Leadership - the style does not matter

Some of you may be a bit surprised with the title.

In an earlier article, I had mentioned about how, during my MBA days, I was fascinated with Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model.

Just to recap, as per this model, leadership styles need to be different for different people based on the maturity of the person being led and the relationship of the person with the leader.

Broadly, there are 4 leadership styles:

Telling style: This is simply telling and directing people to do what is desirable and not do what is undesirable.  This style is applied when the maturity of the person is very low and the relationship of the person with the leader is low.

Selling style: This is encouraging and motivating people to do what is desirable and not do what is undesirable.  This style is applied when the maturity of the person is low and the relationship of the person with the leader is high.

Participating style: This is collaborating and guiding people to do what is desirable and not do what is undesirable.  This style is applied when the maturity of the person and the relationship of the person with the leader are both high.

Delegating style: This is empowering and inspiring people, to decide on their own, to do what is desirable and not do what is undesirable.  This style is applied when the maturity of the person is very high and the relationship of the person with the leader is low.

I had also mentioned that I internalized these leadership styles and have been applying them in my life.

If that is so, why am I saying now that leadership style does not matter?

Well, even before joining my MBA program, one of the earlier books on human relationships that I had read was "Games People Play" by Eric Berne, courtesy my childhood friend, Raj Chundur.

In this book, the author talks of 3 states of ego - parent, adult and child and how people use varying combination of these 3 states while engaging with one another.

When one person choses to operate in the parent ego state or the child ego state, the other person reacts by operating in the child ego state or the parent ego state respectively and the game goes on and on.

The challenge is to respond, not react, by staying in the adult ego state, irrespective of the stimulus, and eventually the other person may, gently, be led back to the adult ego state.

I observe a similar pattern when we use different leadership styles to engage with the people that we lead.

When we use telling style (parent ego state), with people whom we consider as very low on maturity, our relationship with that person also becomes very low.  This approach encourages them to shed ownership of their actions and blame us when things go wrong (child ego state).

Even selling style is another form of operating from the parent ego state.  Both participating and delegating styles are closer to operating from the adult ego state.

Also, people are confused when they see us use different styles with different people.  They are unable to predict our behavior in a given situation and, in the process, tend to be on guard at all times.  This tend to lower the relationship quotient.

The moment I realized this, I started looking for a better approach to engage with the people without diluting the relationship quotient and that's when I discovered the importance of performance agreement or Win/Win agreement as suggested by Stephen R. Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Though I had read about performance agreement many years ago and have adopted this framework for setting goals in my organization for many years, I didn't see the connection between the performance agreement and resolving relationship challenges emerging through adopting different leadership styles.

Let me explain:

The performance agreement has five elements:

1. Desired results - what is to be done and when.
2. Guidelines - parameters (principles, policies, etc.) within which results are to be accomplished.
3. Resources - human, financial, technical, or organizational support available to help accomplish the results.
4. Accountability - standards of performance and the time of evaluation.
5. Consequences - good and bad, natural and logical - what does and will happen as a result of the evaluation.

I realized that we can finetune the performance agreement based on the degree of maturity of the person being led:

1. Desired results - for a person whose maturity is low, the desired results may be simple and the number limited to one or two; for a person whose maturity is high, the number and the complexity of desired results may be increased.
2. Guidelines - for a person whose maturity is low, more detailed guidelines may be specified in the performance agreement and explained clearly till the person understands and accepts; for a person whose maturity is high, broad principles and policies that are not to be breached may be specified and the rest may be left to the person's own creativity. 
3. Resources - for a person whose maturity is low, the leader may offer active assistance in identifying the resources required to accomplish the results; for a person whose maturity is high, the person may, on his/her own, identify the resources required to accomplish the results and ask for them.
4. Accountability - for a person whose maturity is low, clear, easy to measure parameters may be agreed upon and the evaluation of performance may be more frequent, say once a week or once a fortnight; for a person whose maturity is high, discernable performance milestones may be agreed upon and the evaluation of performance may be less frequent, say once a month or once a quarter.
5. Consequences - for a person whose maturity is low, consequences - natural, logical, individual and organizational, may be specified in the performance agreement and explained clearly till the person understands and accepts; for a person whose maturity is high, lesser elaboration may be sufficient.

By adopting performance agreement, finetuned to suit people with varying degrees of maturity, one can bring predictability into the engagement and enhance relationships.

And the leadership style does not matter.