Life-Cycle Model of Leadership

The situational leadership (SL) theory, developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, is one of the most widely known frameworks for explaining managerial effectiveness. Although the framework is particularly popular among practicing managers and professional trainers, it has not enjoyed comparable attention from the academic community of industrial/organizational researchers. Nonetheless, the theory is recognized among researchers for its intuitive appeal, though it is not considered a clearly valid or robust framework for the prescription of leader behavior.

Since its earliest origins, when it was known as the life-cycle theory of leadership, SL theory has undergone a variety of changes. Some of these changes have been relatively cosmetic—for example, relabeling follower maturity as developmental level and then readiness, relabeling willingness as commitment, relabeling ability as competence, relabeling leader task behavior as directive behavior, relabeling leader relationship behavior as supportive behavior, relabeling the prescriptive curve as the performance curve and then the leadership style curve, and finally, relabeling telling-selling-participating-delegating as directing-coaching-supporting-delegating. Other changes—reflected in the most recent version of the model, termed situational leadership II—such as suggesting that low employee development or maturity involves differing dynamics, are arguably problematic and even suggest that increased maturity may result in decreased motivation. Despite these changes, the core concepts of SL remain largely intact, even if they have not been adequately validated.

Situational leadership theory continues to tie in with other contemporary views of what makes for effective supervision. For example, three contemporary workplace perspectives are completely in accord with SL's essential principles: (1) Self-directed work teams (a popular performance-enhancement technique) advocates that supervision should be minimal when employees are sufficiently capable of being selfdirected; (2) employee competence and dedication or professionalism can be viewed as potent substitutes for leadership; and (3) leaders need to be both socially intelligent and flexible in their behavior.

In relation to other perspectives on leadership, SL theory is often viewed as one of several situational models that arose during the 1960s and 1970s. As part of a trend toward incorporating situational elements into explanations of leader effectiveness, the theory's appeal was driven by dissatisfaction with earlier paradigmatic approaches that emphasized leader traits and leader behaviors to the exclusion of situational attributes. This theory also builds on earlier behavioral (or stylistic) approaches in that it includes a prevalent perspective wherein leadership is conceptualized along two independent dimensions: leader consideration and leader initiation of structure. The theory is novel, however, in its attempt to specify which combination of leader behaviors along these two dimensions is optimal in light of follower maturity. Within this theory, follower maturity is most often defined as a combination of the ability to perform a task and the willingness (or commitment and motivation) to accomplish a task.

The key principle underlying SL theory's most essential social dynamic is that as follower maturity increases, optimal leader behavior should involve less structuring and less consideration. Although the decline in the need for structuring is straightforward, the relationship to leader supportiveness is less so. Specifically, followers who are comparatively low on maturity should benefit from high structuring combined with low consideration. As the follower gains maturity, the need for leader structuring declines, but the need for supervisory supportiveness actually increases. At the highest levels of follower maturity, the need for both leader structuring and social supportiveness declines further, such that at the highest levels of follower maturity, leader structuring and consideration are irrelevant to follower performance. This transitioning of prescribed leader style can be summarized as moving from telling to selling to participating and, ultimately, to delegating (along a prescriptive curve).

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