Leadership Approach Paper Essay

Organizational way comes into play to aid management in enhancing their visualizeing of human behavior in spite of appearance organizations to better overhaul, bothocate resources, delegate tasks, plan, organize, direct, and control work activities. The main purpose of understanding organizational behavior is to increase leading effectiveness, motivate workers, and inspire them to work toward a common objective. Although there be many lead uprisees, we entrust focus on the situational leadership approach.We will analyze the purpose, strengths and weaknesses of the situational leadership approach, and translate an example of how it can be utilise to real situations. Situational Leadership Approach As it name suggests, the situational leadership approach states that leaders should use different approaches as situations transpose. In short, leaders should be flexible, embrace change as it comes, and be capable of adapting to it. The situational leadership approach is a mod el that was developed by Kenneth Blanchard and capital of Minnesota Hersey in 1972.The theory states that leaders should check off their leadership style to the maturity of followers and to the specific tasks on hand (Lerstrom, 2008). As people within organizations acquire more experience and become more well-educated about their job, leaders will need to adapt new leadership styles to keep these people motivated. accord to May (2013) the core concept of the situational leadership approach is that one size does non fit all.The outstrip leaders are not only those who bind a vision, but the most prosperous leaders are the ones who are able to adapt their leadership styles across a broad arena of varying maturity levels readily present within the average organization (May, 2013). Moreover, using the situational leadership approach suggests that leaders use a mix of other leadership approaches to be effective. According to Phatak (2012), The philosophy of a leader should be fle xible enough to adapt to situations and ever-changing times.We need a mixture of transactional and transformational leadership techniques to get the job done. The basic idea behind this theory is that one must adapt strategy with changing conditions. Strengths As mentioned earlier, situational leadership allows for more flexibility. As the world evolves, organizations have to make sort outments to survive. Tomasco (2013) states that with the situational leadership approach, leaders get the opportunity to adapt their leadership style to their followers needs.Consequently, as leaders effectively match their leadership style to situations and followers needs, work activities will run smoothly, interactions will be more successful, relationships will be built up, and followers will achieve optimum performance. Weaknesses Although the situational leadership approach appears to be the best course of action due to its flexibility, it has weaknesses that one cannot ignore. Phatak (2012) explains that constantly changing strategies with time, a leader will come about it difficult to implement new strategies on the go.A long term vision may ring him due to constant changes. Further, Wile (2013) identifies four weaknesses of the situational leadership approach which are confusion, leadership or management, distant factors, and perception. Indeed, followers may become confused as leaders change a newly utilize leadership strategy as a result of changing conditions. The situational leadership approach is often misconstrued with a management strategy to lead employees to achieve better outcomes.One cannot downplay the impact external factors have on organizations and organizational behavior. Leaders should demonstrate their ability to understand the organizations external surround and to assess followers behavior to implement a leadership approach that will work. Finally, people within organizations have different perceptions and react differently in similar situati ons. Hence, the situational leadership approach may not give accurate predictions of followers behavior.Situational Leadership Approach in Real Life Alan Lerstrom from Luther College did a suit of clothes subject area using the situational leadership approach in which he demonstrated how academic advisors can deepen their leadership style based on students maturity as they advance higher in their studies. Lerstrom applied the Hersey and Blanchards model of situational leadership in the case study. The model suggests that effective leaders will adjust their leadership styles in accordance with changing situations and followers maturity.According to Lerstrom (2008), Jay, the student in the case study began showing signs of maturity as he better understood the major he wanted to attend and classes he needed to enroll in. Also, Jay became more confident about his abilities, understood the requirements associated with his major, and was more willing to communicate with the advisor. S ituational leadership provide theoretical and practical tools that help advisors in understanding changes in the readiness levels of their students, and it suggests patterns for relating to students (Lerstrom, 2008, p. 7). finishSituational leadership is the approach that states that leaders must be flexible enough to adapt their leadership styles to changing situations, to specific tasks, and to organizational behavior. This study showed that although the situational leadership approach yields positive outcomes it has weaknesses. Thus, it is important to leverage the strengths of the approach to mollify its weaknesses. For increased effectiveness, leaders will need to use organizational behavior research methods to better understand the situations at hand, their followers perceptions, and the organizations internal and external environments.This method will provide advocate in applying the appropriate leadership style. References Lerstrom, A. C. Advising Jay A Case Study Using a Situational Leadership Approach. NACADA ledger Fall2008, Vol. 28 Issue 2, p21-27, 7p May, R. (2013). Basics of the Situational Leadership Model. Retrieved from http//www. businessdictionary. com/article/724/basics-of-the-situational-leade rship-model/ Phatak, O. (June 20, 2012). Pros and Cons of Leadership Theories.