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Situational Leadership : Changing your style to reflect different needs |
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Good leaders are able to adopt differing leadership styles with different people, or with the same people, but at different times. The key factors which are likely to influence the style the leader adopts at a particular time include the nature of the work to be done, the skill level of the person being asked to do the work and the ongoing needs of the leader's relationship with that person. |
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Thinking in this area is based on work by Blake and Mouton who developed a simple model around two axes, concern with people, and with task. The (9,1) leadership style is solely focused on getting the job done - which in the medium or long term is likely to prove highly unpopular, especially in a voluntary organisation! Conversely, a (1,9) style leads to a warm and cosy ‘country club’ where there is loving concern for people and their needs, but nothing happens!A (1,1) leadership style suggests the worst of both worlds - little or nothing is happening. The diagonal is clearly the place to be - where over time the needs of the task and the people are held in balance. (5,5) is a half way house - where compromise is the order of the day, and (9,9) suggests the goal of long term leadership - where people and task are integrated. Although this (9,9) leadership style may be the desired long term approach, different situations and different people will require leaders to use a range of styles at different times. For example, when a fire breaks out, concern for the task of emptying a building in a safe and orderly fashion is of prime importance. Asking people to get into small groups, and to reflect on how they feel about the prospect of being consumed by flames is clearly unhelpful. At other times, greater concern for people over task is called for.. |
Adapting leadership style to different situations in a Christian context requires balancing concern for the task with concern for the individual. Delivering quality in mission and ministry are important, but one of the distinctives of Christian leadership should be that we also have concern for the individual we are working with. Christian leaders should always have a high regard for people and for maintaining quality relationships with them. That is good pastoral practice, and a clear and direct result of loving our neighbours. Yet, it is important that we do not always seek to operate with high degree of time commitment to involvement in relationship building. There simply isn’t time for us to have high relationship involvement in every contact we make with people within the church. Not only that, but as people gain competence in their ministries, leaders need to stand back and adopt a different leadership style in order to give them space to grow and develop. This suggests that we need to focus
carefully investment in relationship with team members to the most important occasions to
give this time : |
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