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Situational Leadership in Education According to Dr. Paul Hersey and his co authors in the book Management of Organizational Behavior: Leading Human Resources, state that Situational Leadership Theory is a leadership model. A situational leader recognizes that he has at his disposal various leadership styles and he can choose one or combine more than one to effectively lead people. There are four kinds of Situational Leadership Styles: the Directing/Telling Leadership, Coaching/Selling Leadership, Participating/Supportive Leadership, and the Delegating/Trusting Leadership. The Directing or Telling Leadership Style is usually applied in situations where the members are inexperienced or new to the company or situation.
The leader solely defines the tasks and provides close supervision. The Coaching or Selling Leadership style is appropriate when the members are not as inexperienced but nonetheless need guidance to complete their tasks. The leader still defines the tasks but asks for inputs from his members. The Participating or Supportive Leadership style emphasizes on interpersonal relationships within the group. The leader is sensitive to the feelings of the members and tries to include them in making decisions. The Delegating or Trusting Leadership Style is applicable if the members are competent and need minimal supervision.
Mastery of the different styles of Situational Leadership, or any leadership style for that matter, does not guarantee success. The leader must have an awareness of his self, from his limitations to his preferences as well as his members, their abilities and general sentiments and the overall dynamics of the group. A good leader must always be able to adapt, evolve and transcend. Leadership is harnessing the collective energy of a group of people and directing that energy towards the completion of a common goal. Common experience teaches that there is no formula to ensure success in leadership.
Many leadership theories have been developed over the years to prove common experience wrong. Yet, one of the theories that have gained wide acceptance and popularity is the Situational Leadership Style theory. Perhaps because the Situational Leadership Theory emphasizes flexibility on the part of the leader and awareness of the value of group members. Can Situational Leadership Theory finally provide the magic formula for a successful leadership? This paper aims to show Situational Leadership Theory as applied in the context of an educational set-up can help in a leaders work with his people. Situational Leadership Theory is a leadership model and not just a theory.
A theory is something that is formulated to explain and understand a given circumstance. Theories emphasize understanding. A model, on the other hand, is a framework used and applied over and over again. It emphasizes application. From the name of the theory itself, Situational Leadership Theory is about adapting a leadership style that not only satisfies the requirements of the task but addresses the needs of the members as well. A situational leader recognizes that he has at his disposal various leadership styles and he can choose one or combine more than one leadership style to effectively lead (Famous Models: Situational Leadership).
Situational leadership theories believe that different styles in leadership can be better in different situations, and that leaders must be flexible enough to adapt their style to the situation they are in. Leadership style should depend on the initiative and self motivation of followers. The democratic approach will best suit to those experienced employees who no longer need any form of leadership. Several educational set-ups are now conducting skills training on Situational Leadership. This involves diagnosis, flexibility and partnering for performance.
In the skills training, the participants are taught how to diagnose the developmental level of their employees. Both Competency and Commitment are assessed as well as selecting the appropriate style they will use for each situation -- whether it be Directing, Coaching, Supporting or Delegating. Trainings of this kind are highly effectively as each participant is able to gauge his own current Style Flexibility Effectiveness. In an educational setting, this tool helps the teacher zero in on where to focus self development energy. This, therefore, leads to both improved leadership behaviors and a heightened sense of communications in leading their own people.
This way, educators are able to positively impact performance (Blanchard and Hersey). Moreover, in a school set-up, to individualize instruction effectively, informed decisions must be made about what to teach and how to teach it. To discover what to teach, or the task level, one must compare the relative position of the students skills on the curricular continuum with the curricular expectations, in coordination with the teacher. A students probable access point in the general education program can be predicted by comparing his or her learning needs and pace with the prevailing curriculum and the teaching skills.
This procedure also provides the substance of required educational adjustments. Once the students instructional needs have been identified, thus determining what to teach, decisions must be made about how to teach. This is where Situational Leadership is best utilized. Analysis of a students task performance under varying conditions helps one to decide how to teach. By carefully observing the students response, one can isolate variables that promote task mastery.
