry and have no competence in other facets of ministry that's perfectly fine i wouldn't lead them the same way in every situation then if it's something where they're highly competent and highly effective and highly motivated man i'm going to delegate it if it's something where it's new to them skill set wise or they have some you know skill but they kind of don't want to do it it's just sort of one of those tasks we need them to do so i look at the nature of the task what's required i look at the where my personnel fit up for the task with regards to competence and commitment and then i now based on the situation right we've talked about leadership from the perspective of the leader of the follower of the situation now i'm evaluating the situation and i'm evaluating the type of follower and now i will employ directive behaviors or supportive behaviors to match the situation and the type of follower that i have all right what are the strengths we always like to talk about strengths and weaknesses um the strength of situational leadership honestly at least here in north america and across north america is it's recognized by many as a standard for training leaders right we if i'm developing leaders i eventually want to swing them around to where i can delegate to them we've all seen somebody who's very skilled not committed and we've delegated something to him too soon and it didn't go well we've all seen somebody who was super committed and wanted to lead it and maybe didn't have the skills and it's not gone well so we need to be looking at both of those and then eventually releasing ministry so it's recognized as a simple way to train leaders the other thing is it's practical honestly it's it's pretty easy to understand it's pretty easy to employ i have two facets of of my leadership style and behaviors supportive or directive i've got two kind of characteristics i look at in the followers competence and commitment and i marry those two to these two and it becomes a win-win um there's third strength is there's very clear prescriptions for how a leader should act if they want to enhance their leadership effectiveness it's very clear if we're not effective leading in a certain situation i'm going to pull back and i'm going to look at the situation and what it requires of the followers and whether my followers have the competence or the commitment to it and now i'm going to adjust what it is that i'm going to do be more supportive less supportive more directive less directive it's not one size fits all it's i have options between how i gauge two types of leadership behaviors so very very clear prescriptions on how to enhance my leadership in any given situation fourth and last strength and there's probably some more but these are the ones i want to share with you is that it recognizes and stresses that there's not one best leadership style leaders honestly we all know this need to be effect need to be flexible and we need to be willing to adapt our styles to the requirements of the situation leaders need to be flexible now this is helpful for me as a leader to say there are different styles i can adapt as a leader who is leading other developing leaders we also want to realize that in them there's not just one style right sometimes we can think they need to be exactly like me they need to be more directive or they need to be more supportive they need to be able to discern what the situation calls for and they need to be able to discern what their followers bring to the table and then they match their style to that so it can really uh be helpful in helping us understand there's not just sort of one style that fits all uh there's a couple of weaknesses the first one is kind of out there in the academic world not that that necessarily matters here again i i find myself more of a practitioner scholar than scholar so i want to know what works this works but those that are more in a scholarly pursuit there's not a huge body of research findings around situational leadership there is a lot of practice finding around situational leadership and it's very effective but we don't have a huge amount of research base behind it if that's something that is important to you second weakness and this one really matters to me is it's not clear based on this model how followers move from developing to becoming more developed it's not clear how commitment changes it's not clear how competence is built now this is a model that's effective in accomplishing the organization's goals for sure but it doesn't necessarily grow the follower what i'm doing is not going how do i grow my follower around this wheel it's not that it's can i identify what my follower has at the moment and this is the type of style i would utilize so it doesn't tell me how to grow the person but this will help me accomplish organizational goals very very effectively by the way talking about growing the follower that's going to be coming up in the next video on servant leadership where the emphasis will shift to if i can grow more committed more competent followers i can actually now start to reproduce ministry but that's beyond the scope of of situational leadership last weakness something just to think about is it doesn't necessarily show how to handle groups what if i have a wide range of people what if i have some super competent people that have no commitment what if i have some super committed people that have no competence what if i have highly committed highly competent and what if i have people that don't have either and they're all in one group and now i've got to motivate a group um this is helpful in that i can recognize the individuals within the group and adopt a style for each of them but it doesn't really tell me how if i'm standing up and trying to move this group and empower this group and adopt a one-to-many style doesn't really tell me how to do that and that can create some complexity so if i'm on a on a team if i'm on a in a smaller group if in the course of a work group i have weekly one-offs with somebody this will certainly help me how to how to address the individual and and put them in the most effective position to move the project forward uh but it doesn't necessarily help me how to handle a diverse group this is situational leadership and i'm going to ask that we put up now the the slide so you can take a look at this if you want to screenshot it and you can see how it all fits together in a little bit larger than this and next we're going to start talking about servant leadership [Music]