AMS deploys solutions based on customized industry and
experiential best practice.
Our team of executive level consultants will work with
your organization to craft the best implementation of any
service, solution suite and correlating best practice.
This holistic approach to creating business solutions
will render high value ROI, continuity and embedded value.
It has been proven that professional growth
is driven by skill set enhancement and skill set enhancement is
driven by knowledge.
Issues arise in organizations when these two activities
are looked upon as being mutually exclusive.
As leaders of people and companies, we are expected to
identify and develop our subordinates.
This development process can take many shapes including:
training, coaching, modeling and shadow work.
Any of these methods can and will result in knowledge
transfer, the question however, is will this knowledge transfer
lead to improved performance?
At the end of the day, we all want to realize
improvement or optimization of our efforts leading to
improvement. In
today’s business climate successful results are looked upon as
being instantaneous and providing immediate gratification is the
norm. So, how can
an employee take the time to compare, contrast or even digest
new information if they are expected to show immediate results
as a derivative from the new skills they have been exposed to?
Herein lies the conflict in most
organizations, and it really reflects back on the overall
leadership culture of the organization.
Today’s leaders have difficulty taking accountability for
their subordinates and thus they lack the true essence of the
situational leadership model.
This breakdown is one of the core issues that derail good
intentions and produce contradictory results.
It is imperative that managers embrace the
tangible elements of the situational leadership concepts to
ensure they apply the principals in their own behaviors before
expecting results from subordinates.
There have been many organizational models, theories and
concepts over the years and they all focus on the improved
performance of an organization.
The situational leadership model is no different except
that it ties the theory back to behaviors of individuals and
allows the manager to correlate real organizational change with
each interaction.
We have found in both, consulting practice and
real executive management experience that embracing the
Leadership Styles, Development Levels and Leadership/Development
Matching aspects of the Hersey/Blanchard model provides both a
proactive tool to guide employee growth as well as an ongoing
tool to assist with professional development.
In many cases training
gap analysis and organizational effectiveness assessments focus
only on the skill set of an individual, job function or cross
section of the same.
In order to take full advantage of the situational
leadership model a company must integrate the process with
learning events.
And, they must realize that learning events take place in every
interaction a leader has with a subordinate.
This is a relevant point because the success of true
situational leadership is greatly enhanced when the organization
embraces a belief in “continuous learning.”
Our consultants, facilitators and teams have
always professed that an organization will not succeed in continuous
learning until it embraces a structure to support creativity, open
feedback and trust.
Consider the structure of your organization and
look at it as the skeleton upon which you will build the behaviors
associated with situational leadership. It is a prerequisite to
evaluate the organizational culture and make any adjustments
necessary to support a true learning model prior to implementation.
In order to prepare your company’s leaders and
structure for the implementation of situational leadership it is
suggested that you evaluate the following:
-
Strategic Alignment with a continuous
learning environment.
-
Baseline management and supervisory skill sets.
-
Objectives for employee growth and advancement.
-
Career path aligned training curriculum.
-
Aligned performance review process.
-
Communication protocols that support continuous feedback.
-
On-going coaching and mentoring programs.
-
Visible behavioral model that supports all of the above.
Once the above bullets are embraced as a
prominent component to the daily behavioral pattern of both managers
and staff you will have accomplished a good balance between goals,
values and culture.
This balance will permit the continued growth of employees and
managers driven by each interaction.
The overall benefit will be seen in performance,
reduced turn-over and generally improved moral.
Furthermore you can expect a heightened level of
accountability not only in the management realms but all the way
throughout the organization.
The aspects of situational leadership can greatly
benefit an organization and its leaders.
With that said it must be understood that the concepts must
be embraced by everyone in the company and more importantly the
company must be structured to support the situational leadership
theory.
AMS can customize any best practice to fit your
organizational needs.