For example, in Multiple Intelligence tasks, the Band methodology of incorporating sensory information to plan for and engage in activities and identifying and solving problems in a variety of ways as well as the material, presentation mode, response demand and learner preference are factors for scrutiny. Through systematic modification of these factors, the best plan for how and where to teach can be developed. The selection of the best methods, materials, and strategies to use in an instructional program depends upon how the student learns best. According to Mercer and Mercer (1993), knowing how to assess is the best way to teach a student, especially those belonging to this category since this is a very critical skill, one that has received too little emphasis in teacher training programs. When an educator is aware of Situational Leadership skills, he can adapt his teaching styles with those of his students. The decision about how to teach is usually based on what was generally successful in the past with similar students.
The student might also be assessed directly in an effort to find out how best to teach. When this is the case, the instructional environment should be analyzed as well. Analysis of the teaching environment, ecological assessment examines learning preferences (visual vs. auditory presentation, reading vs. listening, inductive vs. deductive, easy vs.
difficult and primary vs. social rewards). Understanding the behavior of workers in an education set-up is the key in coming up with strategies that would benefit the organization as a whole. Author Beer enumerates four factors that shape the behavior of the organization namely: the organization environment and the choice its leaders make about strategy; the organization design; the people selected and promoted; and, the behaviors of leaders and their top team. He also cites various studies showing the interrelationship between organizational behavior and culture, and the performance of the firm. There are proofs that employee-centered organization climates are associated with high customer satisfaction.
Beer noted that good performance could also result to changes in behaviors as change in behavior causes performance. He emphasized that planned change in organizational behavior opens the doors to improved performance. The leaders perception on their subordinates will greatly affect their decision on which between the two dimensions are they going to emphasize. If they assume that their people are responsible and capable, there would be less control and leaders would put more reliance on their people, otherwise there would have a large amount of control on their workers. But more than the well-established organizational design and properly selected leadership style, Beer emphasized the importance of people because without the capabilities of these people, the goal of effective organization would be difficult to attain, or worse, would never be reached (Beer, Michael). Organizational behaviors emphasis on people makes the management understand their employees more and make them committed in pursuing a common organizational goal of productivity and effectiveness.
One of the strategies in building the performance of a worker is through motivation. Dr. Hersey and co authors tackle this issue in their book and posit that people who are satisfied with their jobs are motivated to be more productive. Similarly, an effective teacher could formulate a motivation technique that would fit into the needs of the students and encourage them to be more productive. Understanding what moves students to work more productively would make the decision of the teachers in coming up with a motivational technique more acceptable to their pupils and in turn would give favorable results for the whole school organization. As organizations continue to move away from the command and control structure to open, flexible, risk-taking and creative environments, changing the mental models organizations have of themselves should be led by leadership's commitment from the top down.
Today's leaders encourage corporate entrepreneurship by exploring the organizations destiny. Leaders taking a systems approach at looking and exploring the forces at work and the interrelationships that make things happen in the organization are most often successful. Leaders come in all styles, personalities and models with varying degrees of behaviors. More important than leadership style is the leaders ability to exercise influence, direct, motivate, and persuade others to attain the strategic intent and goals of the organization. When leaders direct their energy and resources to meeting their goals by providing visible and participatory leadership, they demonstrate an understanding of Colin Powell's thought that "Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible. (Blanchard and Hersey). It is said that leadership starts at the top.
Management experts at Wharton and McKinsey say that leadership can be found and must be practiced by all employees at all levels of an organization. Everybody can lead at every level. There are no excuses, says Michael Use, director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at Wharton and the author of many articles and books on leadership. It doesnt matter if youre on the front line or the top line. If you are given an office with the powers of that office, what do you add to the office above and beyond those powers? Do you excite and motivate people?
