Benchmark – Leadership Approaches

The textbook is needed for this assignment: 

In 500-750 words, do the following: 1. Compare the various approaches to leadership as covered in your textbook (Leadership by Peter G Northouse 8th edition) readings for this topic. Include the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. 2. Choose one of the approaches. Describe how that approach might influence a leader’s philosophy on public service. 3. Explain how principles of Christian leadership could influence a leader’s philosophy on public service. Use two to three scholarly resources to support your explanations. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. Please let me know you can do it, if not then I will have to create time and do it.

Chapter 2

Trait Approach
Reference

Northhouse, P. (2019). Leading Public Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Discription
Of interest to scholars throughout the 20th century, the trait approach was
one of the first systematic attempts to study leadership. In the early
20th century, leadership traits were studied to determine what made certain
people great leaders. The theories that were developed were called “great
man” theories because they focused on identifying the innate qualities and
characteristics possessed by great social, political, and military leaders (e.g.,
Catherine the Great, Mohandas Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln,
Joan of Arc, and Napoleon Bonaparte). It was believed that people were
born with these traits, and that only the “great” people possessed them.
During this time, research concentrated on determining the specific traits
that clearly differentiated leaders from followers (Bass, 2008; Jago, 1982).
In the mid-20th century, the trait approach was challenged by research that
questioned the universality of leadership traits. In a major review, Stogdill (1948)
suggested that no consistent set of traits differentiated leaders from nonleaders
across a variety of situations. An individual with leadership traits who was a
leader in one situation might not be a leader in another situation. Rather than
being a quality that individuals possess, leadership was reconceptualized as a
relationship between people in a social situation. Personal factors related to leadership
continued to be important, but researchers contended that these factors
were to be considered as relative to the requirements of the situation.
The trait approach has generated much interest among researchers for its
explanation of how traits influence leadership (Bryman, 1992). For example,
Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) went so far as to claim that effective leaders
are actually distinct types of people. Lord, DeVader, and Alliger (1986) found
that traits were strongly associated with individuals’ perceptions of leadership.
More recently, Dinh and Lord (2012) examined the relationship bet The trait approach has earned new interest
through the current emphasis
given by many researchers to visionary and charismatic leadership (see Bass,
2008; Bennis & Nanus, 2007; Jacquart & Antonakis, 2015; Nadler &
Tushman, 2012; Zaccaro, 2007; Zaleznik, 1977). Charismatic leadership catapulted
to the forefront of public attention with the 2008 election of the United
States’ first African American president, Barack Obama, who is perceived by
many to be charismatic, among many other attributes. In a study to determine
what distinguishes charismatic leaders from others, Jung and Sosik (2006)
found that charismatic leaders consistently possess traits of self-monitoring,
engagement in impression management, motivation to attain social power, and
motivation to attain self-actualization. In short, the trait approach is alive and
well. It began with an emphasis on identifying the qualities of great persons,
shifted to include the impact of situations on leadership, and, currently, has
shifted back to reemphasize the critical role of traits in effective leadership.
Although the research on traits spanned the entire 20th century, a good
overview of this approach is found in two surveys completed by Stogdill
(1948, 1974). In his first survey, Stogdill analyzed and synthesized more than

124 trait studies conducted between 1904 and 1947. In his second study, he
analyzed another 163 studies completed between 1948 and 1970. By taking
a closer look at each of these reviews, we can obtain a clearer picture of how
individuals’ traits contribute to the leadership process.
Stogdill’s first survey identified a group of important leadership traits that were
related to how individuals in various groups became leaders. His results showed
that an average individual in a leadership role is different from an average group
member with regard to the following eight traits: intelligence, alertness, insight,
responsibility, initiative, persistence, self-confidence, and sociability.
The findings of Stogdill’s first survey also indicated that an individual does not
become a leader solely because that individual possesses certain traits. Rather, the
traits that leaders possess must be relevant to situations in which the leader is
functioning. As stated earlier, leaders in one situation may not necessarily be
leaders in another situation. Findings showed that leadership was not a passive
state but resulted from a working relationship between the leader and
other group members. This research marked the beginning of a new approach to
leadership research that focused on leadership behaviors and leadership situations.
Stogdill’s second survey, published in 1974, analyzed 163 new studies and
compared the findings of these studies to the findings he had reported in his
first survey. The second survey was more balanced in its description of the
role of traits and leadership. Whereas the first survey implied that leadership
is determined principally by situational factors and not traits, the second
survey argued more moderately that both traits and situational factors were
determinants of leadership. In essence, the second survey validated the original

trait idea that a leader’s characteristics are indeed a part of leadership.

Similar to the first survey, Stogdill’s second survey identified traits that were
positively associated with leadership. The list included the following
10 characteristics:
1. drive for responsibility and task completion;
2. vigor and persistence in pursuit of goals;
3. risk taking and originality in problem solving;
4. drive to exercise initiative in social situations;
5. self-confidence and sense of personal identity;
6. willingness to accept consequences of decision and action;
7. readiness to absorb interpersonal stress;
8. willingness to tolerate frustration and delay;
9. ability to influence other people’s behavior; and
10. capacity to structure social interaction systems to the purpose at hand.
Mann (1959) conducted a similar study that examined more than 1,400
findings regarding traits and leadership in small groups, but he placed less
emphasis on how situational factors influenced leadership. Although tentative
in his conclusions, Mann suggested that certain traits could be used to
distinguish leaders from nonleaders. His results identified leaders as strong
in the following six traits: intelligence, masculinity, adjustment, dominance,
extraversion, and conservatism.
Lord et al. (1986) reassessed Mann’s (1959) findings using a more sophisticated
procedure called meta-analysis. Lord et al. found that intelligence, masculinity,
and dominance were significantly related to how individuals perceived leaders.
From their findings, the authors argued strongly that traits could be used to make
discriminations consistently across situations between leaders and nonleaders.
Both of these studies were conducted during periods in American history
where male leadership was prevalent in most aspects of business and society.
In Chapter 15, we explore more contemporary research regarding the role of

