by Rosemary Letson

Created on: August 03, 2010   Last Updated: August 04, 2010

An effective leader is not only one who possesses strong working knowledge of operations and budgeting, but knows how to motivate, mentor, coach, counsel, resolve conflict, and play the game of politics.  Tangible skills such as finance, accounting, marketing, are leaned in the classroom by attending vocational or college level courses depending on the field an individual pursues. 

Intangible skills such as conflict resolution, counseling, require training and development offered by an internal Training Department or outside consultants or external resources.  However, not everyone is successful at these intangible skills regardless of the number of in-services and conferences they attended.  Such skills also require a leader to possess the innate ability to terminate a team member’s employment, address performance issues, develop a member to grow within the organization.    

When team members know their leader is deficient in one or several or all of these intangible skills, the leader more than likely will not be effective in leading the team.  Many teams consist of a group of people with varying levels of skills, knowledge, education, and experiences.  If their intrinsic and/or extrinsic needs are not being met, they may do one or all of the following:

a) Gossip and bring down the morale of the team

b) Transfer

c) Complain to their boss’s boss or to Human Resources

d) Perceive they are being discriminated and pursue outside counsel

e) Resign

Intrinsic needs are those internal career-related goals and desires a member wants to achieve such as advancement, recognition, responsibility.  Extrinsic needs are tangible goals or desires such as pay, time off, work from home. 

One model of leadership theory was developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in the early 1970’s to help leaders become more effective. The Hersey and Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory categorized leadership into four behavioral types also known as situational leadership styles (S-1, S-2, S-3, S-4) and matched the styles according to the maturity level or task level (M-1,M-2, M-3, M-4) of individual team members. 

 S-1 Leadership & M-1

High Directive/Low Supportive

“Telling” 

S-1 style is used when members (M-1) lack the skills and are either unable or unwilling to assume responsibility for their assignments, or time pressure is great, group interaction is not important, or routine

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