Hello, class. It is so great to have you back for Module Four. I'm just I'm just thrilled that we're continuing this journey together, right? We're continuing to learn together, we're continuing to grow together. And this has been so much fun for me through the first three modules, and I hope it has been for you as well. Today we're talking about the situational approach to leadership, and this one's really cool, because you'll see a lot of the theories kind of try to put you in one position or another. This one really takes a an approach that says, hey, leadership is all about different situations that occur, and sometimes your leadership style needs to change, depending on the situation. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, and I'm really excited about it. So before we do what do we do every class, we give glory to God and we open up in prayer. And today is no different, and we're doing that now. So please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the opportunity to come together. Lord, thank You for this class. Thank you for these leadership theories that we've been able to learn together. Lord, today we're talking about situational leadership, Lord, and and how, how there's different situations where different leadership styles work in and, Lord, I certainly think that you know, you have provided us so many examples of your leadership, you know, and how different situations have called for different things, whether it was turning over the table in the temple or if it was giving grace to the sinner at the well, Lord and you, you have just showed us the model for what true leadership is, Lord, and We just thank you for that. So Lord, as we, as we talked about situational leadership, I pray that you'll be with us. I pray that you'll direct this lecture, and Lord, just give me the words to say, and please remove distractions so others can hear them in Jesus name. I pray Amen. All right, so situational approach to leadership. What are we going to be talking about today? We're going to define it. We're going to talk about how it works. We are going to talk about the strengths and weaknesses, and then we're going to apply it to the modern day. So the people who developed it actually are some of my heroes when it comes to leadership theories. And their names are Hersey, Hersey, Hersey and Blanchard. And Ken Blanchard actually, as a as an aside, Ken Blanchard actually sold a company, his company to a friend of mine recently so and a company that have actually done some work for in the past. So it's kind of kind of a really neat guy who really lives the principles of his model. So this theory was developed in 1969 and it was based on a model called the 3d management style. And then many researchers have been gone into that original study style and and have revised it. So you're going to hear words the original authors, Hersey and Blanchard, have gone in and revised it. And then you're going to hear other names, like Zigarmi is another researcher that has gone in and revised it, so the model is now called SL2 Situational Leadership two model, and that's the approach that we're going to be talking about in this class. So not as much the original model, but more of this situational approach to model. So basically, there's these two types of behaviors, and we're going to get into them in details, but it detail, but is directed behaviors, or it is supportive dimensions of leadership, and then there's certain situations that apply to both of them. So just to kind of frame it in a large context. Let's say I'm your leader, and you come to work for me in the tech space, and we developed an app together. Well, the first day you come in, I'm going to be very directive, right? I'm going to say, hey, to get the app, you do this, in order to make changes, you do this, and I'm going to be very directive, but you worked for me for six months. Worked for me for a year, two years, three years, five years, 10 years. Let's hope our app lasts that long, but you work for me for 10 years. Eventually, I'm not going to have to be so directive anymore, right? Because you're going to understand the app, you're going to understand the workings of it, you're going to understand the inside and outside. So I can go. From being directive to being supportive. And that is the important thing is there's different kinds of behaviors. There's the directive behaviors and the supportive behaviors. And the whole point is it's based on the followers competence and commitment to achieve the common goal. So if you have low commitment, then I may have to be more directive. If you have very high commitment and a high organizational knowledge, then I can be more supportive than directive. I hope that makes sense, and basically that could be the lecture in five minutes and 32 seconds, but there's a lot more to it, so we're not going to finish yet. So let's talk about this model. So there's actually one second, just to give you a representation, I want to bring something up, and I just got to look at it. You would think, out of after all this time together, that I would have been prepared. And I apologize for my lack of preparedness. Okay, good. This is exactly what I want. So allow me to switch my screen for one second. I'm going to bring up the little camera. I'm going to move myself around. Okay, so here you can see we're going to talk about what these S's mean, but I just kind of want you to see this for a second, so you have the S and D for directive and supportive and you have a low directive behavior to high directive behavior going across the bottom. And then you have supportive behavior from from low to high going across the top. So when you're in the s4 which is low directive and low supportive behaviors. That's what's called delegating. And you can see this kind of runs through a continuum. So when delegating is the ultimate low directive and low supportive, on the other side is the directive and that's high directive and low supportive. So when you think about that new employee coming in, that's going to be the directing behavior, right? And that's you're going to give a lot of instruction, you're going to give a lot of training, they're going to ask a lot of questions, and you're not going to really give a lot of supportive behavior, because they are trying to learn. And then you move into the coaching, which is high directive and high supporting, and we'll get into what coaching is. And then you go into the supporting behavior, which is low directive and high supporting. Then eventually you go into delegating. And that's when you have a familiarity with