Understanding Blanchard Model of Leadership

Harsey and Blanchard are two of the most sought-after experts on leadership. We will find so many people try to learn about Harsey Blanchard model of leadership. That’s why, now we will present a deep insight of theories and frameworks related to model of leadership that the employees must adopt for its personal career development. Our report starting with the detailed focus and insights on the Model of Leadership by Hersey and Blanchard.

Model of leadership

Now-a-days, leadership is a very complex process in other to build a set of attributes, standards and competencies to hold the nature of employee. It is the big task for a leader to create a model that deliver successful to then. One it is fail, all the effort and purpose will become unsuccessful in the organizations.

Organizations expects from their leader to on more responsibilities for their employee. Then the employees had to develop a high income to the organization as the main purpose of organization.
Leadership is an important part in the management area. It is has the role in coordinating the activities of people. It is also guiding the management efforts towards goals and objectives of the organization.

In the 21st century, leaders must create a good atmosphere to their employees. It follows closely in the workplace to help in completing the plans to achieve goals. The atmosphere has to make people enjoying to reach strategy, believe to management decisions and believe in their work.

Believing in management decisions is important, because it produces an excitement within an organization. The result of successful Leadership able to create such atmosphere that makes an organization prosper. The leader has to create this sort of environment both inside and outside the organization.

Moreover, leadership has been the key factor in profession advancement. Leadership skills have played vital role in profession improvement. This is done by supporting generate responses in various circumstances.

It is also important to the leader in reducing complacency. It helps the employees in feeling more confidents in the abilities to take more responsibility. They also need confident to take the charge of tasks, team processes, decision making, goal setting and also personal and career development.

The leader has to able in helping the employee in understanding and internalizing their qualities. So, they able to enhance the ability for making the rational decisions by creating supporting plans, delivering information efficiently, confidently, and effectively.

The leader also need to develop useful strategy to results in the end meet the specific needs of the organization. This scheme may be the factor that Hersey and Blanchard want to explore to find the best result in their theory.

Read also: Blanchard Hersey Leadership Model Situational

Hersey Blanchard Model of Leadership

The Hersey-Blanchard Model of Leadership draws attention to the importance of developing the ability, commitment and confidence of subordinates. This model plays the vital role in determining the most appropriate leadership styles or leader behaviors that created by the development levels of a leader's subordinates.

This development Zrticipating and delegating.
- Task behavior is the extent to which the leader provides directions for the actions of followers, defines their roles, set goals for them, and how to undertake them.
- Relationship behavior is the extent to which the leader engages in two-way communication with the followers, listens to them, and then provides support and and encourage them.
Model of situational leadership according to Harsey and Blanchard is based on the interrelationship of several things. Some of the things that are meant :
- The number of instructions and guidance given by the leadership,
- the amount of socio-emotional support provided by the leadership, and
- the degree of preparedness or maturity of followers who are shown to perform certain tasks, functions or specific purposes.

From the theory described by Hersey and Blanchard, it can be concluded that this model is based on three situation variables, namely:
1. Task Behavior
Level of guidance and direction given by the leader
2. Relationship Behavior
Levels of socio-emotional support provided by leaders
3. Maturity subordinates
Level of preparedness or maturity of followers who are shown in performing specific tasks, functions or specific purposes.

If analyzed more deeply, it can be seen that this leadership model more emphasis on maturity subordinates, which consists of:
- Ability (job maturity)
A person who is high in work maturity has the ability to do the job.
- Willingness (psychological maturity)
A person who does the job without direction from his boss.
A leader must know the level of maturity of his followers for leaders to adapt to leadership. This adaptation is done to the demands of the environment in which he demonstrates his leadership.

S4 Model of Leadership
A leader must have varying flexibility. Different needs in the subordinate to make him have to be different, although many practitioners who consider it impractical that in every decision to take must first consider each variable situation.

Further, According to Harsey and Blanchard, there are four leadership styles (S1 to S4) tailored to the employee development stage (D1 to D4). The leadership style that will be applied by a leader will determine the success of the task performed by the person he leads. This is the main model of Blanchard Model of Leadership.

Situation Leadership S1 (Telling / Directing). This situation occurs when a subordinate is incapable of performing a task and is unwilling or afraid to try something new so it must play a huge directing role and instruct what the subordinates must do. This usually happens to new employees who do not yet know what a job is doing.

At this stage attention is still aimed at developing the competence of subordinates who are practically not yet built properly. The boss will also develop a structure of work on how a job is done and how well control is done. In essence in this situation subordinates only do what is ordered by the boss.

Situation Leadership S2 (Selling / Coaching). This situation occurs when subordinates have less competence but they have a strong desire to work and want to try new things. In this situation leaders are more likely to advise on the implementation of various jobs than to instruct subordinates to do the work in detail.

Thus the leader must try to "sell" ideas on how to carry out more effective and efficient work so that the motivation already possessed by his subordinates can be further improved so that the work given to him can be solved properly and correctly.

Situation Leadership S3 (Participating / Supporting). In this situation, subordinates have high competencies but they are reluctant or have insecurity to do the job. In situations like this, the leader must show what the subordinates must do and ask the subordinates to work together to carry out the work that the subordinates have to do because the subordinates have the ability to do the job.

In this situation, leaders should also motivate / encourage employees with the goal of increasing the confidence they have that they are capable of performing their duties.

S4 Leadership Situation (Delegating / Observing). In this situation employees have the competence and also a high commitment to complete the task so that leaders can perform delegation of work to subordinates.

As a result, leaders in this situation have a low focus on work and working relationships with their subordinates. Subordinates in this situation need little support from leaders because they can do the work independently.

That’s all we describes about Blanchard Model of Leadership. Wish you enjoy this article.