Jeff Standridge (Intro):
Are you ready to change the trajectory of your business and see massive improvements? Each week, we’ll share strategies and practices to generate sustained results and long-lasting success in your organization. Welcome to the Innovation Junkies Podcast.
Jeff Standridge:
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Innovation Junkies Podcast. I’m Jeff Standridge.
Jeff Amerine:
This is Jeff Amerine. Glad to be back, Jeff.
Jeff Standridge:
Hey, me too, man. How’re you doing?
Jeff Amerine:
Good, good.
Jeff Standridge:
Hey, today we’re talking about situational leadership. When I first started studying leadership, I was introduced to this concept of authoritarian leadership, democratic leadership, and what they called laissez-faire, live and let live kind of leadership. And the leadership or the management theorist at that time basically said, “Oh yeah, you stay away from authoritarian leadership. You stay away from laissez-faire leadership. And you really need to be a democratic leader. You really need to kind of manage by committee.” And that really had an influence on me all the time. Obviously, authoritarian has high control and little freedom, and laissez-faire has high freedom and little control. And then kind of like the three bears that democratic leadership was just right. What do you feel about that? How did you feel? Did that resonate with you when you were going through that training?
Jeff Amerine:
Absolutely. And we got that early on back to the early, early 1980s when I was at the Naval Academy, obviously a big emphasis on leadership training and education there. And at the time, I think there was already some awareness within military thinking that you used a particular style based on a couple of things. And one is the level of maturity of the people that were working for you. In other words, their professional maturity, where they were in their career, education, all that. The other was the actual situation. If you’re driving a ship or you’re in an aircraft, you don’t have a lot of time if you’re an aircraft commander or captain of a ship or the officer on deck to have a debate about what to do if it’s an urgent situation. So I mean, that kind of sets up the idea of you use the right style based on what situation you’re in.
Jeff Standridge:
Yes, situational leadership. And that’s really the topic we’re talking about today. And Paul Hersey kind of coined that term Situational Leadership, and he basically took that authoritarian, democratic and laissez-faire kind of continuum, if you will, and he plotted below it this concept of directive leadership, which is the authoritarian, “Hey, you go do this,” to a coaching style of leadership that’s kind of in between authoritarian and democratic. It’s that you direct a little bit, you give them some rope, and then you coach them along the way. Then there’s this supportive leadership, which is between democratic and laissez-faire. And then finally you’ve got delegating where you hand it off. And that really actually made a lot of sense to me, and I’ve used it for years since that.
They say different strokes for different folks because people need to be led differently, and then different strokes for the same folks based upon the situation. And they like to talk about this concept of the situation being, as you just said, the risk of the responsibility or the task at hand plotted against their competence and confidence in doing it. The example I’ve used before is if I’m training a room full of people and the building breaks out in a fire, I’m probably not going to say, “Show of hands, what do you think we need to do?” That’s not the time for coaching, supporting or delegating type of leadership. It needs to be directive, and so it’s like, “You go pull the fire doors. You call 911. The three of you, let’s get out of here. Follow them out and I’ll be around behind.”
When I was a paramedic, it was the same thing. I would have people on the scene who wanted to help with a mass casualty incident. All right. You do this and you do that and you get out of the way because you’re running around crazy over here. So, that’s based upon the situation, directive leadership might be the absolute kind of leadership to use and any other kind could prove fatal.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, absolutely. And where leaders sometimes struggle is if they’ve got one tool and it’s a hammer, the authoritarian, and they apply that to every situation, you can get evidence of what that does to an organization by looking at things like churn rate and employee satisfaction and a whole variety of other measures. So again, it’s another one of those things where the leader has to be willing to kind of shine the mirror on themselves and to also look critically at what’s the situation and where are my people in terms of their maturity level. If you have a bunch of brand-new 17-year-olds right out of high school that need a lot of direction because they haven’t had a lot of life experience, you got to be aware of that. If you have a bunch of PhD-level research talent that is used to being kind of self-directed, you got to be aware of that. So, really understanding your people and where they are and what they react to, I think also informs which of these situational leadership styles you should use.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, I agree. And I think developing them to evaluate themselves. So, people say, “Well, how do you know which situation you use?” And before I get into that, I want to share a couple of examples of how a leader that I had, used different styles with me based upon the situation. I was a 26-year-old, young assistant professor in an academic program and my department chair said, “Hey, I want you to take over our recruitment and selection of candidates every year.” Because we had a specific program that people came through. And the first year she directed, she said, “You go do this in October and you do this in November and you do this in December and February, you do this, and then we select in March,” and et cetera. The second year she kind of coached and supported. She said, “Okay, you know what to do between now and the end of the year, go do those things and then let’s touch base after the first of the year. If you need me, come see me.”
And then periodically she would say, “How’s it going? You need anything? Everything going alright?” Well, then by the third year, she completely delegated it to me and I redesigned the process, improved the process, used new selection tools, it was mine and I was running it. She completely delegated it to me. She was measuring me on the outcomes. Did we have a cohort of qualified candidates at the end of the day? But then while I’m running and she’s delegating this to me over here, she came to me and said, “I want you to learn how to do the budget.” And the first year she directed me, “We do this in October and we do this in December.” The second year she coached and supported me. But because she was using a directive or a coaching supporting style there, she didn’t have to revert back and start doing the same thing to me in the admissions process, I was good to go on that.
So, she was using two or three different styles of leadership with me based upon the situation and my confidence and my competence and her confidence in my competence, so to speak. So, just an example. And I like when people ask, “Well, how am I going to know which style to use?” My response is, “Ask the people that you’re leading.” You say, “Here’s the task, here are the outcomes that we have to have. Here’s what we need to have done. Tell me what kind of leadership you think you need from me in order to make this happen.” And if they say, “Oh, just let me run with it.” Okay. Well, if I’m confident in their competence, I will let them run with it. But if I’m not, then I might say, “Well, I tell you what, you go put the plan together and show me what your plan and what your milestones are going to be. And then let me look at that, and based upon that plan, then we’ll decide kind of how to go forward.”
And if they come back with a plan that makes absolute and complete sense, then you might just delegate to them according to that plan with the understanding that if the plan changes, they come back. Or if they bring back a plan that’s not quite there, that doesn’t give you confidence that they really understand what they’re doing, then you may revert back to more of that directive coaching style. And so having that conversation with your team is critical in determining where are they on the continuum relative to this responsibility that you’re asking them to fulfill.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah. And it’s an element, to use another cliché, it’s kind of trust but verify. And your degree of confidence in their ability to have a more delegative approach, it grows based on the outcomes you see from them and the performance you see from them and also the feedback you get from them. As you said, if it’s something brand new to them, good team members are going to say, “I need more guidance.” And the good ones are going to know, they’re going to be comfortable coming back to you and saying, “Hey, I need a little bit more. I need your help knocking down these obstacles or these issues because I’m not yet comfortable with it.”
Jeff Standridge:
That’s a great point. That goes back to another episode that we talked about building that culture where people feel like they can come to you and be vulnerable with you as the leader. And this is another example of where that plays out, is if you’ve built the right climate, you’ve built the right culture, you treat people with mutual respect and encouragement, they’re going to say, “Hey, I need some additional guidance here.” Hey, no harm, no foul, happy to give you that. And so that whole concept of situational leadership, I have just found it to be so beneficial. Whether it’s executive development sessions with groups, and I know you’ve done the same thing, and you begin to see the light bulbs come on.
Because all of us, particularly when you inherit a group of people, you’ve got people at varying levels, and how do you sort through who’s going to be able to do what? Well, this concept of beginning to have a common language around directing, coaching, supporting and delegating styles of leadership, beginning to have a common language about that, and then beginning to have conversations with your team to help them assess their confidence and competence against the risks of the task is a great way to lay that groundwork to make it easier on you as the leader to get higher, more sustained results from your people.
Jeff Amerine:
And the one thing I would say too is this is sort of a lifelong process as a leader, and most of the topics that we cover, it’s not something you can get exposed to one time and have it done. You need to constantly invest in yourself and in your team by renewing some of this thinking. Having conversations about the thinking, taking courses, getting refreshed, engaging with groups like Innovation Junkie to have that outside objective third party, it’s really important. And it’s an investment, again, in the thing that will make the most difference for the organization, and that’s the team and the way the team is being led, that’s the number one asset. I know I say that a lot, but it’s really true. It’s not the technology, it’s not the market, it’s the team more often than not, that’s going to make the biggest difference in organizational performance.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah. And in our executive coaching engagements, and we’re doing a lot more of those just for our listeners, everything we do here is around helping organizations achieve sustained strategic growth. And we find that the effectiveness of the organization is a key pillar to that sustained strategic growth, and the effectiveness of the leaders that lead that organization is another key pillar. And so we find more and more, it’s about helping them build a strategic growth plan. But then when we start, most of our clients want us to engage in the advisory services to help them execute that plan. We find more and more that we’re doing executive coaching for the CEO, we’re doing executive coaching for two or three members of the C-level suites. And many of these tools that we’ve been talking about in the past few episodes come to bear on this. And to watch an organization transform, which we have several right now, one of which told us not long ago, that his 10 years further down the road than what he was two years ago. And that’s really fulfilling to see.
Jeff Amerine:
And it’s amazing how helping them smooth off these friction points, these organizational leadership friction points, can just unlock the potential of an otherwise good organization to really get to levels they wouldn’t have gotten to otherwise.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. But as we know, our friend, Jim Collins, says, “Good is the enemy of great.”
Jeff Amerine:
That’s right.
Jeff Standridge:
Good is the enemy of great. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been another episode of the Innovation Junkies Podcast. We appreciate you for joining.
Jeff Amerine:
See you next time.
Jeff Amerine (Outro):
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