Situational Leadership is an important concept, particularly in the context of international management and leadership. The following links briefly introduce Hersey and Blanchard's model of situational leadership as well as follower readiness.
http://www.chimaeraconsulting.com/sitleader.htm and
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/situational_leadership_hersey_blanchard.htm
Vroom and Yetton also took the model and added to it. For an introduction to their model, including the limitations of situational leadership, see http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/theories/vroom_yetton.htm.
These brief introductions to concepts will probably just be refreshers for most of you. But I wanted to include a few links for review as I think situational leadership is an interesting topic for cross cultural communication as well as international/multinational management.
Do you think that similar situations might be handled in different ways based on the cultural differences in a country? You might check out the work of Geert Hofestede http://www.geert-hofstede.com/and Fons Trompenaars http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqNI8le1bF4 to find some descriptions and discussions of differences.
What do you think? EM
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I’ll read texts on every link, and try to give my opinion in separate comments, and in the end try to recapitulate everything as a closing comment.
ReplyDeleteSituation leadership in my opinion is the way that we always have to act, according to situation. This model is theoretically developed almost perfect by Blanchard and Hersey. I like the way that they actually put things together. In the beginning of reading the article when I saw the grid with supportive and directive behavior, in the very same moment I asked myself: but what is actually with follower’s skills and level of development. And when I saw the table with commitment and competences, I was pleased because my way of thinking was right. Next thing what I am going to say might be a result of language barrier and the meaning of the words. The word commitment in this case I think it means the commitment to work, to do things the right way, to work very hard to do something. But I asked myself, and spotted that there is no loyalty involved in this model. Actually the followers can be a spot where confidential information’s can leak from organization if the leader thinks that his followers are loyal, but in reality there is different situation. This was just an example, and I would like that authors of this model calculated loyalty in commitment, or that loyalty is actually is the premise that’s already involved as existent for theoretical conclusion.
Now I read second text on Blanchard and Hersey situation leadership model, and I still want to say that loyalty is really important, they have to mention, that leaders believe their followers not just that they think that their competences are developed enough. Reason that I mention loyalty so much is because there are a different kind of personalities, and we never know what actually one person thinks deep inside, and the way they feels about leader or whole organization. Leader must be careful while selecting followers.
Vroom and Yetton's Normative Model is familiar to me, because I’ve learned about it from Management. Actually there is one sentence that I am going to mention in my comment: “Decision acceptance is the degree to which a follower accepts a decision made by a leader”. It’s going to look like I am too negative, because the situation in which this degree is low, it might be a cause for intrapersonal conflict of follower. I am talking about conflict inside the follower, because he doesn’t agree with that decision, but must participate in realization. It’s something that can be serious problem if it happens few times, it can be bad for motivation, the way of doing work, and it can drag a follower in D1 section of Blanchard and Hersey model if he was on a higher level.
After reading prof. Hofstede article and watching prof. Trompenaars short lecture and explanation I start to realize why I was so “negative” and it looks like I would be afraid of people surrounding me if I was a leader. But explanation lies in two of seven dimensions lectured by prof. Trompenaars, first is second dimension and that is individualism VS collectivism. It’s familiar that our society in Bosnia was a pure collectivism 20 years ago, and my generation is partly raised in that spirit, and right now we are passing through transitional period. And the second reason sixth dimension, called time dimension, actually the part tied to time orientation, I think that society I live in is too much past oriented and in past very much negative things happened. Also I would like to say that prof. Hofstede article is really productive, and while reading it I also recognized partly a reason of different way of thinking in our discussion and in different cultures.
Elle, now I would like to thank you for posting these applying and useful articles. Also, I hope that everyone who reads my post will understand what I was trying to say. And I hope that one day whole Bosnian society will think like most of us young people and be future oriented.
Emir Skopljak