Coaching practices for Situational Leadership with Friends

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Situational Leadership with Friends, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I lead a team and I’ve realized the people I lean on most are the ones who remind me of myself or are just easy to be around
• Some people leave me lit up and others leave me flat and small, but I keep giving the most of my time to the draining ones out of habit or obligation
• If a friend brought me this exact dilemma I’d know in two seconds what they should do, but stuck inside my own version I just go in circles
• Where I come alive is in the human glue
• I’ve quietly filed each person on my team as strong or weak, and then I’m baffled when my "strong" one flounders on something new

Practices that may help

1. Situational Leadership, Made Practical
   Situational Leadership, developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, says the right leadership style depends on the follower’s readiness for a given task: match how much you direct versus support to where the person actually is. It is enormously popular in corporate training, but its empirical support is genuinely weak — treat it as a useful thinking tool, not a validated law.
2. Manage LMX differentiation fairly as a leader
   Acknowledge that you develop different relationships with different people — and ensure the differences are earned, not arbitrary.
   Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Made Practical
3. Supporting — step back on direction, stay high on support
   For the capable-but-cautious performer, lighten the instructions and bolster their confidence.
   Situational Leadership, Made Practical
4. Coaching — high direction and high support for the disillusioned learner
   When early enthusiasm dips but skill is still forming, combine clear guidance with active encouragement.
   Situational Leadership, Made Practical
5. Curate your social situation portfolio
   Who you spend time with, and in what contexts, is perhaps the highest-leverage situation selection available to most people.
   Situation Selection, Made Practical
6. Give yourself advice as if advising a close friend
   Describe your problem as if a close friend brought it to you — then write the advice you would give them.
   Self-Distancing Journaling
7. Lead from the relationship building domain — hold the team together
   People strong in relationship building are the glue that holds a team’s cohesion under pressure.
   Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical
8. Build the flexibility to switch styles
   The skill the model actually demands is style range — most leaders overuse one default.
   Situational Leadership, Made Practical
9. Assess readiness task by task, not person by person
   Rate competence and commitment for the specific task in front of them, not the person overall.
   Situational Leadership, Made Practical
10. Assess the current quality of your leader-member relationship
    Honestly diagnose where you stand in the relationship before trying to improve it.
    Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Made Practical

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