PSYCH-105 Industrial Psychology
Chapter 7: Leadership
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4
Appendix
Hersey and Blanchard Leadership Style
Paul Hersey and Kenneth H Blanchard (1988)
By looking at Hersey and Blanchard’s leadership styles you can see that situational leadership follows the same styles as the behavioural theories.
Fig.: Hersey and Blanchard Leadership Style
• Telling
High Task, Low Relationship
This approach is good for mental jobs and tasks that need to be completed quickly. The leader tells the workers what needs to be done and how it is to be done.
• Selling
High Task, High Relationship
This approach has the leader give most of the direction, but allows the workers to contribute. This is good for those just learning the task, such as coaching sports teams, new hires at a firm, etc.
• Participating
High Relationship, Low Task
This approach shares the decision making between the leader and the workers. Workers are able but unsure of what needs to be done.
• Delegating
Low Relationship, Low Task
This approach has the leader identify the problem and passes responsibility on to the workers to get the job done. Many companies run on this model, where the CEO passes the responsibility onto the managers.
The situational leadership model proposed by Hersey and Blanchard suggests four leadership-styles and four levels of follower-development. For effectiveness, the model posits that the leadership-style must match the appropriate level of follower-development. In this model, leadership behavior becomes a function not only of the characteristics of the leader, but of the characteristics of followers as well.
