Episode D.009 Leadership of Individuals

Leadership Styles
Yesterday we covered a working model for the development or progression of mastery. Today we move to leadership styles - your options for dealing with the situation.

• Direction - Telling people what, when, who, and most importantly HOW, plus being present to build skills.
• Support - Telling people why and being available to build confidence as they transition from being directly supervised to working on their own.

Which gives you 4 leadership styles:

1. High Direction - Low Support - Telling Style
2. High Direction - High Support - Coaching Style
3. Low Direction - High Support - Participating Style
4. Low Direction - Low Support - Delegating Style

Now that we have the 2 essential elements of readiness of people for a specific task and your options as a leader, the next part of the conversation is obvious, lets match follower needs with leader approach.

• WILLING to learn or try, not ABLE to perform (Unconscious Incompetent). The willingness doesn't need large amounts of support (LOW SUPPORT) but the individual will fail without HIGH LEVELS OF DIRECTION - the HOW = Telling Style.
• Because they have become aware of what the task really entails, their WILLINGNESS has slipped while their PERFORMANCE has slightly improved (Conscious Incompetent). The leader increases SUPPORT to prop up their willingness and continues HIGH DIRECTION - HOW= Coaching Style.

​What the first 2 Readiness or Development Levels have in common is the lack of ABILITY. Based on the leader's assessment, the decision is reached the individual CAN do the job. Now the challenge is to continue their growth to mastery and working independently.

• The follower has demonstrated their ABILITY to perform up to an acceptable standard. The issue is helping them build confidence to operate without direction (Conscious Competent). The leader is now providing LOW DIRECTION while keeping the SUPPORT HIGH = Participating Style.
• You have arrived. The goal of every (smart) leader is to have people who can operate successfully under delegation. The individual has proven the ABILITY to PERFORM without supervision and does not need support (Unconscious Competent). The style from the leader that makes sense is LOW DIRECTION and LOW SUPPORT = Delegation

Sit back and ponder what this means - there is a logical progression to how individuals or groups gain skills, and therefore there is a consistent approach to build skills and commitment to your company - situational leadership.
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