Shifting Your Leadership Style To Meet Employee Needs

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As a leader you can be challenged to develop your skills as a leader. How do you develop the skills to be an effective leader? Ultimately the challenge is: creating a leadership style that motivates staff to get their jobs done and at the highest level of quality

One way to look at leadership is situational. For example, with a new employee supervisor's action is very directive. At this stage you are in training mode; we give the employee lots of information and direction. The aim is to move an employee to move to an empowered inspired employee At this point, the staff know their job and can do it in with minimal direction or intervention. But, we can't just move from directing to mentor. There are a couple of additional transition stages. After directing, the manager is still telling the employee what to do, but the level of telling and direction has decreased. The employee is able to do the task with some direction and feedback, versus total direction and feedback.

In the third transition stage, the leader is supportive and motivating. The employee is able to do the task with minimal intervention from the manager. The fourth stage is the target, one in which the employee is totally skilled and empowered to do their job with the support and mentorship of the manager. At this point the manager is a coach and mentor, acknowledging accomplishments and the motivator.

Although, it would be easy to have linear maps of human behavior, this again is not the case. As the manager, you will need to shift with ease through the different phases and be able to step back when an employee needs greater assistance at some point. You also will move back to directing when a new task or job duty is assigned that the employee has never done before. Now, a new cycle of training and mentoring is started. The manager's role is to provide the direction needed to move successfully through each phase of developing competence to the final stage of empowered action, in which the employee is capable of doing high quality work.

This article is based upon Hershey and Blanchard's situational leadership model, from their book: Management of organizational behavior: Utilizing Human Resources. (1982, Prentice-Hall, Inc.)

Copyright: 2006

Reprint Permission: You may reprint this article with the copyright and Information box intact. You may not change the article in any way. Please notify the author of your use of the article at: dprice@compassroseconsulting.com

About the Author:
Donna Price, President and Founder of Compass Rose Consulting, LLC. Donna works with leaders and their teams to be high performing and effective teams, closing the gap between the vision and implementation. Donna has extensive background as a upper level manager for 18+ years and team builder/developer. Donna is the creator of the Business Builders Intensive", a comprehensive tele-series focused on building business success and Coaching Staff For Success", a training program for managers to learn effective coaching skills for. Her innovative team development, coaching and other programs produce changes in business results. Contact Donna at http://www.compassroseconsulting.com;



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