Question: The Situational Leadership Model: It seems fairly obvious that leaders do not interact with all followers in the same manner. For example, a leader may give only general guidelines or goals to her highly competent and motivated followers, but spend considerable time coaching, directing, and training her unskilled and unmotivated followers. Contrarily, leaders may provide relatively little praise and assurances to followers with high self-confidence. Although leaders often have different interactional styles when dealing with individual followers, is there an optimum way for leaders to adjust their behavior with different followers and thereby increase their likelihood of success? What factors should the leader base their behavior on, such as:
1) the follower's intelligence,
2) personality traits,
3) values,
4) preferences, and/or
5) technical competence?
Based on the above information and issues, many leadership professionals believe the Situational Leadership Model offers answers to these important leadership questions. From your review and knowledge of the Situational Leadership Model, discuss the concepts and characteristics of this model and address the above issues/questions using this technique.