Blanchard's Model
The Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership model accounts for behaviors and followers as situations. They break leadership into two behaviors, relationship and task orientated, with four different combinations of the two shown in the picture below. When the situation matches the approach it works in favor of the business and employees. This would happen in a situation where there is an employee who is a new, still learning the expectations and standards set within the organization. A leader in this situation would want to use a high task and high relationship approach to coach the employee, making them feel supported and directed. An example of this that I have personally encountered is when I started my internship this past summer with Four Seasons St. Louis. Before arriving for the internship I was given a 90 page employee standards manual. This was a bit overwhelming, but I was sure to read through the entire thing before my first day. The first week on the job my manager, Ryan, went through the manual, menu, and list of exact duties I would be responsible for during my first rotation. He even did some role-playing with different situations I may encounter to give me some practice with him before taking care of actual guests of the hotel. My first rotation was at their pool as a server. I had been a server for three years already so had the knowledge needed to complete this task but because it was a new company with such high standards I really appreciated the coaching he offered me. All of this made me feel confident when it was time to actually take care of the guests of the hotel while adhering to Four Seasons standards and expectations.
On the flip side if a mismatch occurs everyone suffers and causes tension within the organization. If there is a highly trained and motivated employee with a leader that uses the high task high relationship orientated approach the employee could feel degraded and the result will be a loss in productivity. An example of this is when I worked at The Santaluz Club. I had worked there for a year and a new manager, Nicole, was hired. At first she seemed great and really tried to get to know the employees, always asking them how they are doing and inquiring about their lives outside of work, really showing an interest in them. After about a month on the job she started to micromanage me all the time. She would ask me if I completed a certain task such as “did you set the library for tomorrows continental breakfast meeting” where I would answer yes. She then would ask me did you remember to put the sugar out, the trash fro the sugars, the paper and ceramic coffee mugs and so on. This I found insulting because I had just told her yes I set the library and she went on to question my competence by listing every detail included in a standard continental set. Which I had set at The Santaluz Club over 100 times, many more times then her in the 30 days she had worked there. This made me dislike doing favors for her because she would make me feel like I did not know how to do my job or couldn’t complete it with her watching over my shoulder. She continued to do this to not only me but also every employee on staff, who overtime started talking about how condescending she was to everyone behind her back. As you can imagine, this caused moral to fall and turnover to rise. I no longer work there and neither do any of the original servers I started with do either which is sad to see because the members of Country Clubs get to know the employees and notice when the come and go so frequently, slightly diminishing that relational aspect of service country clubs strive for.