gender in leadership, and we look at whether traits such as masculinity and
dominance still bear out as important factors in distinguishing between
leaders and nonleaders.
Yet another review argues for the importance of leadership traits: Kirkpatrick
and Locke (1991, p. 59) contended that “it is unequivocally clear that leaders
are not like other people.” From a qualitative synthesis of earlier research,
Kirkpatrick and Locke postulated that leaders differ from nonleaders on six
traits: drive, motivation, integrity, confidence, cognitive ability, and task knowledge. According to these writers,
individuals can be born with these
traits, they can learn them, or both. It is these six traits that make up the
“right stuff ” for leaders. Kirkpatrick and Locke asserted that leadership traits
make some people different from others, and this difference should be recognized
as an important part of the leadership process.
In the 1990s, researchers began to investigate the leadership traits associated
with “social intelligence,” which is characterized as the ability to understand
one’s own and others’ feelings, behaviors, and thoughts and act appropriately
(Marlowe, 1986). Zaccaro (2002) defined social intelligence as having such
capacities as social awareness, social acumen, self-monitoring, and the ability
to select and enact the best response given the contingencies of the situation
and social environment. A number of empirical studies showed these capacities
to be a key trait for effective leaders. Zaccaro, Kemp, and Bader (2017)
included such social abilities in the categories of leadership traits they outlined
as important leadership attributes (Table 2.1).
Table 2.1 provides a summary of the traits and characteristics that were identified
by researchers from the trait approach. It illustrates clearly the breadth

of traits related to leadership. Table 2.1 also shows how difficult it is to select
certain traits as definitive leadership traits; some of the traits appear in several
of the survey studies, whereas others appear in only one or two studies.
Regardless of the lack of precision in Table 2.1, however, it represents a general
convergence of research regarding which traits are leadership traits.
What, then, can be said about trait research? What has a century of research
on the trait approach given us that is useful? The answer is an extended list
of traits that individuals might hope to possess or wish to cultivate if they
want to be perceived by others as leaders. Some of the traits that are central
to this list include intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and
sociability (Table 2.2).
Intelligence
Intelligence or intellectual ability is positively related to leadership (Sternberg,
2004). Based on their analysis of a series of recent studies on intelligence and
various indices of leadership, Zaccaro et al. (2017) found support for the finding
that leaders tend to have higher intelligence than nonleaders. Having
strong verbal ability, perceptual ability, and reasoning appears to make one a
better leader (Jacquart & Antonakis, 2015). Although it is good to be bright,
if the leader’s IQ is very different from that of the followers, it can have a
counterproductive impact on leadership. Leaders with higher abilities may
have difficulty communicating with followers because they are preoccupied or
because their ideas are too advanced for their followers to accept.
In a study of the relationship between intelligence and perceived leadership
in midlevel leaders from multinational companies, Antonakis, House, and
Simonton (2017) found that the optimal IQ for perceived leadership appeared
to be just above one standard deviation above the mean IQ of the group
membership. Their study found a curvilinear relationship between IQ and
perceived leadership—that is, as IQ increased, so did perceived leadership to
a point, and then the IQ had a negative impact on leadership. Stated another
way, it is good for leaders to be intelligent, but if their intelligence scores

become too high, the benefits appear to taper off and can become negative.
An example of a leader for whom intelligence was a key trait was Steve Jobs,

founder and CEO of Apple who died in 2011. Jobs once said, “I have this
really incredible product inside me and I have to get it out” (Sculley, 2011,
p. 27). Those visionary products, first the Apple II and Macintosh computers
and then the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, revolutionized the personal computer
and electronic device industry, changing the way people play and work.
In the next chapter of this text, which addresses leadership from a skills
perspective, intelligence is identified as a trait that significantly contributes
to a leader’s acquisition of complex problem-solving skills and social judgment
skills. Intelligence is described as having a positive impact on an individual’s
capacity for effective leadership.
Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is another trait that helps one to be a leader. Self-confidence
is the ability to be certain about one’s competencies and skills. It includes a
sense of self-esteem and self-assurance and the belief that one can make a
difference. Leadership involves influencing others, and self-confidence
allows the leader to feel assured that his or her attempts to influence others
are appropriate and right.
Again, Steve Jobs is a good example of a self-confident leader. When Jobs
described the devices he wanted to create, many people said they weren’t
possible. But Jobs never doubted his products would change the world, and
despite resistance, he did things the way he thought best. “Jobs was one of
those CEOs who ran the company like he wanted to. He believed he knew
more about it than anyone else, and he probably did,” said a colleague
(Stone, 2011, p. 40).
Determination
Many leaders also exhibit determination. Determination is the desire to get
the job done and includes characteristics such as initiative, persistence,
dominance, and drive. People with determination are willing to assert
themselves, are proactive, and have the capacity to persevere in the face of
obstacles. Being determined includes showing dominance at times and in
situations where followers need to be directed.
Dr. Paul Farmer has shown determination in his efforts to secure health care
and eradicate tuberculosis for the very poor of Haiti and other third world
countries. He began his efforts as a recent college graduate, traveling and
working in Cange, Haiti. While there, he was accepted to Harvard Medical
School. Knowing that his work in Haiti was invaluable to his training, he
managed to do both: spending months traveling back and forth between
Haiti and Cambridge, Massachusetts, for school. His first effort in Cange was to establish a one-room clinic where
he treated “all comers” and trained
local health care workers. Farmer found that there was more to providing
health care than just dispensing medicine: He secured donations to build
schools, houses, and communal sanitation and water facilities in the region.
He spearheaded vaccinations of all the children in the area, dramatically
reducing malnutrition and infant mortality. In order to keep working in
Haiti, he returned to America and founded Partners In Health, a charitable
foundation that raises money to fund these efforts. Since its founding, PIH
not only has succeeded in improving the health of many communities in
Haiti but now has projects in Haiti, Lesotho, Malawi, Peru, Russia, Rwanda,
and the United States, and supports other projects in Mexico and Guatemala
(Kidder, 2004; Partners In Health, 2017).
Integrity
Integrity, another of the important leadership traits, is the quality of honesty
and trustworthiness. People who adhere to a strong set of principles and take

