By Jack Ruffer

So you think it's only right to take the egalitarian approach and treat all of your people the same, do you? It's an idealistic philosophy, but not pragmatic as it assumes that your entire staff has the same experience, competency, capacity to learn, desire to achieve and many other characteristics in common. In short, to treat everyone the same assumes that everyone is the same and we all know that's not the case. Certainly you approach everyone with the same fair-minded, pleasant and professional demeanor, with the same desire to help them be successful. But as a mentor you must recognize that everyone has different professional strengths and weaknesses and you must approach your managerial responsibilities with that in mind. This area of study is called Situational Leadership.

Situational leadership simply advocates that you adjust leadership style as you interact with each of your staff members because each of them have differing professional needs. Some of those needs require directive behavior on your part and some require supportive behavior on your part. For our purposes let's agree on the definition of Leadership Style as the behavior pattern manager exhibits when attempting to influence the activities of others as perceived by those others. Two other definitions are essential here in order to understand the overall concept.

Task Behavior is the extent to which leaders are likely to organize and define the roles of the members of their group; to explain what activities each is to do and when, where and how tasks are to be accomplished, characterized by endeavoring to establish well-defined patterns of organization, channels of communication, and ways of getting jobs accomplished.

Relationship Behavior is the extent to which leaders are likely to maintain personal relationships between themselves and members of their group by opening up channels of communication, providing emotional support, "psychological strokes," and facilitating behaviors.1

Here are a few examples:

Mary is new to your staff, having responded to your ad for an entry level customer service representative for your on-site management team. She is bright, outgoing, and eager to learn and interviewed very well. You've had to explain and demonstrate everything you want her to do and, in some instances, you've had to do it more than once. She's made some mistakes but you expected that and she appears to be learning from those mistakes. You've told her to come to you if she had any questions and, still unsure of herself, she's come to you often. It's taken a good deal of your time to try to get her up to speed but then, that was to be expected. Your leadership style with Mary has been high task-related behavior because she has so much to learn but low relationship-related behavior until she matures in her job and has earned the "strokes."

John is the senior of your two customer service representatives now that Mary is on board. John has played a minor role in helping Mary learn the ropes. John has been with you for just over a year and requires moderate supervision for routine tasks but still needs close supervision for non-routine tasks. Your leadership style with John is both high task-related behavior and high relationship-related behavior because while John still has something to learn, he has progressed to the point that he needs to know you approve of much of his performance on the job which you demonstrate by the frequent pat on the back or verbal "attaboy".

Jane is your accounts payable/ receivable person and knows her job inside and out, requiring a minimum of supervision on your part. You count heavily on Jane's competency/accuracy and she's never let you down. Your leadership style with Jane should be high relationship-related behavior and low task-related behavior. Jane is highly competent and you have full confidence in her ability to get the job done. More importantly, you've made a point of soliciting her opinion on a wide range of issues related to management of this account because you trust her logical thought processes and you genuinely value her input.

Many of you have been practicing situational leadership intuitively for some time. Now, you know what to call it.

If you have questions about this or any other subject I've covered so far this year, feel free to contact Adamen, Inc. They'll get the word to me and I'll respond as soon as possible. If there is a subject you'd like me to address, I'd like to know that too but please keep your questions as generic as possible.

1.  Paul Hersey and Kenneth H. Blanchard, "Leadership: Situational Approaches," inManagement of Organizational Behavior-Utilizing Human Resources, 5th ed. (Prentice Hall, 1988).