Adaptive Leadership

“In order to achieve the optimum performance from each individual, the leader chooses the style that will best match the task and the team member or individual.”??Therese Linton

I have used this concept for decades and the more you consciously choose the leadership style for each team member the easier and more natural it becomes. You can’t always get the perfect match so it’s important to be flexible and adjust along the way. Even more critical is to realise that you don’t use the same style for a team member in every situation – once a day you might be asking them to undertake a task that is well within their capabilities so you can delegate. Another day you may be asking them to take on a task that is a big stretch for their current capabilities so you may choose coaching or directive depending on their level of confidence.

Adaptive Leadership Model

Many techniques and frameworks exist to support people management and leadership.

One of the most successful of these is Situational Leadership? - developed in the mid-1970s by Dr Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard. This model is built around the belief that leaders need to adapt their leadership style in order to assist each individual team member to achieve their full potential in any given circumstance.?In order to do this a leader needs to exercise both emotional and social intelligence (Goleman reference).

I developed this Adaptive Leadership model in 2014 when I wrote the Legal Project Management book for Lexis Nexis and used it extensively when lecturing at The College of Law. It is an extension of Hershey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership?. This was one of the first models that I learnt when becoming a new leader over 30 years ago. Hershey and Blanchard researched individual performance factors and found that when leaders adapt their leadership style to the needs of a team member in different contexts, then individual performance can be optimised.

Adaptive Leadership for Managing Individual Performance brings together many of the techniques and concepts from Situational Leadership?, emotional and social intelligence, as well as theories on personal motivation.

Primary leadership styles

According to Blanchard, there are four main leadership styles. The same leadership styles are used in the Adaptive Leadership Model illustrated above -

1. Directing – characterised as high directive and low supporting. The Leader provides specific objectives for the task and then maps out the process in detail for how the task will be accomplished. The leader also closely supervises progress and makes corrections when required.
2. Coaching – characterised as both high directive and high supporting. The leader explains processes and decisions and encourages participation by the team member in the refinement of the approach. The leader considers input from the team member but makes the overall decisions about how tasks will be accomplished.
3. Supporting – characterised as low directive and high supporting. The leader encourages the team member through guiding discussions to develop their own approach to the task. Allowing the team member to learn through problem solving and by designing their own process.
4. Delegating – characterised as both low directive and low supporting. The leader provides the right resources and environment and then empowers the team member to undertake the task according to their own processes and judgement.

In all four styles the leader – 1. clarifies expectations and goals; 2. observes and monitors performance; 3. gives feedback. (Blanchard, 2001)

In order to achieve optimum performance from each individual, the leader chooses the style that will best match the task and the team member or individual. This requires a conscious decision and forethought before each work assignment session with the team member and places the responsibility on the leader to apply flexible leadership rather than simply falling back into their preferred style.

Reflection Activity on Leadership styles – Your style

Can you identify the leadership style that is your natural preference?

Would some team members benefit from a different style?

All people managers have a preferred style of leadership that is their automatic go-to style. It is possible to consciously select the style that will obtain the best performance from each team member in each interaction or task assignment.

Your primary leadership style is the one you use automatically without even thinking about it. Put yourself in the shoes of your team members and consider how a poor choice of leadership style may impact their performance. Indeed, you may have some examples where you have consistently used your preferred style and this has caused friction and lowered performance for some team members.

Having read the above descriptions of the primary leadership styles, many of you will recognise that you have one particular preference and perhaps you have been unconsciously applying that style in all people management situations.

Pause for a moment to consider the following –

1. What is your preferred leadership style? The one you use automatically without even thinking about it
2. What is your secondary leadership style? The one you use as a fall-back when your primary preference doesn’t work.

Adaptive Leadership Model – Individuals

The Adaptive Leadership model uses the same four leadership styles from Situational Leadership? and expands on the concept of development levels of the individual to allow for more flexibility and greater choice.

This is particularly important when dealing with team members with differing levels of experience and from different generations, and to cater for leaders from different generations.

In order to select the optimum leadership style when allocating tasks to a team member the leader needs to assess the individuals based on four dimensions –

1. Confidence
2. Attitude
3. Capability
4. Experience

Consider the development level of each team member. Consider these categories and each of your team members. Where does each of them fit in terms of the two scales? Confidence and Attitude, as well as Capability and Experience

Note – you’ll need to use some subjective judgement in addition to your observations to consider each dimension and determine a blended rating of High, Medium, or Low

Leaders need to use their knowledge of each team member to assess their position on the Confidence and Attitude and the Capability and Experience scales, in order to determine the optimal leadership style to use for each task.

Different styles will need to be selected for the same team member depending on the specific task that is to be assigned. Even for experienced team members, it might be preferred to use a highly delegative style for one task and then a highly directive style for another task depending on their experience and attitude.

Two dimensions are given for each scale; this allows further flexibility and requires judgement on behalf of the leader to select the overall rating.

For example, if a team member has the extremely high capability but very little experience then the rating normally selected would be medium. Also, where a team member had medium confidence, but a particularly low attitude rating then the overall rating recommended would be low.

“Selecting the leadership style requires a conscious decision and forethought before each work assignment session with the team member and places the responsibility with the leader to apply flexible leadership rather than simply falling back into their preferred style.”??Therese Linton

Find out more…

Get over yourself and out of your own way, start delegating immediately!

If you’d like to know more about Adaptive Leadership and the various delegation styles that you have at your disposal, then check out the foundation learning module Legal People Leadership . You might even be able to use it to satisfy any continuing education requirements for your profession.

Or you can book me for a FREE 30-minute coaching call so I can share my experience and tools to support you.

My aim is to inspire you to transform your working life and achieve great things and I look forward to joining you on your journey!