What are the Qualities of a Situational Leader?
In the previous articles we have learned what situational leadership is, matching leadership styles to employee needs, and what it looks like in practice. But, what does the leader themselves look like? What qualities does a situational leader embody? There can be a difference where someone attempts to ‘deploy’ situational leadership, versus embrace its core purpose and ensure they are connecting with their employees. A true situational leader will also be a servant leader.
Humble
Situational leaders see themselves as the background player. They are not looking for the glory that may come from connecting with a team and developing top talent. Rather, their enjoyment comes from seeing that team thrive and grow together as well as individuals. The sum of the parts is greater than any one person, especially themselves. That doesn’t mean they are not confident in what they accomplish, or proud of the results they deliver. You just won’t see them shouting that from the mountaintop.
Engaged
One must be engaged to create engagement. A situational leader will be ‘all in’, especially for their team. Their desire, and what they will take the most pride in, is knowing their team chooses to do what they do each day and has a passion for the work they deliver. The engaged situational leader looks to support in a three-sixty way: up, down, and across the organization.
Empathetic
Understanding how your team feels and building strong connections around that is a key component to a situational leader. Engaging empathetically strengthens the bonds between learner and leader. Utilizing this effectively ensures that the leader can sense when a different leadership style may be necessary very early on. Visual, audible, and other subtle clues can emerge that indicate that the employee is feeling a certain way about the circumstances they find themselves in. Identifying and understanding that early allows the leader to make the shifts they need that will help the employee.
These next three are all very similar, but have some important distinctions. In the situational leader, they utilize each in a specific way, leading to matching the styles the individual employee needs.
Developer
Personal growth should be a top-level outcome of working with a situational leader. Development is not just learning something new. It is about being exposed to new situations, gaining experience in meaningful new ways, and being provided a safe space to try new ideas. The situational leader encourages and supports all of that.
Teacher
If development is about encouragement, trialing, and growing, teaching is about the sharing of knowledge and information. There are times and places where the transference of knowledge is the critical role the leader plays. This likely manifests itself most often in the ‘Directing or S1’ style, while the employee is in the ‘Enthusiastic Beginner or D1 stage’. It can certainly happen in all phases of the situational leadership framework, but would be more common in the early phases of a new project, role, or set of circumstances.
Coach
Coaching begins to combine elements from both teaching and development. It starts first by observing the actions and behaviors of the team members to gain insight and real-life scenarios to understand the outcomes from the actions taken. Without observation, it is difficult to provide specific feedback for growth and any needed change. Coaching combines pushing forward, as well as providing patience through the learning curves and while new skills are begging developed.
Situational leadership shares many common denominators with another of Ken Blanchard’s teachings, the One Minute Manager. Written in the 1980s with Spencer Johnson, this must read leadership book for any aspiring leader outlines three simple steps for a leader to support their team. The six traits above clearly play into all areas of this.
One Minute Management
Goal Setting – clear expectations
Effective leadership comes from having clear expectations with the team members, all knowing their role and the desired outcomes. Goals may be used broadly here, but it is an agreement between employee and leader on what results will be delivered and by when.
Praising – reinforcing the positive behaviors and outcomes
Catch people doing things right. That is the best way to create the desired behaviors. This will evolve over time, but this starts with praising progress and ‘almost right’ to begin with, and moving the employee along to ‘exactly right’. Again, it becomes clear how situational leadership plays into this. There will be a lot more praising of ‘almost right’ in S1 and S2, moving to ‘you are just about there’ in S3, and finally in S4 you are recognizing the full expectations being delivered consistently. Praising creates progress and leads to the positive behaviors you are looking for.
Redirect – coaching for improvement and success
There will be times when employees fall off the path and need guidance back. At one point this was referred to as a reprimand, but you can already see where that can be taken in the wrong way and feel more punitive. The situational leader knows how to nudge the learner back on course by calling out the specific behaviors that are not on target and can reconnect back to the expected path. You can see how the traits above would be critical for this step especially, but really for all three of the pieces to the One Minute Manager.
All of this requires being out and around your team. Leading by walking around enables the observations to happen, the specific and immediate follow-up conversations, as well as encouraging the team to seek you out. Being visible and available is also a cornerstone trait of any situational leader.
It would be easy to mistake situational leadership as too warm and fuzzy. Done poorly, it would look, feel, and sound like something that only a Human Resources group would put together as a webinar for learning. However, done well, with a leader who not only embraces, but personifies the traits of being humble, engaged, and leading empathetically while working as a developer of talent, teacher of information, and coach of behaviors you can see there is a lot more to an effective situational leader. Situational leadership is the framework for a culture of accountability. We will explore that further as we look at the benefits and outcomes of situational leadership in our next article.
Have you seen these traits in your leaders? How would your team rate you on each of those?
Previous Situational Leadership Articles
What is Situational Leadership?
Situational Leadership is Not Just Environmental; It Matches Leadership Support to Learner Needs
What Does Situational Leadership Look Like in Action?
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Photo by Karl Fredrickson on Unsplash