Coaching practices for Situational Leadership with My Team

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

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

  • My team is genuinely running well without me now, but I keep inserting myself into decisions they could make
  • My team just executes whatever I hand them and never pushes back or brings me a better idea
  • 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
  • Everything still flows through me
  • I treat my whole team the same way and run the same kind of one-on-one with everyone, and it’s landing flat

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. Performing: step back and protect the conditions
    A Performing team needs air cover and resources, not direction.
    Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development
  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. Challenge assumptions and invite new thinking
    Actively encourage your team to question old ways and generate new approaches.
    Transformational Leadership, Made Practical
  5. 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
  6. Distribute leadership rather than centralizing it
    Develop leadership capacity throughout the team, not just in the designated leader.
    Transformational Leadership, Made Practical
  7. Treat each person as an individual with distinct needs and aspirations
    Know what each team member needs to grow and provide support tailored to them.
    Transformational Leadership, Made Practical
  8. Delegating — hand over both direction and decision
    With a skilled, committed performer, give the goal and the authority, then get out of the way.
    Situational Leadership, Made Practical
  9. Directing — high direction for the eager novice
    With someone new and keen but unskilled, give clear, specific instruction and tight structure.
    Situational Leadership, Made Practical
  10. Use delegation as a development tool
    Assign Q3 tasks to team members who are ready to stretch — and treat the learning curve as the point.
    The Eisenhower Matrix and Delegation

Related concerns

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice