Leadership

Sara was blogging about employee motivation and commitment and it reminded me of the Transformational Leadership class I took this summer. We discussed Situational Leadership and the model developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard. I posted the Wikipedia descriptions of this model on her blog and wanted to talk more about it here. I do not work in training currently so I have felt a bit 'out of the loop' regarding some of the blogs posted by other students in class. As I though about this leadership class (also in the ALOP program at Drake) I decided it would be a great thing to share with the rest of you and anyone else reading my Blog. The model encompasses a lot of leader/employee areas, but I found the 'Leader Behaviors' (S1, S2, S3, S4) and 'Follower Readiness' (R1, R2, R3, R4) the most interesting and useful. Essentially the Leader Behavior model of Situational Leadership outlines how the leader/manager's behavior should adapt to the level of readiness their employee exhibits. For example, a leader should use S1 (Telling) behavior and use high task/low relationship behavior with a new employee who is possibly at an R1 level of readiness which means they are unable to do the task and possible insecure as well. An employee that is categorized as an R4 and is willing and confident in their job/task can be lead by using a Delegating S4 style of leadership which is lower task focused and lower relationship as well. I hope I have explained this clearly and I will add more links to help if needed. i look forward to reading what some of you 'trainers' and leaders think about this.