responsibility for their actions are exhibiting integrity. Leaders with integrity
inspire confidence in others because they can be trusted to do what they say
they are going to do. They are loyal, dependable, and not deceptive. Basically,
integrity makes a leader believable and worthy of our trust.
In our society, integrity has received a great deal of attention in recent years.
For example, as a result of two situations—the position taken by President
George W. Bush regarding Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and the
impeachment proceedings during the Bill Clinton presidency—people are
demanding more honesty of their public officials. Similarly, scandals in the
corporate world (e.g., Enron and WorldCom) have led people to become
skeptical of leaders who are not highly ethical. In the educational arena, new
K–12 curricula are being developed to teach character, values, and ethical leadership.
(For instance, see the Character Counts! program developed by the
Josephson Institute of Ethics in California at www.charactercounts.org, and
the Pillars of Leadership program taught at the J. W. Fanning Institute for
Leadership Development in Georgia at www.fanning.uga.edu.) In short, society
is demanding greater integrity of character in its leaders.
Sociability
A final trait that is important for leaders is sociability. Sociability is a
leader’s inclination to seek out pleasant social relationships. Leaders who
show sociability are friendly, outgoing, courteous, tactful, and diplomatic.
They are sensitive to others’ needs and show concern for their well-being.
Social leaders have good interpersonal skills and create cooperative relationships

with their followers.

An example of a leader with great sociability skills is Michael Hughes, a
university president. Hughes prefers to walk to all his meetings because it gets
him out on campus where he greets students, staff, and faculty. He has lunch
in the dorm cafeterias or student union and will often ask a table of strangers
if he can sit with them. Students rate him as very approachable, while faculty
say he has an open-door policy. In addition, he takes time to write personal
notes to faculty, staff, and students to congratulate them on their successes.
Although our discussion of leadership traits has focused on five major traits
(i.e., intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability),
this list is not all-inclusive. While other traits indicated in Table 2.1 are
associated with effective leadership, the five traits we have identified contribute
substantially to one’s capacity to be a leader.
Until recently, most reviews of leadership traits have been qualitative. In addition,
they have lacked a common organizing framework. However, the research
described in the following section provides a quantitative assessment of leadership
traits that is conceptually framed around the five-factor model of personality.
It describes how five major personality traits are related to leadership.
Five-Factor Personality Model and Leadership
Over the past 25 years, a consensus has emerged among researchers regarding
the basic factors that make up what we call personality (Goldberg, 1990;
McCrae & Costa, 1987). These factors, commonly called the Big Five, are
neuroticism, extraversion (surgency), openness (intellect), agreeableness,
and conscientiousness (dependability) (Table 2.3).
To assess the links between the Big Five and leadership, Judge, Bono, Ilies,
and Gerhardt (2002) conducted a major meta-analysis of 78 leadership and
personality studies published between 1967 and 1998. In general, Judge et al.
found a strong relationship between the Big Five traits and leadership. It
appears that having certain personality traits is associated with being an
effective leader.

Specifically, in their study, extraversion was the factor most strongly associated
with leadership. It is the most important trait of effective leaders.
Extraversion was followed, in order, by conscientiousness, openness, and low
neuroticism. The last factor, agreeableness, was found to be only weakly
associated with leadership. In a more recent study, Sacket and Walmsley
(2014) found that conscientiousness had the highest correlation with overall
job performance, task performance, organizational citizenship behavior,
and counterproductive work behavior (negative correlation). It was
found to be the most frequently assessed trait in job interviews for a
variety of occupations.

Strengths and Leadership
Very closely related to the traits approach is the more contemporary
emphasis on strengths and leadership. The idea behind strengths leadership
is that everyone has talents in which they excel or thrive and leaders are able
to recognize and capitalize on not only their own strengths but those of
their followers as well. A strength is defined as an attribute or quality of an
individual that accounts for successful performance. Strength researchers
(Buckingham & Clifton, 2001; Rath, 2007) suggest that strengths are the
ability to consistently demonstrate exceptional work.
The seminal research in this area has been undertaken by the Gallup organization,
which has spent more than 40 years identifying and assessing
individual strengths or “themes of human talent” and designing and publishing
the StrengthsFinder profile, now called CliftonStrengths assessment,
an online assessment of people’s talents and potential strengths.
Talents are similar to personality traits—they are relatively stable, fixed
characteristics that are not easily changed. From talents, strengths emerge.
Strengths are derived from having certain talents and then further developing
those talents by gaining additional knowledge, skills, and practice
(Rath, 2007).
In the strengths perspective, extraordinary individuals are “distinguished less
by their impressive ‘raw power’ than by their ability to identify their strengths
and then exploit them” (Gardner, 1997, p. 15). MacKie (2016) suggests that
our leadership capability is enhanced when we are able to discover our fully
utilized strengths, underutilized strengths, and weaknesses.

