Situational Leadership

There are different types of situational leadership who strive to achieve their goals. Some will direct others to get the work done, some will coach others towards their success by encouraging and motivating them, some will roll up their sleeves and work with others to achieve the targets, and some will prefer to delegate the work and observe their development from afar and will only step-in whenever required.

Overview of Situational Leadership

Then there is one type of leaders known as situational leaders. They evaluate the situation and also the people in the situation. Based on all these factors, they choose the most appropriate leadership style to take care of the situation. The main objective is to not lock oneself into one general leadership instead incorporate different approaches to handle the situation well.

Advantages of Situational Leadership

1- Situational leadership is flexible in nature

Everyone has different perspectives and experiences which creates a difference. Situational leaders recognize the difference and understand the need to be flexible. These leaders don’t insist on a particular set of rules or instructional style to be followed by everyone. The idea will be to create an environment where everyone is encouraged to come forward, help each other, and give suggestions so collective goal can be reached with success.

2- Helps in creating a comforting environment for others.

Situational leaders prefer to create an environment which is based on the readiness level of the team members or based on their needs. In this way, members feel comfortable with the work environment and work productively. Situational leaders will also motivate employees by giving everyone a chance to reach their goal by providing an environment which they will prefer.

3- Situational leaders take different developmental phases into account before creating an environment.

Situational leaders don’t consider all employees into one common category instead consider individual situations/circumstances. Each employee’s competency is mapped and then he/she is motivated to base their style for that particular employee. This approach helps each employee to reach his/her maximum level of productivity with enough motivation. Situational leaders change their style based on each employee’s way of working and in this productivity of employees increases.

4- Situational leadership style makes leaders more aware.

This type of leadership style keeps the leaders on toes as they have to constantly monitor the performance of each employee. Based on their performance, leaders have to change their leadership style in order to enhance their productivity. This also helps the leader to be more empathetic in nature and understand that each employee works in a different manner.

5- Situational Leadership helps the team to work better and together.

As situational leadership is based on intuition and flexible in nature, it ultimately reduces the risk of internal conflict. As the situational leader is quick and responsible, conflict/problem dissipate before it becomes an issue.

6- Situational Leadership also boosts the training.

Situational leaders believe in speeding up quickly and for that, they believe in providing small and customized training for new employees so that they can learn things quickly and efficiently. Another objective is to ensure that every employee is getting a chance to improve his/her performance.

Conclusion

Situational Leadership is the need of the hour and it brings a lot of benefits for the organization as well as for the employees.