Leadership and the One Minute Manager: Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Leadership by Blanchard, Ken, Zigarmi, Patricia, Zigarmi, Drea (1999) Hardcover by Kenneth H. Blanchard

Leadership and the One Minute Manager: Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Leadership by Blanchard, Ken, Zigarmi, Patricia, Zigarmi, Drea (1999) Hardcover Reviews

• 
  Nathan

  As a leader, you have one job: help your people win.
  
  And because every person who works for you needs help in a different way, you can't afford to employ a single leadership style.
  
  Your leadership style has to only and exactly what the person you're leading needs based upon the tasks they perform.
  
  That's where Leadership and the One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard is helpful. His Situational Leadership is a leadership approach that combines directive and supportive behaviors based upon the needs of the person you're leading and the task they're performing.
  
  Blanchard blends those two behaviors into different combinations to present four leadership styles:
  1. Directing. This is one way communication that is ideal for enthusiastic beginners - inexperienced people who are are enthusiastic and committed and have the potential to be self-directed.
  2. Coaching combines directing and supporting and is best for disillusioned learners - people who are gaining competence but have become intimidated by the size of their learning curve.
  3. Supporting is for experienced people who need more confidence or motivation, but not direction.
  4. Delegating is for people with high confidence and commitment, where you're turning over responsibility for day-to-day decision-making and problem-solving to the person doing the task.
  
  Remember that the level should always be assessed with a specific goal or task in mind. As Blanchard writes, it's "not just different strokes for different folks, but different for the same folks depending on the task." How do you determine the appropriate level? By looking to the two functions of performance:
  1. Competence. A function of knowledge and skills, which can be gained from education, training, and/or experience.
  2. Commitment. A combination of confidence (self-assuredness) and motivation (enthusiasm for doing the task well).
  
  So, what does that mean for you as a leader? How do you help your team win?
  
  You do it by applying the appropriate leadership style to consistently increase the competence and confidence of your people. You want to move them up to the less time-consuming styles of supporting and delegating while still achieving high quality results.
  
  Blanchard lays out five steps to develop a person's competence and commitment around a specific task:
  1. Tell them what to do
  2. Show them what to do
  3. Let them try
  4. Observe performance
  5. Praise progress
  
  Be sure you aren't hanging out in the first two steps for too long. Leaders do only what their people can't yet do for themselves. Helping them win does not mean doing their work for them.
  
  As a leader, you must also constantly develop yourself. Succeeding at situational leadership requires consistently improving on the three key leadership skills:
  1. Flexibility. The ability to use all of the four different leadership styles.
  2. Diagnosis. The ability to determine the leadership style appropriate for each person and each task.
  3. Partnering for Performance. The ability to work with the person to develop them.
  
  Remember: If you aren't growing and developing, your people won't either. Are you developing your own leadership skills along with the leaders in your business?