Introduction
Today, there are several leadership theories and models, from person-centered theories through relationship-based theories to theories of transformation, attempting to explain the various styles and traits exhibited by leaders. Among these theories, I find the situational leadership model quite intriguing, especially due to its recognition of the significance of adaptability and flexibility in the leadership landscape. In a world where change is inevitable, the situational model offers a valid framework to understand followers’ development level and navigate project teams’ evolving needs, consequently ensuring optimal production and effectiveness (Benmira & Agboola, 2021). Additionally, I applaud transformational leadership theory for its crucial role in outlining effective ways leaders can motivate and inspire teams to achieve exceptional organizational performance.
In this research paper, I will provide an in-depth analysis of the situational leadership model, which best defines me as a leader and outlines its significance for followers. This research paper will also explore my most distinguishing leadership traits and the traits I am actively working to improve. The paper will also thoroughly assess components of transformational leadership theory to highlight its role in influencing teams under my leadership role. It will finally outline goals and action plans that I would use to enhance my leadership and motivation skills. In summary, this paper is a thorough introspection and assessment of my leadership traits, to showcase the importance of continuing growth and improvement in becoming a holistic and effective leader.
Leadership Theory That Best Defines Me
As a leader, the leadership model best resonates with me is the situational approach. Developed by Dr. Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, the situational leadership is based on the premise that there is no single way to lead people. It therefore advocates for changing leadership style with evolving circumstances, particularly paying attention to the task at hand and follower’s level of development. As a leader, I always have to adapt my style to match the needs of my team members. Though the situational model has been criticized for lacking empirical evidence, I embody it because it offers prescriptive advice that is not only intuitive and flexible but also highly practical, enabling me to navigate the ever-evolving needs of project teams.
In the situational model, follower development level is divided into four categories, each indicating their level of competency and commitment to the task at hand. These categories include the enthusiastic beginner (D1- low competence and high commitment), the disillusioned learner(D2-low to some competence and low commitment), the capable but cautious(D3- moderate to high competence and variable commitment) and lastly, the self-reliant achiever(D4-high competence and high commitment) (Dugan, 2017). Additionally, this leadership model provides four styles that leaders can employ depending on the contextual factors. These four leadership styles include directing (S1), coaching (S2), supporting(S3) and delegating (S4) styles (Dugan, 2017)..
Once the leader has assessed the follower’s relative development per the assigned task goals, they must match the leader styles to follower’s development levels. For instance, at the beginning of a project, when group members are less experienced or do not understand the task instructions, probably development level D1 and D2, I have to adopt a directive leadership style, in which I provide team members with clear instructions and monitor their progress. However, as the project progresses and the team members improve in competency and commitment, I always transition my leadership style from directing through coaching and supporting to delegating when the followers show self-reliance.
Leadership Traits
Among my key distinguished leadership traits, being an excellent communicator takes the first sport. This trait enables me to communicate concisely and succinctly explain everything to my teams, from instructions for specific tasks to organizational goals while also bringing my vision to life. In addition, I actively listen to my team members, clarify misunderstandings, share and solicit input and ideas with them, and respond clearly and appropriately to their concerns. Another distinguished leadership trait that I have is integrity. The values of honesty, transparency, respect, and authenticity guide my decisions, behavior, dealings, and actions as a leader. I act by professional and ethical standards and uphold my subordinates to the same standards; I keep up my promise and treat everyone with respect. In return, integrity has garnered me respect and admiration from my teams. Additionally, I pride myself on being emotionally intelligent, which enables me to navigate complex team dynamics and maintain collaborative teams, especially since I take genuine concern for each team member’s wellbeing.
However, there are some areas that I am actively working to improve, one of which is the ability to delegate effectively. I always find it challenging to strike a balance between ensuring employees’ autonomy and offering them guidance, probably due to my ineffective ability to accurately diagnose a follower’s development level. I am trying to identify when to offer support, when to let team members work on their own, and when to add more responsibilities. Another challenging area that I am actively working on is my servant leadership abilities. Due to my overfocused tendencies, sometimes I prioritize organizational goals at the expense of team members’ well-being. I am striving to advocate for and tailor support to their professional and personal growth.
