Practical approach to situational leadership

Vadim Nareyko, 2014

Rules

▪ Everybody works

▪ There are no silly questions

▪ Respect to other opinions

▪ Meet maximum amount of people

▪ 3 questions per slide (more – to the question board)

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Vadim Nareyko

• Founder of Management Masters School

• Chief Innovation Officer of Itransition Group

• More than 14 years in team management and coaching

https://www.facebook.com/vadim.nareyko

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Training goal

Increase the efficiency of communication using different leadership styles and related people behavior templates

What is in this training?

▪ 4 types of leadership styles

▪ 4 types of individual style

▪ 3 meta-programs

▪ 4 levels of competence

▪ 3 types of service companies

Let us check how to combine it

1. Situational Leadership

Leadership styles theory

Leadership styles

High focus on people

Low focus on people

High focus on processLow focus on process

Telling

SellingParticipating

Delegating

1. Telling

▪ One-way communication

▪ Leader defines the roles

▪ Leader defines how to do the task

2. Selling

▪ Two-way communication

▪ The individual or group being influenced to buy into the process

▪ Leader is providing direction

3. Participating

▪ The individual or group making decision about tasks

▪ Leader is maintaining relationship behavior

4. Delegating

▪ High involvement and responsibility of the individual or group

▪ Leader is monitoring the process

What’s optimal leadership style?

▪ No one style is considered optimal for all leaders to use all the time

▪ Leaders need to be flexible and adaptive

What’s your style?

▪ Think 1 minute and write down your style

Introduction to Psycholinguistics

Our language and our mind

What’s Psycholinguistics?

Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language

3 Presuppositions

1. People have different Experience

2. Experience forms Mind

3. Mind and Language are connected

Frame of reference

High/Low focus on People

Frame of Reference

Internal External

Internal/Self-referencing

▪ Evaluate things on the basis of what they think as appropriate

▪ Own decisions, actions and results

External/Other-referencing

▪ Evaluate things on the basis of what other think

▪ Look to others for guidance, information, motivation, and decisions

▪ Need feedback and information from others to make decisions

Frame of Reference

Internal External

It’s not the point It’s the range

Frame of reference: Language

Internal

▪ I, Me, My

External

▪ You, We, Our

Frame of reference: Questions

▪ How do you know that you have done a good job?

▪ How do you know that you have chosen the right bank?

▪ When it comes to decision making, how do you generally go about it?

▪ What kind of information do you want in making decisions?

▪ What is the right process to make decision in the company?

Philosophical Direction

High/Low focus on Process

Philosophical Direction

Why How

Why (Origins)

▪ Tend to sort for the philosophical past

▪ Value understanding origin and source

▪ Problem focus

▪ Philosophical

How (Solution Process)

▪ Tend to sort for the use and purpose of things

▪ Care more about “so what?”

▪ Solution focus

▪ Practical

Why/How - Language

Why

▪ Reasons

▪ Choices

▪ Origins

▪ Sources

How

▪ Facts

▪ Procedures

▪ Use

▪ “How to”

Why/How - Questions

▪ What are your steps to resolve important issue?

▪ Why did you choose your car?

▪ When you receive new tools during training, what is more important to know: why it works or how to use it?

▪ When do you think about a subject, do you first think about origins/causation, or do you think about use/function?

Philosophical direction

Why How

It’s not the point It’s the range

Attention!

▪ Don’t make decision based on one question and answer!

▪ One frame can not show the whole picture!

2. Situational Leadership

People levels

Leadership styles

Low commitment

High commitment

Low competenceHigh competence

Junior

VacationerExpert

PartnerTelling

SellingParticipating

Delegating

4 Stages of competence

Model from the Gordon Training International

Competence: Stage 1

Unconsciousincompetence

Unconscious incompetence

▪ The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit

▪ The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage

▪ The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn

Competence: Stage 2

Unconsciousincompetence

Consciousincompetence

Conscious incompetence

▪ Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit

▪ The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage

Competence: Stage 3

Unconsciousincompetence

Consciouscompetence

Consciousincompetence

Conscious competence

▪ The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration

▪ It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill

Competence: Stage 4

Unconsciousincompetence

Consciouscompetence

Consciousincompetence

Unconsciouscompetence

Unconscious competence

▪ The individual has had so much refining practice with a skill that he or she does not really need to think about what to do

▪ The individual has become so comfortable with the skill she/he will often be able to teach it to others

How to develop competence?

▪ Define the stage

▪ Show the current stage

▪ Discuss how to move to the net stage

Commitment

Personal motivation

How can we motivate already?

1. Use defined frame of reference

2. Use right philosophical direction

3. Help to develop competence

4. Find people with right motivation

Direction Sort

What is motivation?

Direction Sort

Away from Toward

Away from (Avoidance)

▪ Move away from what they disvalue

▪ Focus on what they want to avoid

▪ Have more difficulty with goals and managing their priorities

Toward (Approach)

▪ Move toward their desired outcomes

▪ Feel motivated to achieve

▪ Have more difficulty in recognizing what they should avoid

Away from/Toward - Language

Away from

▪ Avoidances

▪ Disvalues

▪ Exclude words (stay clear of, get rid of, stay away from, avoid, don’t need)

Toward

▪ Goals

▪ Specific wants

▪ Include words (gain, have, get, attain, achieve)

Away from/Toward - Questions

▪ What do you want in good relationship?

▪ What do you want from job?

▪ When you get peace, what does that mean to you?

Away from/Toward

Away from Toward

It’s not the point It’s the range

Choosing the right style for organization

Situational leadership in consultancy

3 types of service companies

1. Procedural

2. Brain

3. Grey hair

David H. Maister «Managing the Professional Service Firm»

Procedural

▪ Work for which the solution/approach is well known, can be delegated to less experienced staff and to some extent the range of answers can even be ‘prescribed’

▪ The key to selling this work is its efficiency

Brain

▪ Work that requires a lot of creativity

▪ Calling for professional expertise and for which little can be specified in advance

Gray hair

▪ Equally unique and difficult to proceduralise

▪ The delivery of the solution is based on the experience and breadth of the professional

Procedural – Leadership style?

▪ Big percentage of unexperienced staff

▪ Formal procedures

▪ Repetitive tasks

▪ We focus on process1. Telling

2. Selling (if we need to increase commitment)

Brain – Leadership style?

▪ Big percentage of really experienced people

▪ Informal procedures

▪ Creative tasks

▪ We have motivated and experienced people1. Delegating

2. Participating (if we need to increase commitment)

Gray hair – leadership style?

▪ Amount of juniors – between Procedural and Brain

▪ Experienced but not so creative people

▪ We focus on motivation:1. Participating

2. Selling (if we need to improve processes)

References

Books

▪ P. Hersey, K.H. Blanchard, D.E. Johnson, Management of Organizational Behavior

▪ M.L. Hall, Figuring Out People: Reading People using Meta-Programs

▪ D.H. Maister, Managing the Professional Service Firm

Wikipedia

▪ Situational leadership theory

▪ Four stage of competence

Thank you!

Management Masters School

https://www.facebook.com/ManagementMasters

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