Emotional Intelligence
Another way of assessing the impact of traits on leadership is through the
concept of emotional intelligence, which emerged in the 1990s as an important
area of study in psychology. It has been widely studied by researchers, and
has captured the attention of many practitioners (Caruso & Wolfe, 2004;
Goleman, 1995, 1998; Mayer & Salovey, 1995, 1997; Mayer, Salovey, &
Caruso, 2000; Shankman & Allen, 2015).
As the two words suggest, emotional intelligence has to do with our emotions
(affective domain) and thinking (cognitive domain), and the interplay
between the two. Whereas intelligence is concerned with our ability to learn
information and apply it to life tasks, emotional intelligence is concerned with
our ability to understand emotions and apply this understanding to life’s
tasks. Specifically, emotional intelligence can be defined as the ability to perceive
and express emotions, to use emotions to facilitate thinking, to understand
and reason with emotions, and to effectively manage emotions within
oneself and in relationships with others (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2000).
There are different ways to measure emotional intelligence. One scale is the
Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT; Mayer,
Caruso, & Salovey, 2000). The MSCEIT measures emotional intelligence as
a set of mental abilities, including the abilities to perceive, facilitate, understand,

and manage emotion.
Goleman (1995, 1998) takes a broader approach to emotional intelligence,
suggesting that it consists of a set of personal and social competencies.
Personal competence consists of self-awareness, confidence, self-regulation,
conscientiousness, and motivation. Social competence consists of empathy
and social skills such as communication and conflict management.
Shankman and Allen (2015) developed a practice-oriented model of emotionally
intelligent leadership, which suggests that leaders must be conscious of three
fundamental facets of leadership: context, self, and others. In the model, emotionally
intelligent leaders are defined by 21 capacities to which a leader should
pay attention, including group savvy, optimism, initiative, and teamwork.
There is a debate in the field regarding how big a role emotional intelligence
plays in helping people be successful in life. Some researchers, such as
Goleman (1995), suggested that emotional intelligence plays a major role in
whether people are successful at school, home, and work. Others, such as
Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000) and Antonakis (2009), made softer claims
for the significance of emotional intelligence in meeting life’s challenges.
As a leadership ability or trait, emotional intelligence appears to be an
important construct. The underlying premise suggested by this framework

HOW DOES THE TRAIT APPROACH WORK? _________
The trait approach is very different from the other approaches discussed in
subsequent chapters because it focuses exclusively on the leader, not on the
followers or the situation. This makes the trait approach theoretically more
straightforward than other approaches. In essence, the trait approach is
concerned with what traits leaders exhibit and who has these traits.
The trait approach does not lay out a set of hypotheses or principles about
what kind of leader is needed in a certain situation or what a leader should
do, given a particular set of circumstances. Instead, this approach emphasizes
that having a leader with a certain set of traits is crucial to having effective
leadership. It is the leader and the leader’s traits that are central to the
leadership process.
The trait approach suggests that organizations will work better if the people
in managerial positions have designated leadership profiles. To find the right
people, it is common for organizations to use trait assessment instruments.
The assumption behind these procedures is that selecting the right people
will increase organizational effectiveness. Organizations can specify the
characteristics or traits that are important to them for particular positions
and then use trait assessment measures to determine whether an individual
fits their needs.
The trait approach is also used for personal awareness and development. By
analyzing their own traits, managers can gain an idea of their strengths and
weaknesses, and can get a feel for how others in the organization see them.
A trait assessment can help managers determine whether they have the
qualities to move up or to move to other positions in the company.
A trait assessment gives individuals a clearer picture of who they are as
leaders and how they fit into the organizational hierarchy. In areas where
their traits are lacking, leaders can try to make changes in what they do or
where they work to increase their traits’ potential impact.
Near the end of the chapter, a leadership instrument is provided that you can
use to assess your leadership traits. This instrument is typical of the kind of
assessments that companies use to evaluate individuals’ leadership potential.
As you will discover by completing this instrument, trait measures are a good
way to assess your own characteristics.

STRENGTHS ______________________________________
The trait approach has several identifiable strengths. First, the trait approach
is intuitively appealing. It fits clearly with our notion that leaders are the
individuals who are out front and leading the way in our society. The image
in the popular press and community at large is that leaders are a special kind
of people—people with gifts who can do extraordinary things. The trait
approach is consistent with this perception because it is built on the premise
that leaders are different, and their difference resides in the special traits they
possess. People have a need to see their leaders as gifted people, and the trait
approach fulfills this need.
A second strength of the trait approach is that it has a century of research to
back it up. No other theory can boast of the breadth and depth of studies
conducted on the trait approach. The strength and longevity of this line of
research give the trait approach a measure of credibility that other approaches
lack. Out of this abundance of research has emerged a body of data that
points to the important role of various traits in the leadership process.
Another strength, more conceptual in nature, results from the way the trait
approach highlights the leader component in the leadership process.
Leadership is composed of leaders, followers, and situations, but the trait
approach is devoted to only the first of these—leaders. Although this is also
a potential weakness, by focusing exclusively on the role of the leader in
leadership the trait approach has been able to provide us with a deeper and
more intricate understanding of how the leader and the leader’s traits are
related to the leadership process.
Last, the trait approach has given us some benchmarks for what we need to
look for if we want to be leaders. It identifies what traits we should have and
whether the traits we do have are the best traits for leadership. Based on the
findings of this approach, trait assessment procedures can be used to offer
invaluable information to supervisors and managers about their strengths and
weaknesses and ways to improve their overall leadership effectiveness.
CRITICISMS _______________________________________
In addition to its strengths, the trait approach has several weaknesses. First and
foremost is the failure of the trait approach to delimit a definitive list of leadership
traits. Although an enormous number of studies have been conducted over
the past 100 years, the findings from these studies have been ambiguous and
uncertain at times. Furthermore, the list of traits that has emerged appears endless.
This is obvious from Table 2.1, which lists a multitude of traits. In fact,
these are only a sample of the many leadership traits that were studied.

