Situational Leadership and the Six Domains of Leadership
Introduction
In a prior posting, “Helping a ‘Storming’ Team”, we saw how to apply the Six Domains of Leadership (SDL) to the Tuckman Stages of Group Development. The posting shows how the two models can complement each other and help the leader be a more effective leader.
Similarly, SDL can be applied to Hershey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership (SL) model. The Center for Leadership Studies provides information, resources, workshops, etc. on the Situational Leadership model. I’ll describe at a high level how a leader can leverage the richness of SDL as well as Situational Leadership when working with a subordinate.
Situational Leadership
Originally described by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in their groundbreaking Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources (numerous editions exist — check the Internet for availability. Here’s a link to the 4th edition, which I have (no, I’m not selling mine!)), it is a model on how a leader should conduct her/himself based on follower’s level of commitment and competence.
The diagram below represents the model.
The model suggests that everyone starts a task in the D1 (Low Competence / High Commitment) space in development level of the…