somebody. They're doing a great job. And you can basically say, hey, this needs to get done. You own it. You go do it, and then you just let them go, right? So that's kind of a just a little chart to have it in your mind and think about that flow through as we talk about each of the different areas, directing, coaching, supporting and delegating, and the s1 s2 s3 s4 as part of that, and we're going to talk more about what that is. So let me bring up my notes again. All right, so directive behaviors, what they are meant to do is help to accomplish goals by giving directions, establishing goals and methods of evaluation, setting timelines, defining roles and showing how the goals are achieved. So remember, from our behavioral approach, that kind of sounds like the task oriented orientation one doesn't it a little bit, then you have supportive behaviors which helps group members feel comfortable about themselves, their co workers in this situation. So that's one of those. Hey, you're doing a good job. Let's talk. Let's emotionally support each other, let's socially support each other. And those would be things like asking for input. Hey, how am I doing that would be delivering praise, sharing information about oneself and listening to followers. So that's developing those relationship skills that we talked about. So we talked about the four distinct categories, and that's high directive, low supportive, and that's the directing style. And I will bring up that chart as soon as I can figure out how to get my, so for some reason, my word became really big. So I'm going to bring up both the directions, and I'm going to bring up the little chart so you can actually see both or my notes. I should say not the directions. I'm going to bring up both my notes and the chart, so you can see both, and then we can talk about both. So, so here we go. Let me just, okay, perfect. All right, that's what I want you to see. So in that directing phase, remember, there's, it's high direction, low supportive, and it's the directing style. And the leader focuses on communication, on on goal achievement, and they're going to spend a lot of time supervising. Remember, they're not really wanting to get to know you yet, because, you know some companies, and this is kind of a way to think of it. Some companies have those 90 day reviews, right, where you could be fired for any reason within the first 90 days. Well, am I going to invest a lot of time getting to know you and not really teaching you the job? Well, I might not be able to evaluate you that way, right? So you're not. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the personal stuff. I'm going to get you to understand what the job is, right? Then, when you kind of kind of get it and you kind of know your way around the office and those kind of things, then we're going to shift and we're going to go into a high directive and a high supportive phase. And this is also called the coaching approaches. You can see there from S2. And that's where you kind of, you kind of get emotionally involved with the follower. You make the final decision on what goals are, but you kind of help shape those a little bit, so you're highly directive and highly supportive. So I can think of an employee that I currently work with, and I I've actually made a really big mistake with her. I actually started in the s3 phase, which is what we talk about next, which is supportive behaviors that bring out the skills, and you're trying to get to the goal, and you do a lot of listening and praising and a lot of feedback, but you kind of don't get involved in the day to day decisions. Well, with this employee, I jumped right to s3 then it was probably bad. I needed to work through the directive, the coaching, the supportive and then to the delegating phase. And I'm afraid, because I went to the supporting phase and she is really back in the directing phase, that I'm actually doing her harm. So that's something to think about. If you subscribe or prescribe subscribe to this approach of leadership. You would want to start with that directing phase, and then move through the continuum, and then finally, is the delegating phase. And that's pretty much. They know what they're doing and they're going to get it done, and they don't need you messing it up by by being part of the process. So that is the four distinct categories. Now, along with that, there is the developmental level, and I'm trying to find that. Yeah, here we go. Let me bring this one up. Bear with me, with the electronics this, this setup here is just so cool. And someday I'll if I can in the lecture, I can't really move the camera, but I would love to show you what I'm looking at. I have this big screen in front of me in this little like pad right here that I can point around different things. But anyway, so then we get to the director of the direction developmental stage, and that goes from developing to develop. So again, you think of that employee that I started with and and I really thought that she was moderately to highly competent, and she wasn't. She was still in the developing so she has a lot of commitment, but she's a low competence, and normally you'll see that amongst people, when they start a job, they're going to have a lot of commitment, right? So they are, they are interested in what's happening, they are confident in their work, and they're aware of how to achieve their goal, and that's where we want to get them to and then I and then the other side of that is, if they're down here, then they're they have a low skill level, but you do believe that they have the motivation to get it done. So you can see here, I have some notes on how all that works, but we don't need those notes. So we're just going to put them away and we're just going to talk about them.So remember these and these kind of work in conjunction with each other. And you can see there, unless you're colorblind, you can see there they kind of have the same colors. So d1 corresponds to s1 d2 s2 d3 s3 d4 s4 right? So low confidence. What is competence? That means you don't have a lot of skill in what you're trying to do, but you have high commitment. Commitment is your motivation. Is the best way to think of that. If you are in the d2 phase, remember, you're developing so you have low to some competence. So you're improving your competence, and you have low commitment. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you're not motivated, or you're not committed to learn. It's just some of that that commitment may have fallen off a little bit because now you're getting a little comfortable in what you're doing. And then d3 and then remember that not everybody, just like with the first one. You know, some people may never leave s1 some people may never leave, live leave d1 we can I think of somebody else at work, not in my area, but in a different area, and that person, it will be a d1 s1 her entire career. Now, I mean, it's just, it's just a fact. She cares. She has high commitment. She's just not, she's in she's not in the right position, not in the right role. And I'm using she for these examples. But it could very easily be a he. I could also use a he. I can think of plenty of hes as well. So remember when we talked about gender in the first one and we talked about that, that sometimes we had to remove the bias. So I want to be very clear that the she or he, so the pronoun does not matter. D3 is moderate to high competence. And then you have variable commitment. Is sometimes you like the job, sometimes you don't. And then we want to get people to d4 and I would say that in one of my jobs, I am probably in the d3 category, where I'm highly competent. I'm not saying that at bragging. I've just been doing it for a long time, but I'm highly competent, but I have a variable commitment. I'm not really committed to the job I'm doing all the time, at least for that job, and the other job I'm in, I would say that I have, I would say probably in the d I'd say I'm probably in the d3 phase in that one as well. But more on the low to moderate competence with that one. So, so, yeah, so that's basically situational leadership. So it's kind of a cool theory. It's kind of different. And what I again, what I love about it is the fact that it talks about how you can move through and its continuum, and then as a leader, you got to meet people where they are in that continuum, and then your behavior is is dependent on the situation or where your follower is at. So that's kind of a that's kind of a really cool way. That's cool just went away. I didn't have to turn it off. The picture in picture, that's kind of a cool way to look at things. So let's talk about some of the ideas of how it works. So you got to determine the nature of the situation as a leader. So remember also that just as you can go this way on the continuum, you can also go back on a continuum based on what the skill is, right? So actually, that's a good point. I should bring that out in a little more detail. So let's look at this chart again and remember. So I said that, some things I have high confidence and I have high commitment, other things I don't. So let's, let's look at this situation. So my one job that I've been doing, I've been in it for, I would say, 17 or 18 years, but specifically at the place I'm thinking of, I've been there for a little over 10 years. So as far as my confidence in the job, it's high, and I do have high commitment, but if my boss gives me something that I've never done before, then I may move into the low competence, right? Because I've never done it before, and it's similarly, he might have to direct me a lot, so he may have to be highly directive and not get really give me a lot of supportive behavior, because it's something new. So that's part of this. This is to remember that somebody who makes it to s4 or d4 It doesn't always have to remain there. It depends on the situation. Again, for the aptly named Situational Leadership number two model, alrighty. Let's see. So what's why is this strength? Well, it's useful. It kind of gives some prescriptive value as flexibility. But there is a lot of criticism for this, and a lot of people say that it's ambiguous. It says that it doesn't really have a very strong conceptualization. There hasn't been a lot of studies to prove the model. Some people say that validity of what the model says has it comes in question. There's no clear empirical support for the model, but it's a pretty cool model, nonetheless. So how can you use this? Well, if you're a manager and you have somebody coming in, like my employee, then you could avoid the mistake that I made. And you could start that person off right, and start them in the directing phase and in d1 in the developing phase. And then as they move through the continuum, then you provide them the right behavior. So you know you go from highly directive, low supportive to high and high and down to low and high, and finally, low and low, right? And then you can just delegate to them completely. So that's a pretty, I think, a pretty straightforward approach, and that's one of the reasons why this approach is like so before we go, I'm just going to ask you some questions. And you know the reason for that is just to point out some things that you may find again. So let's see, what is the situational approach? It's that remember, it's the situational leadership2to model, also known as SLii. Let's see leaders evaluate how competent and committed. Remember committed followers are. Remember that according to the model, followers who exhibit low confidence but high commitment, are in the d1 which is the developing phase. Remember that correlates to s1 and then the Situational Leadership Model is primarily prescriptive, prescriptive, not descriptive. And then just, let's, let's look at maybe a true false. The model is good because it emphasizes flexibility. And the basic premise is that different styles of leadership are required in different situations. So that is it. I think, yep, that is it. So next we will be talking about path goal theory, which is a little bit different and something to look forward to. It's a little bit different than situational leadership and some of these other ones, but now we're getting into specific leadership theories, which is a little bit different from the first three modules. So we'll continue to path goal next before we go. What do we do every single time we close in prayer? So let us do that now. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for our time together today. Lord, thank You for the commitment in this class. Clearly, they are all in that d4 category, in that s4 category. Lord, and I just appreciate that, and I appreciate the fact that they're learning and they're growing in there, and they really have that high commitment as they're learning these materials and and I just want to thank you for our time together. Lord, I pray that you bless them as they continue on with their coursework this week, and you'll bless them as they deal with family obligations as well. And Lord, just be with this class and thank you for everything they're doing each and every day in Jesus name I pray Amen.

Last modified: Friday, October 17, 2025, 9:14 AM