Another criticism is that the trait approach has failed to take situations into
account. As Stogdill (1948) pointed out more than 60 years ago, it is difficult
to isolate a set of traits that are characteristic of leaders without also factoring
situational effects into the equation. People who possess certain traits
that make them leaders in one situation may not be leaders in another
situation. Some people may have the traits that help them emerge as leaders
but not the traits that allow them to maintain their leadership over time. In
other words, the situation influences leadership. It is therefore difficult to
identify a universal set of leadership traits in isolation from the context in
which the leadership occurs.
A third criticism, derived from the prior two criticisms, is that this approach
has resulted in highly subjective determinations of the most important leadership
traits. Because the findings on traits have been so extensive and broad,
there has been much subjective interpretation of the meaning of the data.
This subjectivity is readily apparent in the many self-help, practice-oriented
management books. For example, one author might identify ambition and

creativity as crucial leadership traits; another might identify empathy and
calmness. In both cases, it is the author’s subjective experience and observations
that are the basis for the identified leadership traits. These books may
be helpful to readers because they identify and describe important leadership
traits, but the methods used to generate these lists of traits are weak. To
respond to people’s need for a set of definitive traits of leaders, authors have
set forth lists of traits, even if the origins of these lists are not grounded in
strong, reliable research.
Research on traits can also be criticized for failing to look at traits in relationship
to leadership outcomes. This research has emphasized the identification
of traits, but has not addressed how leadership traits affect group
members and their work. In trying to ascertain universal leadership traits,
researchers have focused on the link between specific traits and leader emergence,
but they have not tried to link leader traits with other outcomes such
as productivity or employee satisfaction. For example, trait research does not
provide data on whether leaders who have high intelligence and strong
integrity have better results than leaders without these traits. The trait
approach is weak in describing how leaders’ traits affect the outcomes of
groups and teams in organizational settings.
A final criticism of the trait approach is that it is not a useful approach for
training and development for leadership. Even if definitive traits could be
identified, teaching new traits is not an easy process because traits are not
easily changed. For example, it is not reasonable to send managers to a training
program to raise their IQ or to train them to become extraverted. The
point is that traits are largely fixed psychological structures, and this limits
the value of teaching and leadership training.

APPLICATION _____________________________________
Despite its shortcomings, the trait approach provides valuable information
about leadership. It can be applied by individuals at all levels and in all
types of organizations. Although the trait approach does not provide a
definitive set of traits, it does provide direction regarding which traits are
good to have if one aspires to a leadership position. By taking trait assessments
and other similar questionnaires, people can gain insight into
whether they have certain traits deemed important for leadership, and they
can pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses with regard to leadership.
As we discussed previously, managers can use information from the trait
approach to assess where they stand in their organization and what they
need to do to strengthen their position. Trait information can suggest areas
in which their personal characteristics are very beneficial to the company and
areas in which they may want to get more training to enhance their overall
approach. Using trait information, managers can develop a deeper understanding
of who they are and how they will affect others in the organization.

SUMMARY _______________________________________
The trait approach has its roots in leadership theory that suggested that certain
people were born with special traits that made them great leaders.
Because it was believed that leaders and nonleaders could be differentiated by
a universal set of traits, throughout the 20th century researchers were challenged
to identify the definitive traits of leaders.
Around the mid-20th century, several major studies questioned the basic
premise that a unique set of traits defined leadership. As a result, attention
shifted to incorporating the impact of situations and of followers on leadership.
Researchers began to study the interactions between leaders and their
context instead of focusing only on leaders’ traits. More recently, there have

been signs that trait research has come full circle, with a renewed interest in
focusing directly on the critical traits of leaders.
From the multitude of studies conducted through the years on personal characteristics,
it is clear that many traits contribute to leadership. Some of the
important traits that are consistently identified in many of these studies are
intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability. In addition,
researchers have found a strong relationship between leadership and the
traits described by the five-factor personality model. Extraversion was the trait
most strongly associated with leadership, followed by conscientiousness, openness,
low neuroticism, and agreeableness. Another recent line of research has focused
on emotional intelligence and its relationship to leadership. This research suggests
that leaders who are sensitive to their emotions and to the impact of their
emotions on others may be leaders who are more effective.
On a practical level, the trait approach is concerned with which traits leaders
exhibit and who has these traits. Organizations use personality assessment
instruments to identify how individuals will fit within their organizations.
The trait approach is also used for personal awareness and development
because it allows managers to analyze their strengths and weaknesses and to
gain a clearer understanding of how they should try to change to enhance
their leadership.
There are several advantages to viewing leadership from the trait approach.
First, it is intuitively appealing because it fits clearly into the popular idea
that leaders are special people who are out front, leading the way in society.
Second, a great deal of research validates the basis of this perspective. Third,
by focusing exclusively on the leader, the trait approach provides an in-depth
understanding of the leader component in the leadership process. Last, it has
provided some benchmarks against which individuals can evaluate their own
personal leadership attributes.
On the negative side, the trait approach has failed to provide a definitive list
of leadership traits. In analyzing the traits of leaders, the approach has failed to take into account the impact of
situations. In addition, the approach has
resulted in subjective lists of the most important leadership traits, which are
not necessarily grounded in strong, reliable research.
Furthermore, the trait approach has not adequately linked the traits of leaders
with other outcomes such as group and team performance. Last, this
approach is not particularly useful for training and development for leadership
because individuals’ personal attributes are largely stable and fixed, and
their traits are not amenable to change.

