My Experience with Situational Leadership Theory
Leadership is not just some magical mix of traits that if you possess them, it will make you the perfect leader like some theories that have been discussed previously on this site. Your leadership style needs to be adaptable to different situations. Hersey & Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory addresses this and also begins to define it. After reading about this theory I realized that I have actually applied this theory in my work life before in multiple situations. One instance of this actually just happened this past week.
Currently I am an Operations Lead at the San Diego State University Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union. What this means is that I work with a team of Operations Assistants to prepare meeting rooms and event spaces as well as monitor the building and the people utilizing the different spaces. As an Operations Lead, I am in charge of delegating tasks to the Operations Assistants during the shift. Currently, we have just started the training process to create new Operations Leads and this starts with the candidates shadowing us and starting to practice the Lead role. During one of my past shifts I had Nicole shadowing me for this reason. I first asked her if she had completed any shadow shifts to find out what her level of competence was. This was actually her first shadow shift so I started from the very beginning. I could tell she was eager and ready to learn, so I applied a directing approach. I sat her down and went through all of the reservations for the night and gave her a step-by-step process of my plan for the night. Once she started to get the hang of it, I handed the reservations to her and had her continue to go through the process with me right next to her so we could talk about what we were doing. I then had her get the rest of the staff and we headed to different rooms to complete our tasks. For the first half of the night I remained with her so I could explain different aspects of the role, continuing the coaching process. But as the night progressed I could tell that she now had a more moderate comprehension and so I had us split up. She went with part of the staff to different rooms while I took the rest of the staff with me. When Nicole would finish a room with her team I would check on her to see how she was doing and correct any mistakes. Looking back I now know that I was applying the supporting role in Hersey and Blanchard’s model. After one or two more shifts, I will be able to delegate to Nicole and she will be on her way to becoming an Operations Lead. That night I was able to successfully match the approach to the situation and it made a very positive experience for the both of us.
