Situational Leadership Deployment Lessons
How I learned about Situational Leadership (SL): quite a number of years ago, I wanted to do a team-bonding session with my senior staff, with a focus on proactive communication. Our HR director recommended a workshop on SL. I have to admit I was confused as to why my requirements would be met with SL, but I followed our HR director's advice because I have a lot of trust in her. Good thing too, because I have since found it to be useful as a communication and interaction tool.
The basics: the leader should be flexible enough to exercise several leadership styles. For example, SL calls for detailed oversight (S1) over an employee with novice expertise on the task (D1). On the other extreme, the leader should exercise a delegation style (S4) over an employee who is the subject matter expert on the task (D4). The leadership style changes based on the task and situation the employee is in. The tricky part is about correctly diagnosing which D-level competency the employee is in, thus apply the corresponding S-level leadership style. Of course, there is more to it in practice, which is why I am writing this post.
When the SL light went off in my head: just prior to the workshop, I asked my QA manager to provide a partner plan for our growing professional services. He indicated he would deliver it in two weeks. After two weeks, he indicated he has been very busy and had nothing ready for the partner plan. This trend repeated itself for several weeks, and I felt like Tom Hanks in his movie Money Pit, where he kept getting an answer of "two weeks" from his contractor. It is so unlike the QA manager not to deliver. In the middle of this workshop, as I was learning the basics of SL, I stared at him and said: "for the partner plan, did I treat you as a D4 (expert) when you were actually a D1 (novice)?" The answer was an immediate yes, followed immediately with my apology. As an executive of a company, I worked mostly with senior people, so I commonly used a S4 (delegating) leadership style, but in this case, the senior person was a D1 - a clear mismatch, and I should have applied a S1 (directing) leadership style instead. I expected him, as a senior person, to provide a partner plan but he had no idea even how to start. Essentially, I threw him into the water and expected him to swim. Even a senior person needs guidance when he is totally lost on something he has never done before - thus the importance of appreciating the situational in SL.
Common SL language: most of my senior staff agreed that the SL workshop was very useful, and we decided to hold an engineering all-hands afterwards to give the entire engineering organization a summary of the SL concepts. In fact, one of my senior staff decided to use a Pixar short to illustrate the problem with a mismatch of a S4 leadership style for a D1 situation. This all-hands served several useful purposes: 1) explain why all the engineering senior staff disappeared for a couple of days; 2) permit the entire engineering team to understand and speak a common SL language; 3) allow the entire engineering team to grow together in terms of SL understanding. I feel this all-hands is an important first step, but now the lessons learned begin...
Lack of D-level competency alignment: after the diagnosis of the D-level, there can be disagreement between the leader and employee. For example, the leader may feel the employee is a D1 (low competency) whereas the employee feels he is a D4 (high competence). In fact, I actually feel that disagreement in D-levels early on is a good thing, and forces the leader and employee to discuss alignment sooner, or else different expectations in the task delivery can result. However, even after discussions, there is sometimes still no alignment. The conclusion of "we agree to disagree" is not all bad, as with the example above, I would let the employee take more of a lead (as a D3/D4), but insist on regular updates to ensure things don't go too far off track (risk mitigation using a partial S1 style). As the task advances, either the leader or employee may find that the other may be more correct in terms of D-level diagnosis, and there is opportunity to course correct with risk mitigation already in place.
What if the leader is not capable of being S1: back to the partner plan example - turns out that I cannot achieve the S1 leadership style, because I also do not have experience in generating a partner plan for professional services. I scoured the company to look for a subject matter expert, and asked him to be the S1 temporarily, to educate both the QA manager and I on the specifics that need to go into a pragmatic partner plan. Shortly after, drawing on relevant transferable skills, I was able to be the S1 leader.
SL is not restricted to boss-subordinate situations: the term leadership may imply a boss-subordinate relationship (boss = S, subordinate = D), but the above subject matter expert (in the partner plan) happens to be a senior staff reporting to me, so the normal situation was reversed. In fact, I have seen SL successfully applied in peer-to-peer situations - for example, I went to a peer for an answer to a process-related question. The question must have been so ridiculous (he was too kind to say so), that he walked me through all the relevant processes I needed to know about. I am so glad he walked me through those processes, because many things started to make sense. Essentially, this peer served as the S1 to my D1.
Does SL conflict with other leadership models: frankly, I don't care - as with any model, I take whatever applies and modify it to fit my needs. In fact, I was recently in a one-day class on coaching. The recommendation from the class is that coaching is the ideal approach to lead or advise people, because the coachee is not given the fish, but coached to be able to fish. At face value, this contradicts SL. But on further thought, the techniques taught in this class permit me to be a better S2 and S3 leader (notice S2 leadership style is even named coaching). It was never too hard for me to be an S1 and S4, so now the SL cycle is more complete with coaching skills, and there is no contradiction at all.
Is this the end of the lessons learned for SL? I doubt it very much. I hope you find SL as useful as I have, and would love to hear about your deployment lessons learned regarding Situational Leadership.