Most owners have one leadership style. It is the one that matches their temperament, they have used it for fifteen years, and they describe it as how I am rather than as a choice. It works well with roughly a quarter of the people they employ.
Situational leadership, developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, says the style is not supposed to be a fixed property of the leader. It is supposed to change with the person and, more importantly, with the specific task in front of them. The skill is not having a style. It is being able to move between them.
The two dials
There are only two things you are adjusting. How much direction you give: instructions, structure, specifics, checking. And how much support you give: listening, encouragement, involvement in the decision, time spent.
Turn both up and you get Coaching. Direction high and support low gives you Directing. Support high and direction low gives you Supporting. Both low is Delegating, which is the goal for most tasks and the one most easily faked.
The four styles
S1 Directing — new to the task
Show, then check. High direction, low support. The person knows they do not know, so specifics are welcome rather than patronising. Most owners handle this stage reasonably well because it is obvious and new starters expect it.
S2 Coaching — learning and wobbling
Both dials up. Direction is still needed, and now it needs the why attached to it. This is the stage that decides whether the person makes it, and it is the one owners routinely get wrong.
S3 Supporting — able but not confident
Ask rather than tell. Direction now becomes counterproductive, because they mostly know the answer and being told it undermines them. Hold the regular slot even when nothing is wrong, because the slot is the support.
S4 Delegating — able and confident
Agree the measure, agree what they bring you and when, then get out of the way. This is delegating. It is not the same as leaving somebody alone, which is abdication with better manners.
The critical point, and the one that gets lost every time this model is taught badly: the setting depends on the task, not on the person. Your operations manager may be a confident, competent S4 on scheduling and a nervous S1 on a disciplinary conversation. Leading her as an S4 because that is what she generally is will produce a disciplinary conversation that goes badly and a manager who is quietly humiliated by it.
Why it goes wrong at S2
Follow the route somebody takes as they learn a task. They start at S1, needing direction and not much hand-holding. Then they move to S2, and this is where things fall over.
Competence has started to rise, which is why the direction is still needed but feels less welcome. Confidence has fallen, because they now know enough to see how much they are getting wrong. This is the disillusioned stage, and it is when people go quiet, start covering, or hand in their notice.
The owner's instinct at exactly this point is to back off. They have had the training, they seem to have got it, let them get on with it. So support drops precisely when support is the thing most needed, and direction drops before capability is there to replace it. A promising person then either fails visibly or retreats to the parts of the job they were already good at.
A promotion, month by month
An illustration rather than a client, but this is the single most common failed promotion in owner-managed businesses: the best technician is promoted to supervisor of a small team.
Weeks one to four, S1. He does not know what the job is. He needs to be told what a supervisor actually does on a Monday, what he decides and what he escalates, and he needs it in writing. A structured weekly hour with the owner. Nobody minds this stage.
Weeks five to twelve, S2. This is where it is won or lost. He has had his first difficult conversation with somebody who used to be his mate, and it went badly. He is working long hours because he is still doing his old job as well as the new one. Team output has dipped. He is privately wondering whether he has made a mistake. What he needs is both dials up: specific direction on how to run the conversation, plus real time from the owner explaining why the job is done this way and telling him the dip is normal. What he usually gets is silence and a comment about the numbers.
Months four to nine, S3. He can do it; he does not yet believe he can. Ask rather than tell, and hold the weekly slot even when there is nothing wrong.
From month ten, S4. Agree the measures, agree what he brings you and when, and get out of the way.
Note where the owner's effort sits: highest at S1 and S2, then falling. Most owners front-load nothing, coast through S2, and then spend a year firefighting a supervisor who never got established.
How to use it this week
Grid your people against their tasks
Direct reports down one side, their three main tasks across the top. Score each cell S1 to S4. You will find people who are S4 on one task and S1 on another, which is the whole point.
Find anyone sitting in S2 on something that matters
New role, new responsibility, first three months. They are the priority this week, not the person who is already fine.
Put a weekly thirty minutes in the diary for each S2
For the next eight weeks. Both dials up: direction on the specifics, and time on the why.
Ask one person how much direction they actually want
On a named task, not in general. Their answer will differ from your assumption at least half the time.
Audit one thing you think you have delegated
Is there a measure, a deadline and an agreed check-in? If not, you have not delegated it, you have dropped it.
Pick one task where you are over-directing, and stop
Say so out loud, agree what they will bring you instead, and then leave it alone for a month.
Questions to ask yourself
- Out of ten, how different is your leadership style with your longest-serving manager compared with your newest starter? A low score is the finding.
- Who in your business is in the disillusioned stage right now, and when did you last give them an unhurried half hour?
- Which of the four styles do you avoid entirely, and what has that cost you?
- What have you delegated that has no measure attached to it?
- Where are you leading the person rather than the task?
The takeaway. Calling your default style a philosophy is the expensive mistake. Hands-off, applied to somebody in week three of a new role, is simply neglect; involved in everything, applied to a competent manager of eight years, is interference and it is why she is looking. Read the task, not the person, and earn the right to delegate by doing the other three properly first.
Where this connects
This is core material in Leadership Coaching, where the aim is a leader with four working gears rather than one strong one. It runs directly into The Rules of the Game, because delegating safely means somebody knows what they may decide alone, and into Social Styles, which handles the other half of the problem: how the person in front of you needs to be spoken to.
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Frequently asked questions
How do I know which style someone needs?
Read the task rather than the person, and ask two questions about that specific task: can they do it, and do they believe they can. Cannot and know it means directing. Getting there but wobbling means coaching, with both dials up. Can do it but hesitant means supporting, which is asking rather than telling. Can do it and knows it means delegating against an agreed measure. The same person will sit in different boxes for different parts of their job, which is why a grid of people against their three main tasks is more useful than a label attached to each person.
What is the disillusioned stage and why does it lose people?
It is the second stage, once someone has learned enough to see how much they are getting wrong. Competence is rising, so direction feels less welcome, while confidence has fallen, so support is needed more than at any other point. The owner's instinct is to back off exactly here, on the grounds that the person has had the training and seems to have got it. Support therefore drops when it is needed most, and direction drops before capability has arrived to replace it. That is when people go quiet, start covering, or hand in their notice.
Isn't delegating just leaving good people to get on with it?
Not quite, and the difference is what you agreed before you stepped back. Delegating means low direction and low support against a defined output, an agreed measure and a scheduled check-in. Leaving somebody alone with none of those is abdication with better manners, and it usually ends in surprise that the work was not done the way you would have done it. The other half of the answer is that delegating is earned. It is safe once the earlier stages have been done properly, and unsafe when it is used as a shortcut past them.