Self Development-Leadership Theory

Hersey’s and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership

The Classic Situational Leadership® model of management and leadership style also illustrates the ideal development of a team from immaturity (stage 1) through to maturity (stage 4) during which management an leadership style progressively develops from relatively detached task-directing (1), through the more managerially-involved stages of explanation (2) and participation (3), to the final stage of relatively detached delegation (4), at which time ideally the team is largely self-managing, and hopefully contains at least one potential management/leadership successor.

The aim of the leader or manager is therefore to develop the team through the four stages, and then to move on to another role.

Ironically this outcome is feared by many managers. However, good organisations place an extremely high value on leaders and managers who can achieve this.

The model also illustrates four main leadership and management styles, which a good leader is able to switch between, depending on the sitution (ie., the team’s maturity relating to a particular task, project or challenge.)

Situational Leadership® is a trademark of the Center for Leadership Studies, which represents the interests and products of Dr Paul Hersey. Ken Blanchard (who incidentally wrote ‘The One Minute Manager’) went on to develop the Situational Leadership® system into what he called Situational Leadership II®, and which now covers a range of products marketed by his organization, The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Use of material relating to Situational Leadership® and/or Situational Leadership II® requires licence and agreement from the respective companies.

Tannenbaum and Schmidt Continuum

The Tannenbaum and Schmidt Continuum also correlates in a way to the models above – esentially that management style tends to offer more freedom as the group matures.

Tannenbaum&Schmidt Continuum
The diagonal line loosely equates to the dotted line on the other two models. As the team matures and becomes more self-suffient and self-directing, so the manager’s style should react accordingly, ideally becoming more detached, more delegating, encouraging and enablung the group to run itself, and for a successor (or if you are a good manager or a lucky one, for more than one successor) to emerge.