Situational Leadership — Leveraging SDL’s Personal Leadership

Situational Leadership has been out since the late 1960s. As such, it is in wide use by many organizations. It’s focused, as discussed in my prior article “Situational Leadership and the Six Domains of Leadership”, in helping guide the leader on their interactions with subordinates based on the subordinate’s level of competence and commitment.

The previous article touched on how to apply the Six Domains of Leadership™ (for more information, visit Delta Leadership’s website: https://deltaleadership.com/. You may want to purchase the e-book Six Domains of Leadership e-Book in their store.) to Situational Leadership. Another article, “Helping a ‘Storming’ Team” mapped the Six Domains of Leadership to the Tuckman model of group development.

The Six Domains of Leadership™, or SDL, as its name states, consists of six “domains” or areas of leadership focus: Personal, Relational, Contextual, Inspirational, Supportive, and Responsible. All these domains are relevant and valuable to a leader applying the Situational Leadership model as indicated in the table below (from the prior article). The Y axis lists the six domains while the horizontal axis lists the four stages of follower development:

Table 1- SDL domains applied to Situational Leadership — Source: author

I want to dig into the application of specific domains to the Situational Leadership model. A model can be…