Cameron Herold argues that situational leadership is an essential COO skill: leaders must adapt their leadership style project-by-project based on two "fits": (1) the person’s confidence and commitment for that project, and (2) their skill level. He traces the term to Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard (One Minute Manager), shows concrete examples (micromanaging a toddler pouring orange juice vs. hands-off for an expert; a new CFO who is skilled but lacks confidence), and recommends training and reading to master the approach.
Chapters
Leaders who ignore this one skill are really, really going to pay for it later. And this is a skill that every single leader inside of Starbucks is trained on, every single quarter. This is a skill that I have probably spent about 100 hours going through actual training, reading books, watching videos, teaching this skill. The skill that every COO needs to be good at is called situational leadership. It's a term that was developed 60 years ago by Dr. Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard. Ken Blanchard wrote the book the One Minute Manager. Situational leadership is the content that the book the One Minute Manager is framed on. It's a skill that allows a leader like a COO to actually adapt their leadership style on a project by project basis. What I mean by that is let's say that as a coo, you've got seven direct reports, and those seven direct reports each have to be led differently than you. Well, not only does each person have to be led differently, but let's say that you have Kelly, who is your CFO reporting to you. Kelly might have five different projects. You have to adapt your leadership style on a project by project basis to be able to help Kelly in the most optimal way. Because if you're going to manage Kelly the same way on every single project, maybe two out of five times you're nailing it. And three out of five times you're pissing her off because you're not giving her the style of leadership she needs on that individual project basis. Just like you wouldn't lead her the same way that you might lead Bob or Kevin or Sarah. The skill of situational leadership is tied to two things. The first thing is the confidence that the person has and the commitment that they have on working on that project. So you tend to rate them on their confidence and commitment on working on that project. The second area is their skill set. So in this area, you're going to grade them on their level of skills. It's the combination of those two things, how much confidence and commitment they have to working on it and how much skills that they have. The balance of those two things is going to tell you the leadership style that you need to actually give them on that core project. I'll give you a specific example of how this plays out. Let's say that you have a two year old kid who's pouring orange juice for the first time. You're going to micromanage, manage them on pouring orange juice. You're going to give them the exact step by steps. You're going to show them exactly how you do it. You're not going to get their input, you're not going to solicit their ideas, you're not even going to explain why you do it that way. You're literally going to show them exactly how to pour the orange juice. Otherwise you end up with a big mess. So at some points a human needs to be micromanaged, but that same kid, when they're 18 years old, you're not going to talk to them at all about pouring orange juice. You're not even going to cheer them on when they pour it correctly because then you'd be kind of over involving and almost patronizing them. So your style of working with that person changes even on that individual project. The same with a senior leader. You could have a brand new CFO coming into a company with lots of skill set, but they might be a little bit nervous about screwing up, not wanting to upset some of the people, not wanting to hurt feelings, not wanting to do it the wrong way that the company's been doing it. So even though they might be very skilled, they might be a little bit off on their commitment or their confidence on working on that actual project. Their skill set might be solid or it might be something brand new to them and their skills might be low even though they're a very senior person. So our job as a leader is to identify the person's commitment level and confidence and to identify their skill set and then to adapt against that. So that's actually one of the core skills in my online invest in your leaders training is situational leadership. I talk about it at length. I also talk about it in lots of our YouTube videos. Your ability to adapt. I recommend you even all go out and read the book the One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard, because that's the number one skill that all of you as clos need to be great at.
