- Situation
based leadership has been a popular idea in academic circles for
decades.
- Supposedly,
good leaders vary their decision making style according to the
situation.
- They make
decisions unilaterally or use a degree of participation as appropriate.
- A participatory
style should be used whenever employee commitment is required.
- But commitment
is nearly always critical - except with trivial decisions.
- Also,
commitment is harder to obtain with confident knowledge workers
who scoff at arbitrary authority and don't respond unless involved.
- It's no
surprise that discussions of situation based leadership and decision
making style occur mainly in academia.
- Popular
books on leadership written for practicing managers talk only
of participation.
- Of course,
unilateral decisions always need to be made, especially when time
is short. Management is very much like investment - which calls
for the making of smart decisions to get the best return out of
all resources at the managers disposal.
- Important
decisions are increasingly made on a partnership basis - multiple
expert input.
- Today's
managers need to think more about how they can coach employees
and facilitate the making of sound decisions from those best positioned
to make them.
- Top executives
who appear to be making unilateral decisions are, more often than
not, only pulling together multiple inputs from others.
- In any
case, there is a choice to make - decide or lead. When the boss
decides, that is not leading. When the decision is fully democratic,
no leadership has occurred.
- It is
only when someone explicitly tries to persuade the group to make
a particular decision that leadership is shown.
- Leadership
style is therefore really management style or simply decision
making style.
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