Situational leadership
Leadership style treated as a variable, adjusted (directing, coaching, supporting, delegating) to the person's competence and confidence on the task at hand.
Evidence grade: practice A widely adopted practitioner model with clear provenance.
Use it when
Calibrating how much structure to give anyone new to a task, including a new manager or a new executive.
Where it stops working
Style has to follow the task, whatever the person's title. Misread it and you micromanage experts or abandon novices. Its predictive claims are thin, and it works as a vocabulary rather than a theory.
Where the standard uses it
- PL-1Delegation, ownership, and decision rightsMatching scope to capability, making authority explicit, not taking work back.
- CC-2Coaching versus directingDeveloping judgment in others.
Sources
- Paul Hersey and Kenneth H. Blanchard. Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources. Prentice-Hall, 1969. In the bibliography
Used alongside it
- Coaching the coaches practice
- Levels of authority and intent-based leadership practice
- Managerial leverage practice
- One-way and two-way doors practice
- Task-relevant maturity practice
- The GROW model practice
Cite this model
Chicago, BibTeX and licence →Engineering Management Academy. (2026). Situational leadership. In Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge (Version 3.1, TEC.situational-leadership). https://www.engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge/techniques/situational-leadership