Different situations demand different types of leadership. The two most widely used leadership styles include directing leadership and supporting leadership. Directing leadership refers to a leading style in which leader assigns tasks to all the group members or followers. Furthermore, the leader shows them the direction and informs them what they need to achieve at the end (Browning, 2007). The directive way of leadership refers to one-way communication. The leader delegate task gives directions and conveys his messages throughout the period from starting the task until the time of achieving the desired goals. A leader communicates to his followers without asking them to share their views, queries, and issues.
On the other hand, supportive style of leadership means a leader is highly cooperative to his followers. The followers share their issues and queries with the leader and support them by ensuring their comfort (McCleskey, 2014). Emotional and social factors are highly considerable in a supportive way of leading a group. Also, some of the scholars derived two new styles of leadership. The new styles are mix approaches of the traditional ways, but their degrees to which they are used are different. The two new styles include coaching and delegating styles. The findings and results of a case are stated below to understand how situational leadership applies in different organizational settings.
In the case of Jim Anderson, a human resource training specialist arranged a seminar for a group of 25 middle-level managers. Jim put remarkable efforts to make the entire seminar informative and also entertaining. He tried his best to grab the attention of the audience throughout the sessions. Jim avoided restrictions in the seminar concerning the attendance and timings as the workshop attendants were mostly managers and experienced people. As the sessions one and two ended, Jim observed some issues. He found that people came late in the seminar and several people left the seminar hall after two sessions.
There can be several reasons for the unsuccessful seminar of Jim Anderson. Firstly, the communication approach used in the seminar was a one-way communication approach which means that only the presenter was delivering the information and communicating with the audience. However, the best tool that can be used to grab the attention of the audience is to use a two-way communication approach. Two-way-communication approach refers to not only the presenter needs to communicate with the audience, but also audience will participate in the discussion (Graeff, 1983). Secondly, Jim should imply certain restriction regarding the attendance and timings in the seminar. In this way, people would get to know the importance of the seminar, and they would give some importance to the program. As stated in the case that people disillusioned the seminar that it would be the same as they attended boring seminars in the past. According to SLII model, Jim used delegating style of leadership. He used low directive approach by not placing restrictions on the program and also used low supportive by not letting the audience to participate in the discussion. The coaching style of leadership was needed to use rather supporting style as it would enable the audience to out their input to the discussion. Moreover, coaching style would ensure the presence of the audience by using high directive approach.
References
Browning, B. W. (2007). Leadership in desperate times: An analysis of endurance: Shackleton’s incredible voyage through the lens of leadership theory. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 9(2), 183–198.
Graeff, C. L. (1983). The situational leadership theory: A critical view. Academic of Management Review, 8(2), 285-291.
McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117-130.