Follower’s Preferred Leadership Approach
As a follower, I would prefer my leader to employ a situational leadership approach. I chose the situational leadership model because it is deeply embedded in the understanding that dynamic work environments require a flexible and adaptable leadership style (IMD, 2022). There is no one-size-fits-all leadership style; every situation demands its approach, and by leveraging the situational leadership approach, a leader can effectively respond to these varying circumstances to ensure optimal outcomes for followers.
What draws me the most to the situational leadership approach is that it offers prescriptive guidance for leaders, which includes setting clear goals, diagnosing followers’ development level by the assigned goals, and matching leadership style to the development levels (Dugan, 2017). I value a leader who takes the effort to gauge my development level, assigns tasks that match my development, and tailors support and coaching to help me grow in competency and commitment. As a follower, this is much better for my professional and individual growth than a leader who adopts an approach that assumes all team members are of the same level of development. A team is only as strong as its weakest link; leaders should prioritize the unique needs of team members as outlined in situational models.
Additionally, as I grow competently and confidently into my assigned role, I would prefer a leader who effortlessly transitions their leadership style to supporting and delegating style. This would afford me the needed autonomy and enable me to be creative in my roles, especially when I have attained self-reliance. Nonetheless, IMD(2022) confirms that the situational model fosters a culture of collaboration and open communication between followers and leaders, which is imperative for followers’ professional growth.
Influential Leadership Model
The transformational leadership model best captures how I influence others, especially because it emphasizes inspiring teams to exceed expectations and instill positive change. Dugan (2017) outlines that transformational leaders can induce followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and motivations and the aspirations and expectations of both the leader and followers. For this reason, transformational leaders are often highly passionate about their jobs, charismatic, enthusiastic, energetic, and garnering respect and admiration from their followers, a description that I am nothing short of.
Researcher Bernard Bass outlined four different components of the transformational leadership theory that I leverage to influence others: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Reza, 2019). Under the first component, idealized influence, I always make my team members emulate me by serving as their role models. I achieve this by being consistent, working hard at the expense of personal gains, and behaving professionally and ethically. By embodying these principles, I can influence my teams to internalize my ideals. The second component, inspirational motivation, is not my best suit, but I often did my best to push my teams to find meaning and challenge in our work and push them to reach new heights. I often achieve this by developing well-crafted visions and articulating them to my team members in a way that best resonates to onboard them on the shared envisioned future and challenge them to be optimistic and enthusiastic in realizing it (Maran et al., 2021).
Additionally, I have always leveraged the component of individualized consideration to motivate and inspire my teams. In my leadership roles, I achieve this by prioritizing support for team members and aligning coaching and mentoring efforts to their unique needs. I also establish clear and open communication channels to enable team members to voice their concerns; I actively listen to them, respond appropriately to their concerns, and recognize the contributions of each member (Dugan, 2017). This genuine concern for their wellbeing has always accorded my teams a sense of belonging and inspired them to work harder. Additionally, I always ensure intellectual stimulation in my leadership roles by cultivating a continuous learning culture while advocating for creativity and innovation. Instead of disapproving of different approaches, I often empower my teams to be creative in problem-solving and offer constructive criticism whenever a mistake occurs. By adopting and fulfilling the components of transformational leadership theory, I have often led some of the highly motivated and excellently performing teams, Khan et al. (2020) confirm.
Setting Self-Improvement Goals and Action Plan
Leadership Goal
Through an extensive self-evaluation of my leadership, I have realized that I need to advance my adaptability skills to cope with the dynamic leadership landscape and navigate uncertain times. Therefore, my leadership goal is to enhance my capability to adapt my leadership styles to evolving contextual factors. I can attain this goal by properly aligning it with the situational leadership model.
My plan to achieve this goal includes conducting a comprehensive assessment of my past teams and projects to identify circumstances requiring flexible leadership and how I would have better handled such instances. Additionally, I am committing myself to learn more about leadership adaptability, as Ramalingam et al. (2020) recommended, and leverage the learned insights to upscale my adaptive leadership skills. I also plan to seek mentorship from experienced leaders who have effectively handled complex and uncertain times in their practice and borrow real-life techniques from these mentors.
