#112 a refresher

I have talked to two experienced people in the last two days that were unfamiliar with or had forgotten about Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership model.  I thought a refresher may be good for everyone.  This simple concept has helped me with supervision more than any other single idea.

There are books, websites and conferences on this -- so forgive the oversimplification -- but essentially the idea is that you start a leadership (supervisory) relationship by DIRECTING.  This is very counter intuitive as many new leaders/managers, myself included, are very tempted to jump right to the DELEGATING part.  Especially if the new person is experienced and/or there has been a time when the position is vacant, managers are often very relieved to have the new person on board and begin to toss tasks their way from the beginning.  Bad idea.

As the theory goes, effective relationships move from right to left along a bell curve from Directing, to Coaching, to Supporting and ONLY THEN to Delegating.  Think of it as a train following a track.  If you try to go from Directing to Delegating, you jump the track and a "train wreck" occurs.

Certainly the idea is to progress through the sequence; a manager has little interest to prescribe or review every single task, but the effort put in to do so in the beginning will reap rewards later.  Even if the new person comes with 20 years of experience, they need to learn "your track" and the protocol and practices of your place.  They too start with you in a Directing role.

By now it should occur to you that following this model requires a commitment of time.  It is much easier (or so it seems) to delegate from the start or to skip a step or two in the in the middle.  This is why after decades of supervising new staff, I still pull out the wallet-size model in my planner and review it each time I make a hire.   Whether you are supervising interns, student employees, recent graduates, seasoned professionals or even someone just in a new role, I encourage you to utilize Blanchard's model as your map.  It is the best route I know to supervisory success.

-- beth triplett

Model from www.12manage.com/methods_blanchard_situational_leadership