The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership® Theory

Source: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_44.htm

The theory states that instead of using just one style, successful leaders should change their leadership styles based on the maturity of the people they’re leading and the details of the task. Using this theory, leaders should be able to place more or less emphasis on the task, and more or less emphasis on the relationships with the people they’re leading, depending on what’s needed to get the job done successfully.

Leadership Styles

According to Hersey and Blanchard, there are four main leadership styles:

• Telling (S1) – Leaders tell their people exactly what to do, and how to do it.
• Selling (S2) – Leaders still provide information and direction, but there’s more communication with followers. Leaders “sell” their message to get the team on board.
• Participating (S3) – Leaders focus more on the relationship and less on direction. The leader works with the team, and shares decision-making responsibilities.
• Delegating (S4) – Leaders pass most of the responsibility onto the follower or group. The leaders still monitor progress, but they’re less involved in decisions.

As you can see, styles S1 and S2 are focused on getting the task done. Styles S3 and S4 are more concerned with developing team members’ abilities to work independently.

Maturity Levels

According to Hersey and Blanchard, knowing when to use each style is largely dependent on the maturity of the person or group you’re leading. They break maturity down into four different levels:

• M1 – People at this level of maturity are at the bottom level of the scale. They lack the knowledge, skills, or confidence to work on their own, and they often need to be pushed to take the task on.
• M2 – At this level, followers might be willing to work on the task, but they still don’t have the skills to do it successfully.
• M3 – Here, followers are ready and willing to help with the task. They have more skills than the M2 group, but they’re still not confident in their abilities.
• M4 – These followers are able to work on their own. They have high confidence and strong skills, and they’re committed to the task.

The Hersey-Blanchard model maps each leadership style to each maturity level, as shown below.

Maturity Level	Most Appropriate Leadership Style
M1: Low maturity	S1: Telling/directing
M2: Medium maturity, limited skills	S2: Selling/coaching
M3: Medium maturity, higher skills but lacking confidence	S3: Participating/supporting
M4: High maturity	S4: Delegating

The Savitha Deshpande case- Learnings

– An eternal question for the leaders- Where do i put most of my time on ?  On High Performers or Low Performers ?
– There has to be an appropriate balance- not too skewed in either direction.
– The Managerial Grid by R.R. Blake- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_grid_model offers some answer to this situation. “Middle of the Road” style sometimes considered best.

– Whether a leader shows Concern for People or Concern for Task, the answer could be more situational, context based.

– A leader has to put efforts to understand the low performance of their employees and then act accordingly. Sometimes, leaders start addressing performance problems without understanding the real reason.

– Whatever gets rewarded in the organizations gets done.

– Leaders should be concerned with making people grow.

– Employee oriented behavior by the Managers does not mean being Open and friendly with the team members alone. Its more about showing empathy  than sympathy.

– Leaders should give special care to understand how they are percieved by their employees.

The Vroom’s theory of Work motivation

The most widely accepted explanations of motivation has been propounded by Victor Vroom. His theory is commonly known as expectancy theory. The theory argues that the strength of a tendency to act in a specific way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual. To make this simple, expectancy theory says that an employee can be motivated to perform better when there is a belief that the better performance will lead to good performance appraisal and that this shall result into realization of personal goal in form of some reward. Therefore an employee is :

Motivation = Valence x Expectancy.

Valence: How attractive is the outcome ?
Expectance: The possibility that i will get what i desire i.e. my goals.

The theory focuses on three things :

Efforts and performance relationship
Performance and reward relationship
Rewards and personal goal relationship

Source: http://www.laynetworks.com/Theories-of-Motivation.html

The Porter-Lawler theory of motivation

Actual performance in a job is primarily determined by the effort spent. But it is also affected by the person’s ability to do the job and also by individual’s perception of what the required task is. So performance is the responsible factor that leads to intrinsic as well as extrinsic rewards. These rewards, along with the equity of individual leads to satisfaction. Hence, satisfaction of the individual depends upon the fairness of the reward.
Source: http://www.laynetworks.com/Theories-of-Motivation.html

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Rewards

– When people get promoted, the people want to find who else got promoted. People always tend to assess the fairness of the system first.

