Situational Leadership (In a Nutshell)

Good leaders lead each team member differently, meeting them where they need to be met. Maybe George needs more coaching and Amelia needs more training. A good leader will see that and not try to treat them the same. But great leaders are able to meet their people differently on a task-by-task basis, giving them support where they excel, and training where they're learning. The trick is knowing your people well enough to know where they're excelling and where they're stuck.

Ideally, there are at least one or two facets of your people's roles in which they are rock stars. When I first started as a Director of Learning & Development, I was a fairly expert facilitator and instructional designer. In my previous role, those were the two main components of my job description, and I had them down.

However, if you're leading people for growth, there are also going to be some tasks they perform that are new to them or in which they are not yet quite rockstars. When I started, I had never made a budget before. So when my boss asked me to put together my budget for the year, I was totally lost. I was excited to try, but had no idea what to do.

A mistake leaders make is to lump people into "expert" and "learner" buckets whole cloth. You could assume that, because I was great at the executional tasks of L&D, I was an expert in my role. (And I think that's what happened, honestly.) But I wasn't. And being led as an expert in a task where I was a newbie didn't work.

When you're leading an expert, you want to provide more coaching, be more of a sounding board, and encourage them to solve problems themselves. When you're leading a newbie, you want to teach, train, and show them how something should be done. They're two ends of a continuum, with "guided" on one end, and "directed" on the other.

But how you customize your leadership is not just based on their skills or abilities. You also want to look at how willing they are to do a task. A great way to picture this is to remember how you felt when you were learning to drive.

Before I got my license, I was eager, excited, and a little nervous. (Beginner: High willingness, low skill.)

Once I had been driving a while, my father made me get on and off every exit of the Merritt Parkway from here to eternity. The excitement started to dim a little. (Intermediate: Variable willingness, medium skill.)

Now, I'm a perfectly good driver, and I'm generally happy to be the one hopping behind the wheel for most short trips. (Advanced: High willingness, high skill.)

Except, of course, if you want me to drive long distances or parallel park. (Advanced: Low willingness, high skill.)

Directed leadership sounds like:

• Here's how you do this task...

• I got you some resources to help you...

• Let's spend some time together walking through this.

• What part of this makes sense? What part doesn't?

• Where do you need more help/training?

Guided leadership sounds like:

• What do you need from me?

• How can I be helpful?

• What's getting in the way?

• You used to be so confident about this. What's changed?

• What's going on?

• Do you want me to hear, help, or handle?

It's convenient that willingness and ability are both generally observable. Pair them with results, and you can usually tell where your employees need your help, and what kind they need. So ask yourself: what tasks are being performed by experts and what tasks are being done by newbies? And are you leading them successfully?