Anti-thesis on Situational Leadership - Organizational Behavior

            Situational leadership refers to when the leader or manager of an organization must adjust his/her style to fit the development level of the followers he/she is trying to influence. With situational leadership, it is up to the leader to change his style, not the follower to adapt to the leader’s style. In situational leadership, the style may change continually to meet the needs of others in the organization based on the situation. Everything has followers as well as criticizers so do Situational Leadership.

            For the positive takers, it an adaptive leadership style based on four leadership style: Directing, Coaching, Supporting and Delegating. The core thing of the theory is "there is no single leadership style" but rather a leader must find the right fit for the given situation. This removes the need to follow a rigid strategy at all times and instead, a leader is more able to make sense of the situation around him or her. The leadership style is effective in increasing awareness. Leader need to know what type of readiness and competency the employee has, you need to learn about them and understand where they are coming from. This can make the situational leader better at identifying problems and attuning themselves to the passion and motivation of the employee. But the criticism opposes the situational leadership for its falling.

            I do support the latter one with the criticism. The situational leadership has lack of understanding of the demographic differences in leadership style preferences. This style cannot identify appropriately how the styles can be used in group settings, when different demographics are present. This style only creates confusion within the group. If the leader has to change his or her approach within team members or as the team develops, the subordinates can be left questioning the approach. For example, changing from a telling style to a delegating style can make it harder for the employees to know what to do even if their readiness level has increased. Once you get used to a certain style, a sudden change to something different can take some time to adjust. This could cause problems in team morale or the relationship with the leader. The changes in leadership style can be perceived as manipulative and coercive. Therefore, it requires a careful approach from the leader.

            Moreover, the attention of a situational leader tends to emphasize the short-term strategy, as the focus is always on analyzing the current objectives and readiness levels of the subordinates. This model may also ignore differences between female managers who typically have a nurturing style, and male leaders who may lean toward a task-oriented management style. Situational leadership can divert leaders' focus away from long-term strategies, symbols, structure or politics. Critics of situational leadership point to the difficulty in defining and quantifying maturity, who should rate it, and the tendency to assume that job maturity matches emotional maturity. Situational leadership focuses on follower maturity as a key determinant of the leader’s focus on tasks over relationships. This view conflicts with other leadership models that embrace numerous situational factors as determinants of numerous leader behaviors such as providing support and direction, participation and focus on follower achievements.

            On conclusion, Situational Leadership cannot be distinguished its either Leadership or Management. This leadership style could benefit from overlooking important long-term objectives of the organization and instead rely too much on short-term strategy and politics of the organization. It is a drive away of long term strategies and policies. Since the manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective, this questions if situational leadership is Leadership or Management? It ignores the differences between male and female managers. Situational Leadership is only collection of Confusion, employees may not know what sort of response to expect from the manager from day to day, potentially creating an environment of fear and uncertainty. Situational Leadership denies the ability of good leaders to change the situation before they modify their response to it.