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CHATER 3

Skills Approach
DESCRIPTION _____________________________________
Like the trait approach discussed in Chapter 2, the skills approach takes a
leader-centered perspective on leadership. However, in the skills approach
we shift our thinking from a focus on personality characteristics, which
usually are viewed as innate and largely fixed, to an emphasis on skills and
abilities that can be learned and developed. Although personality certainly
plays an integral role in leadership, the skills approach suggests that knowledge
and abilities are needed for effective leadership.
Researchers have studied leadership skills directly or indirectly for a number
of years (see Bass, 2008, pp. 97–109). However, the impetus for research on
skills was a classic article published by Robert Katz in the Harvard Business
Review in 1955, titled “Skills of an Effective Administrator.” Katz’s article
appeared at a time when researchers were trying to identify a definitive set of
leadership traits. Katz’s approach was an attempt to transcend the trait problem
by addressing leadership as a set of developable skills. More recently, a
revitalized interest in the skills approach has emerged. Beginning in the early
1990s, a multitude of studies have been published that contend that a leader’s
effectiveness depends on the leader’s ability to solve complex organizational
problems. This research has resulted in a comprehensive skill-based model of
leadership that was advanced by Mumford and his colleagues (Mumford,
Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, & Fleishman, 2000; Yammarino, 2000).
In this chapter, our discussion of the skills approach is divided into two parts.
First, we discuss the general ideas set forth by Katz regarding three basic
administrative skills: technical, human, and conceptual. Second, we discuss
the recent work of Mumford and colleagues that has resulted in a skillsbased
model of organizational leadership.
Three-Skill Approach
Based on field research in administration and his own firsthand observations
of executives in the workplace, Katz (1955, p. 34) suggested that effective
administration (i.e., leadership) depends on three basic personal skills: technical,
human, and conceptual. Katz argued that these skills are quite different
from traits or qualities of leaders. Skills are what leaders can accomplish, whereas
traits are who leaders are (i.e., their innate characteristics). Leadership skills are
defined in this chapter as the ability to use one’s knowledge and competencies
to accomplish a set of goals or objectives. This chapter shows that these leadership

skills can be acquired and leaders can be trained to develop them.
Technical Skills
Technical skills are knowledge about and proficiency in a specific type of
work or activity. They include competencies in a specialized area, analytical
ability, and the ability to use appropriate tools and techniques (Katz, 1955).
For example, in a computer software company, technical skills might include
knowing software language and programming, the company’s software products,
and how to make these products function for clients. Similarly, in an
accounting firm, technical skills might include understanding and having the
ability to apply generally accepted accounting principles to a client’s audit. In
both these examples, technical skills involve a hands-on activity with a basic
product or process within an organization. Technical skills play an essential
role in producing the actual products a company is designed to produce.
As illustrated in Figure 3.1, technical skills are most important at lower and
middle levels of management and less important in upper management. For
leaders at the highest level, such as CEOs, presidents, and senior officers,
technical competencies are not as essential. Individuals at the top level depend
on skilled followers to handle technical issues of the physical operation.
Human Skills
Human skills are knowledge about and ability to work with people. They are
quite different from technical skills, which have to do with working with
things (Katz, 1955). Human skills are “people skills.” They are the abilities
that help a leader to work effectively with followers, peers, and superiors to
accomplish the organization’s goals. Human skills allow a leader to assist
group members in working cooperatively as a group to achieve common
goals. For Katz, it means being aware of one’s own perspective on issues and,
at the same time, being aware of the perspective of others. Leaders with
human skills adapt their own ideas to those of others. Furthermore, they
create an atmosphere of trust where employees can feel comfortable and secure and where they can feel encouraged
to become involved in the planning
of things that will affect them. Being a leader with human skills means
being sensitive to the needs and motivations of others and taking into
account others’ needs in one’s decision making. In short, human skills are
the capacity to get along with others as you go about your work.
Figure 3.1 shows that human skills are important in all three levels of management.
Although managers at lower levels may communicate with a far greater number
of employees, human skills are equally important at middle and upper levels.
Conceptual Skills
Broadly speaking, conceptual skills are the ability to work with ideas and
concepts. Whereas technical skills deal with things and human skills deal
with people, conceptual skills involve the ability to work with ideas. A leader
with conceptual skills is comfortable talking about the ideas that shape an
organization and the intricacies involved. He or she is good at putting the
company’s goals into words and can understand and express the economic principles that affect the company. A
leader with conceptual skills works
easily with abstractions and hypothetical notions.
Conceptual skills are central to creating a vision and strategic plan for an
organization. For example, it would take conceptual skills for a CEO in a
struggling manufacturing company to articulate a vision for a line of new
products that would steer the company into profitability. Similarly, it would
take conceptual skills for the director of a nonprofit health organization to
create a strategic plan that could compete successfully with for-profit health
organizations in a market with scarce resources. The point of these examples
is that conceptual skills have to do with the mental work of shaping the
meaning of organizational or policy issues—understanding what a company
stands for and where it is or should be going.