While the above action plan enables me to enhance my adaptive leadership skills, regularly assessing my improvement levels is also important. For this reason, I plan to establish a continuous feedback loop in which I regularly assess how my adaptive leadership skills impact my team performance and make appropriate adjustments based on the collected feedback. I believe implementing these actions would enhance my adaptive leadership skills per the conditions of the situational leadership model.
Motivation Goal
Another area I significantly need to improve when it comes to inspiring and motivating teams is crafting and articulating compelling visions. Therefore, my goal for the next 12 months is to enhance my capacity to develop strategic, compelling visions and successfully share these visions with team members. To achieve this goal, I intend to leverage transformational leadership theory, particularly its component of inspirational motivation. The actions that I will undertake to achieve this motivation goal include enrolling in a vision crafting training or workshop to enable me to make more compelling visions, sharpen my storytelling skills to enable me to effectively articulate the visions, and enrolling in a communication course as articulation and expressiveness require effective communication skills. Nonetheless, I also plan to organize feedback sessions with my peers and mentors and use the collected feedback to adjust my vision properly. I also plan to conduct regular sessions with my team to revisit and reinforce the team’s vision and use the sessions to further refine and realign the vision. Implementing these targeted actions would help me address the specific challenge of effectively articulating compelling visions and improve my ability to inspire and motivate teams.
Conclusion
Through this paper, it has become apparent that leadership is a dynamic journey that requires continuing growth and adaptability. Additionally, there is no one-size-fits-all leadership theory; what works for some leaders might not work for others. However, the situational leadership approach stands out as intuitive and practical, emphasizing leadership adaptability and the need for tailored approaches that meet follower’s development levels. Additionally, by serving as a role model, articulating a compelling vision, encouraging a culture of continuous learning and creative problem solving, and demonstrating individualized concern for my followers as outlined in transformational leadership theory, I have been able to inspire and motivate teams to exceed both their expectations and mine and maintain exceptional performance.
A thorough reflection on my leadership traits reveals that excellent communication skills, unwavering integrity, and astounding emotional intelligence enable me to easily navigate the complexities of leading teams. However, it has also become apparent that I need to enhance my adaptive leadership and delegation skills and refine my servant leadership capability and ability to articulate compelling visions and onboard team members to the envisioned future. However, by committing to personal and professional growth through seeking mentorship, attending training and workshops, reading leadership books, and regularly assessing my leadership quality through establishing feedback loops, I can become a holistic and effective leader who fosters collaborative environments and drives exceptional outcomes.
References
Benmira, S., & Agboola, M. (2021). Evolution of Leadership Theory. BMJ Leader, 5(1), 3–5. https://bmjleader.bmj.com/content/5/1/3
Dugan, J. P. (2017). Leadership Theory: Cultivating Critical Perspectives. John Wiley & Sons.
IMD. (2022, August 17). The 15 genuine benefits of Situational Leadership in 2023. Www.imd.org; IMD – International Institute for Management Development. https://www.imd.org/reflections/situational-leadership/#:~:text=Successful%20leaders%20have%20the%20ability
Khan, H., Rehmat, M., Butt, T. H., Farooqi, S., & Asim, J. (2020). Impact of transformational leadership on work performance, burnout, and social loafing: A mediation model. Future Business Journal, 6(1), 1–13. Springeropen. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-020-00043-8
Maran, T. K., Baldegger, U., & Klösel, K. (2021). Turning visions into results: Unraveling the distinctive paths of leading with vision and autonomy to goal achievement. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 43(1), 133–154. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj-06-2021-0268
Ramalingam, B., Nabarro, D., Oqubuy, A., Carnall, D. R., & Wild, L. (2020, September 11). 5 Principles to Guide Adaptive Leadership. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/09/5-principles-to-guide-adaptive-leadership
Reza, M. H. (2019). Components of transformational leadership behavior. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 5(3), 119–124. https://eprajournals.com/IJMR/article/1310/abstract
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