Situational Leadership Theory

Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership theory is based on the idea of follower readiness. Hersey and Blanchard argue that employees have different levels of readiness for handling different jobs, responsibilities, and work assignments.

Accordingly, Hersey and Blanchard’s situational theory states that leaders need to adjust their leadership styles to match followers’ readiness. Performance readiness is the ability and willingness to take responsibility for directing one’s behavior at work.
Readiness is composed of two components.

Job readiness consists of the amount of knowledge, skill, ability, and experience people have to perform their jobs. As you would expect, people with greater skill, ability, and experience do a better job of supervising their own work.

Psychological readiness, on the other hand, is a feeling of self-confidence or self-respect. Likewise, confident people do a better job of guiding their own work than do insecure people.

Job readiness and psychological readiness are combined to produce four different levels of readiness in Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership theory. Situational theory defines leadership styles in terms of task behavior (that is, concern for production) and relation-ship behavior (that is, concern for people).

A telling leadership style (high task behavior and low relationship behavior) is based on one-way communication, in which followers are told what, how, when, and where to do particular tasks. Telling is used when people are insecure and neither willing nor able to take responsibility for guiding their own work (R1).

A selling leadership style (high task behavior and high relationship behavior) involves two-way communication and psychological support to encourage followers to “own” or “buy into” particular ways of doing things. Selling is used when confident people are willing but not able to take responsibility for guiding their own work (R2).

A participating style (low task behavior and high relationship behavior) is based on two-way communication and shared decision making. Participating is used when insecure people are able but not willing to take responsibility for guiding their own work (R3).

A delegating style (low task behavior and low relation-ship behavior) is used when leaders basically let workers “run their own show” and make their own decisions. Delegating is used when people are willing and able to take responsibility for guiding their own work (R4).

In general, as people become more “ready,” and thus more willing and able to guide their own behavior, leaders should become less task oriented and more relationship oriented. Then, as people become even more “ready,” leaders should become both less task oriented and less relationship oriented until people eventually manage their own work with little input from their leaders.