As shown in Figure 3.1, conceptual skills are most important at the top
management levels. In fact, when upper-level managers do not have strong
conceptual skills, they can jeopardize the whole organization. Conceptual
skills are also important in middle management; as we move down to lower
management levels, conceptual skills become less important.
Summary of the Three-Skill Approach
To summarize, the three-skill approach includes technical, human, and
conceptual skills. It is important for leaders to have all three skills; depending
on where they are in the management structure, however, some skills are
more important than others are.
Katz’s work in the mid-1950s set the stage for conceptualizing leadership in
terms of skills, but it was not until the mid-1990s that an empirically based
skills approach received recognition in leadership research. In the next section,
the comprehensive skill-based model of leadership is presented.
Skills Model
Beginning in the early 1990s, a group of researchers, with funding from the U.S.
Army and Department of Defense, set out to test and develop a comprehensive
theory of leadership based on problem-solving skills in organizations. The
studies were conducted over a number of years using a sample of more than
1,800 Army officers, representing six grade levels, from second lieutenant to
colonel. The project used a variety of new measures and tools to assess the skills
of these officers, their experiences, and the situations in which they worked.
The researchers’ main goal was to explain the underlying elements of
effective performance. They addressed questions such as these: What
accounts for why some leaders are good problem solvers and others are not? What specific skills do high-performing
leaders exhibit? How do
leaders’ individual characteristics, career experiences, and environmental
influences affect their job performance? As a whole, researchers wanted
to identify the leadership factors that create exemplary job performance
in an actual organization.
Based on the extensive findings from the project, Mumford and colleagues
formulated a skill-based model of leadership. The model is characterized as
a capability model because it examines the relationship between a leader’s
knowledge and skills (i.e., capabilities) and the leader’s performance
(Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al., 2000, p. 12). Leadership capabilities can
be developed over time through education and experience. Unlike the “great
man” approach (discussed in Chapter 2 of this text), which implies that
leadership is reserved for only the gifted few, the skills approach suggests
that many people have the potential for leadership. If people are capable of
learning from their experiences, they can acquire leadership. The skills
approach can also be distinguished from the leadership approaches we will
discuss in subsequent chapters, which focus on behavioral patterns of leaders
(e.g., the style approach, transformational leadership, or leader–member
exchange theory). Rather than emphasizing what leaders do, the skills
approach frames leadership as the capabilities (knowledge and skills) that make
effective leadership possible (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al., 2000, p. 12).
The skill-based model of Mumford’s group has five components: competencies,
individual attributes, leadership outcomes, career experiences, and environmental
influences. A portion of the model, illustrating three of these
components, appears in Figure 3.2. This portion of the model is essential to
understanding the overall skill-based leadership model. Competencies
As can be observed in the middle box of Figure 3.2, problem-solving skills,
social judgment skills, and knowledge are at the heart of the skills model.
These three competencies are the key factors that account for effective
performance (Mumford et al., 2012).
Problem-Solving Skills. What are problem-solving skills? According to

Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al. (2000), problem-solving skills are a leader’s
creative ability to solve new and unusual, ill-defined organizational problems.
The skills include being able to define significant problems, gather problem
information, formulate new understandings about the problem, and generate
prototype plans for problem solutions. Mumford, Todd, Higgs, and McIntosh
(2017, p. 28) identified nine key problem-solving skills leaders employ to
address problems:
1. problem definition, the ability to define noteworthy issues or significant
problems affecting the organization;
2. cause/goal analysis, the ability to analyze the causes and goals relevant
to addressing problems;
3. constraint analysis, the ability to identify the constraints, or limiting
factors, influencing any problem solution;
4. planning, the ability to formulate plans, mental simulations, and
actions arising from cause/goal and constraint analysis;
5. forecasting, the ability to anticipate the implications of executing the plans;
6. creative thinking, the ability to develop alternative approaches and new
ideas for addressing potential pitfalls of a plan identified in forecasting;
7. idea evaluation, the ability to evaluate these alternative approaches’
viability in executing the plan;
8. wisdom, the ability to evaluate the appropriateness of these alternative
approaches within the context, or setting, in which the leader acts; and
9. sensemaking/visioning, the ability to articulate a vision that will help
followers understand, make sense of, and act on the problem.
Figure 3.3 shows the relationship between these different skills as a developing
process, where employment of one skill can lead to the next.
To clarify how these problem-solving skills work in conjunction with one
another, consider the following hypothetical situation. Imagine that you are
the director of human resources for a medium-sized company and you have
been informed by the president that you have to develop a plan to reduce the company’s health care costs. In
deciding what you will do, you demonstrate
problem-solving skills in the following ways. First, you identify the
full ramifications for employees of changing their health insurance coverage
(problem definition; forecasting). What is the impact going to be (cause/
goal analysis)? Second, you gather information about how benefits can be
scaled back (constraint analysis). What other companies have attempted a
similar change, and what were their results (forecasting)? Third, you find a
way to teach and inform the employees about the needed change (planning;
creative thinking). How can you frame the change in such a way that it is
clearly understood (planning; creative thinking; wisdom)? Fourth, you create
possible scenarios for how the changes will be instituted (forecasting;
idea evaluation). How will the plan be described? Fifth, you look closely at
the solution itself (idea evaluation). How will implementing this change
affect the company’s mission and your own career (sensemaking; vision)?
Last, are there issues in the organization (e.g., union rules) that may affect
the implementation of these changes (constraint analysis; forecasting)? Problem-solving skills also demand that
leaders understand their own leadership
capacities as they apply possible solutions to the unique problems in
their organization (Mumford, Zaccaro, Connelly, & Marks, 2000).
Being able to construct solutions plays a special role in problem solving. In
considering solutions to organizational problems, skilled leaders need to
attend to the time frame for constructing and implementing a solution,
short-term and long-term goals, career goals and organizational goals, and
external issues, all of which could influence the solution (Mumford, Zaccaro,
Harding, et al., 2000, p. 15).
The process of dealing with novel, ill-defined organizational problems is

