Situational project leadership

- There are lots of different leadership styles, and project managers need to understand how and when to use each one. Back in the 1960s, Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey developed a theory about this called situational leadership. They claimed that leadership styles are basically a combination of task behaviors and relationship behaviors. Task behaviors are focused on the work that you're doing, like teaching someone how to do their job. Relationship behaviors are things that you do to make people feel valued and supported, like asking for their opinion or giving them a compliment. Situational leadership aligns the task and relationship behaviors with an employee's competence and motivation. You can illustrate this by drawing a path that goes through four quadrants. For an employee who's new to a job, they generally have a lot of enthusiasm but very little competence. In this case, the leader should be directive, focused more on telling them what to do and less about how they feel about it. As an employee builds more competence, their commitment and enthusiasm may drop. In this situation, the leader should adopt a coaching style where they're continuing to provide clear directions about the tasks, and they're building more of a relationship with the employee. As the employee's competence continues to grow, their commitment can vary. Then it's time for the leader to use a supporting style focused heavily on building a relationship and less on providing guidance for tasks. Finally, when an employee has a high level of competence and they're highly engaged, the leader should use a delegating style. Basically, they need to make sure that the employee understands what needs to be done and then get out of their way. You can use the situational leadership model to adapt your style to the needs of your team, and you can also use it to help your leaders understand the kind of guidance and support that you need at any given time. What's great about situational leadership is that it can make you more versatile. Knowing how to be the best leader to each team member at different times can help you become a truly exceptional project manager.