– People always assess fairness by comparing the decisions taken against their reference groups. So even though they get promoted it doesn’t mean they will be happy because if they find that someone else they perceive to be a lower performer than them gets promoted (along with them), they lose enthusiasm.

– As a leader, imbibe a sense of fairness and equity in the team. Keep a record of performance, rely on accurate data points.

– Make use of both Extrinsic and Intrinsic approaches to reward employees.
– Extrinsic approaches are the ones like Promotions, Bonuses etc., typically the ones that are defined within the system.

– Intrinsic approaches can be created by a leader e.g. by simply asking “What do you want to learn in next 3 months ?” a leader shows his concern to the team member that he/she is ready to address one of the employee’s core needs i.e. to facilitate skills development.

Effort and Performance

– As a leader, find a link between effort and Performance.
– One of the jobs of a leader is to define Performance. Define for your employees, what is the specific definition of performance.
– At the most basic level, everyone who joins the organization wants to perform.
– As a leader, make it a habit to communicate the definition of performance proctively to your employees.
– Superior the definition of Performance, the superior will be the performance.
– Performance is as much about Skill as much it is about will.

Leadership lessons from Leadership Summit

I had attended the leadership Summit conference a while back but i did find lot of correlation between that Summit and the contents covered in the lectures of “Team building and Conflict Management”. This Summit had the higher management people from various organizations as speakers and panel members and was a good learning experience.

I had drafted my notes and learnings from this Summit at the location below. Please read on if you find it relevant.

Equity theory of motivation

The core of the equity theory is the principle of balance or equity. As per this motivation theory, an individual’s motivation level is correlated to his perception of equity, fairness and justice practiced by the management. Higher is individual’s perception of fairness, greater is the motivation level and vice versa. While evaluating fairness, employee compares the job input (in terms of contribution) to outcome (in terms of compensation) and also compares the same with that of another peer of equal cadre/category. D/I ratio (output-input ratio) is used to make such a comparison.

EQUITY THEORY
Ratio Comparison	Perception
O/I a < O/I b	Under-rewarded (Equity Tension)
O/I a = O/I b	Equity
O/I a > O/I b	Over-rewarded (Equity Tension)

Negative Tension state: Equity is perceived when this ratio is equal. While if this ratio is unequal, it leads to “equity tension”. J.Stacy Adams called this a negative tension state which motivates him to do something right to relieve this tension. A comparison has been made between 2 workers A and B to understand this point.

Referents: The four comparisons an employee can make have been termed as “referents” according to Goodman. The referent chosen is a significant variable in equity theory. These referents are as follows:

	Self-inside: An employee’s experience in a different position inside his present organization.
	Self-outside: An employee’s experience in a situation outside the present organization.
	Other-inside: Another employee or group of employees inside the employee’s present organization.
	Other-outside: Another employee or employees outside the employee’s present organization.

An employee might compare himself with his peer within the present job in the current organization or with his friend/peer working in some other organization or with the past jobs held by him with others. An employee’s choice of the referent will be influenced by the appeal of the referent and the employee’s knowledge about the referent.

Source: http://www.managementstudyguide.com/equity-theory-motivation.htm

Basic human Psychology

– The Basic human psychology talks about the various selves- the Real self, the Projected self and the Ideal self. Illustrated in the figure below-

– It is considered ideal to have a good deal of overlap between the three selves.

– Behavior tends to define attitude and vice versa.

– What i aspire to be in a period of time is also a function of how i want to be seen by the people who matter to me.

– Habit formation- If we do somethings sometimes, it becomes a part of us (our behaviour) over a period of time.

– Hypocrisy results when one’s real self and the projected self is very different.

– Motivation is a process that starts with a psychological or physiological need that activates a drive or a behavior and that is aimed at a goal.

Managing motivation and Performance

Some Key points:
– Motivated behavior is quite outcome focused.
– It is usually a self directed behavior and there is an element of willingness and inner drive.
– Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can explain some basics related to motivation.
– Meaning of motivation can be understood better by assessing one’s Desires, Wants, Goals, Drives and Needs.
– One of the possible reasons people dont have vision for future is if they are preoccupied today i.e. struggling to meet today’s needs, there is very less possibility that they could be looking at what they want to be achieving in next 3 years. Basic principle- if i am comfortable today, i can think of tomorrow.
– There is often a lot of peer pressure that infleunces what one aspires to be.