Do you bring excellence and vision to what ultimately is the objective of that office or even the whole company? Everybody should be good at leading, whatever their level in the hierarchy. Everyone can exercise leadership by being an individual contributor at any level of an organization, agrees Helen Handfield-Jones, an independent consultant on leadership talent strategy and co-author of the book The War for Talent. What does that mean? Ultimately it comes down to looking for opportunities to make the world a better place (Blanchard and Hersey). To be an effective leader, one needs to know first the concept of leadership.
There are basic ways to become a leader. Good character, skills and knowledge plus leadership know-how contribute well to the respect that my subordinates will give me because it is said that leaders are respected for who they are, what they are and what they do. With this, my people will follow me willingly as a leader and not just obey me. Respect can also be gained by being ethical, knowing the right things to do. However, as Dr.
Paul Hersey concludes, there is no single all purpose leadership style. One is considered a successful leader when he is able to adapt behavior to meet the demands of each unique situation. There are tools designed to equip leaders to diagnose the demands of different situations and to establish the behaviors that would be most successful in each situation. One of the ways to create and maintain a healthy organizational culture is through motivation. People who are satisfied with their job are motivated to be more productive. In order for the manager to effectively motivate his employees, he must have knowledge on what determines their motivation.
Again, under the principle of cause and effect, and the studies on the behavior of organization, an effective leader could formulate a motivation technique that would fit into the needs of the workers and encourage them to be more productive. Understanding what moves workers to work more productively would make the decision of the leaders in coming up with a motivational technique more acceptable to the workers and in turn would give favorable results for the whole organization. Another recommendation to create and maintain a healthy organizational culture is the leaders perception on their subordinates will greatly affect their decision on which between the two dimensions are they going to emphasize. If they assume that their people are responsible and capable, there would be less control and leaders would put more reliance on their people, otherwise there would have a large amount of control on their workers. But more than the well-established organizational design and properly selected leadership style, Beer emphasized the importance of people because without the capabilities of these people, the goal of effective organization would be difficult to attain, or worse, would never be reached (Beer, Michael).
Based on the facts presented here, the researcher has drawn the conclusion that Situational Leadership is one of the best ways of handling people in any organization. In summation, the effective leader must not only follow or accommodate nurturing leadership styles; they must adopt them in an integrated, people-valuing, yet accountability-demanding way that is a mix of the best that men and women do when they lead. To lead with honor and power challenges the best in us all. There is little room for the small-mindedness of parochial thinking and acting. Applied in an educational set-up, educators can easily match leadership behaviors to their students ability level and motivation, thus. the behavior shaping of students can be done in a more effective way.
REFERENCES Beer, M. Organizational Behavior and Development. (n. d. ) Accessed 10 October 2005. < web 'organizational% 20 behavior% 20 affects% 20 organization n'>. Blanchard and Hersey Accessed 10 October 2005 at: web Canada. Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. How You Can Be an Effective Leader.
July 1994. Accessed 10 October 2005. < web rural / facts / 94 - 081. htm+% 22 situational+leadership+s types% 22 &hl = en>. Coaching. Money-Zine. Accessed 10 October 2005. < web Career-Dictionary/Coaching-Leadership-Style/>.
Delegating. Money-Zine. Accessed 10 October 2005. < web Career-Dictionary/Coaching-Leadership-Style/>. Directing. Money-Zine. Accessed 10 October 2005. < web Career-Dictionary/Coaching-Leadership-Style/>.
Handfield-Jones, Helen. The War for Talent, Leadership Talent Strategy. Accessed 10 October 2005. web Hersey, P. , K. Blanchard and D. Johnson Management of Organizational Behavior: Leading Human Resources (8 th Edition). (October 3, 2000).
Prentice Hall. Famous Models: Situational Leadership. Chimaera Consulting. Accessed 10 October 2005 < web sit leader. htm+% 22 situational+leadership+styles% 22 & hl = en>. Mercer and Mercer (1993) Teaching students with learning problems (4 th ed).
New York: Merrill/Macmillan. (8). Supporting. Money-Zine. Accessed 10 October 2005. < web Career-Dictionary/Coaching-Leadership-Style/>.
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Research essay sample on Leadership Style Organizational Behavior
