SItuational Leadership and Success Coaching

Leadership is defined as “someone who guides or directs a group.” There are many ways to do this. The most visible and probably the most ineffective is to yell at people until they do something that looks like what you want them to do. That works once. But true situational leadership - that focuses on the group, the conditions, and the goals - is a much more effective and long lasting method of leadership.

This type of leadership is closely related to success coaching in that each member’s success in the endeavor is crucial to the overall success. The coaching techniques can be used to guide the group toward the group goal as well as each person’s individual goals.

The problem is that most companies think they “don’t have time” for this sort of thing. They think that working with individuals or situations distracts from the “work of the company” when in reality it IS the work of the company.

Here are 5 success coaching techniques you can use for effective situational leadership:

Creativity. Encourage each group member to be as creative and problem solving as possible. Not only might a good idea come up, but each person feels more invested in the final decision, even if it is not his or hers.
Immediate feedback. This is the “guide” part of leadership. Waiting until the project is over to give feedback is too late. That’s like waiting until the plane lands in Chicago to tell the pilot it’s off course for Cleveland.
Effective use of energy. Controlling one’s energy use is a large part of success. A person who uses up all of his or her energy at the beginning of the project is not effective for the final push. A leader who is saving his or her energy for later probably is not spending enough at the beginning to give the project a solid send off.
Encouragement. Too many companies have the antiquated idea that praising someone is bad, especially if that praise is for doing their job. “That’s what I’m paying you for” is hardly encouraging. This is related to timely feedback, but is also encouragement in general. This lets people they are doing it right.
Developing individual goals. Goals should be SMART: Specific; Measurable; Attainable; Relevant; Timely. Working with each team member to define SMART goals for his or her part of the project will increase the efficiency of the project as well as help the individual.

Using these techniques for a specific project or team member or phase of the project is situational leadership. Yelling at people to “work harder” won’t make them work harder. Focusing them on the problem that is holding them up, developing ways around the problem, and using feedback to adjust the SMART goals is leadership that gets the job done and helps everyone achieve success.