Author: Aleksandra Milewicz / Source: The Next Web
Being a great leader is important for many reasons: your team gets more work done, your staff are engaged and enthusiastic, and co-workers will invite you to their dinner parties. But there’s a lot more on the line than just your team’s performance.
According to Gallup’s 2017 survey, the number one reason why Americans are quitting their jobs is to get away from a bad manager. That’s right: being a poor leader could cost you your best talent. And you know you can’t afford that.So, how do you create a work environment your employees don’t want to leave? Rule number one is to stay flexible. A fixed management style is like a broken clock. Sure, it gets it right occasionally, but it probably gets it wrong most of the time. And as a manager, you want your team to be happy and productive all (or at least most) of the time.
Why situational leadership?
Striking the right balance between providing support to your team and giving them space to grow is one of the main characteristics of great managers, as Google found. In research study Project Oxygen, the company identified top qualities that make an excellent leader: being a good coach was number one while resisting the temptation to micromanage came at a close second. Still, for many managers, finding the fine line between being present and getting too involved in people’s work can be tricky. That’s where situational leadership comes in.
Developed by Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey, situational leadership claims that as a manager you need to adjust your leadership style according to the needs of your team. Your staff go through several stages of learning, from being complete beginners at first to becoming experts, and they need different levels of support at different points. For example, an employee who’s new to the role needs extensive coaching and frequent supervision. An experienced and confident report, on the other hand, will get frustrated if you don’t show enough trust in their capabilities.
What Google thinks
At a recent leadership workshop hosted at TQ City — TNW’s tech hub in the center of Amsterdam — we heard from Tatiana Silva, Google’s Global Programmatic Industry Manager. Silva’s a big believer in giving workers space to fail and learn from their mistakes and incorporates flexible leadership into her own management style.
I caught up with her to dig a bit deeper to find out what results you can expect from adopting this approach. “Implementing a flexible leadership style, which enables team members to learn, to be challenged, and to feel supported along the way, can be…
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