complex and demanding for leaders. In many ways, it is like a puzzle to be
solved. For leaders to solve such puzzles, the skill-based model suggests that
problem-solving skills are essential.
Social Judgment Skills. In addition to problem-solving skills, effective
leadership performance requires social judgment skills (Figure 3.2). In general,
social judgment skills are the capacity to understand people and social systems
(Zaccaro, Mumford, Connelly, Marks, & Gilbert, 2000, p. 46). They enable
leaders to work with others to solve problems and to marshal support to implement
change within an organization. Social judgment skills are the people
skills that are necessary to solve unique organizational problems.
Conceptually, social judgment skills are similar to Katz’s (1955) early work
on the role of human skills in management. In contrast to Katz’s work,
Mumford and colleagues have delineated social judgment skills into the
following: perspective taking, social perceptiveness, behavioral flexibility, and
social performance.
Perspective taking means understanding the attitudes that others have toward
a particular problem or solution. It is empathy applied to problem solving.
Perspective taking means being sensitive to other people’s perspectives and
goals—being able to understand their point of view on different issues.
Included in perspective taking is knowing how different constituencies in an
organization view a problem and possible solutions (Gasiorek & Ebesu
Hubbard, 2017). According to Zaccaro, Gilbert, Thor, and Mumford (1991),
perspective-taking skills can be likened to social intelligence. These skills are
concerned with knowledge about people, the social fabric of organizations,
and the interrelatedness of each of them.
Social perceptiveness is insight and awareness into how others in the organization
function. What is important to others? What motivates them? What
problems do they face, and how do they react to change? Social perceptiveness
means understanding the unique needs, goals, and demands of different
organizational constituencies (Zaccaro et al., 1991). A leader with social perceptiveness has a keen sense of how
followers will respond to any proposed
change in the organization. In a sense, you could say it allows the
leader to know the pulse of followers on any issue at any time.
In addition to understanding others accurately, social judgment skills involve
reacting to others with flexibility. Behavioral flexibility is the capacity to
change and adapt one’s behavior in light of an understanding of others’ perspectives
in the organization. Being flexible means one is not locked into a
singular approach to a problem. One is not dogmatic but rather maintains
an openness and willingness to change. As the circumstances of a situation
change, a flexible leader changes to meet the new demands.
Social performance includes a wide range of leadership competencies. Based
on an understanding of followers’ perspectives, leaders need to be able to
communicate their own vision to others. Skill in persuasion and communicating
change is essential to do this. When there is resistance to change or
interpersonal conflict about change, leaders need to function as mediators.
To this end, skill in conflict resolution is an important aspect of social performance
competency. In addition, social performance sometimes requires
that leaders coach followers, giving them direction and support as they move
toward selected organizational goals. In all, social performance includes
many related skills that may come under the umbrella of communication.
To review, social judgment skills are about being sensitive to how your ideas fit in
with others. Can you understand others’ perspectives and their unique needs and
motivations? Are you flexible, and can you adapt your own ideas to others? Can
you work with others even when there is resistance and conflict? Social judgment
skills are the people skills needed to advance change in an organization.
Knowledge. As shown in the model (Figure 3.2), the third aspect of competencies

is knowledge. Knowledge is inextricably related to the application and
implementation of problem-solving skills in organizations. It directly influences
a leader’s capacity to define complex organizational problems and to attempt to
solve them (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al., 2000). Knowledge is the accumulation
of information and the mental structures used to organize that information.
Such a mental structure is called a schema (a summary, a diagrammatic
representation, or an outline). Knowledge results from having developed an
assortment of complex schemata for learning and organizing data.
For example, all of us take various kinds of facts and information into our
minds. As we organize that information into categories or schemata, the
information becomes more meaningful. Knowledge emerges from the facts
and the organizational structures we apply to them. People with a lot of
knowledge have more complex organizing structures than those with less
knowledge. These knowledgeable people are called experts. Consider the following baseball example. A baseball
expert knows a lot of
facts about the game; the expert knows the rules, strategies, equipment, players,
and much, much more. The expert’s knowledge about baseball includes
the facts, but it also includes the complex mental structures used in organizing
and structuring those facts. That person knows not only the season and
lifetime statistics for each player, but also that player’s quirks and injuries, the
personality of the manager, the strengths and weaknesses of available substitutes,
and so on. The expert knows baseball because she or he comprehends
the complexities and nuances of the game. The same is true for leadership
in organizations. Leaders with knowledge know much about the products,
the tasks, the people, the organization, and all the different ways these elements
are related to each other. A knowledgeable leader has many mental
structures with which to organize the facts of organizational life.
Knowledge has a positive impact on how leaders engage in problem solving.
It is knowledge and expertise that make it possible for people to think about
complex system issues and identify possible strategies for appropriate change.
Furthermore, this capacity allows people to use prior cases and incidents in
order to plan for needed change. It is knowledge that allows people to use
the past to constructively confront the future.
To summarize, the skills model consists of three competencies: problemsolving
skills, social judgment skills, and knowledge. Collectively, these three components
are positively related to effective leadership performance (Figure 3.2).
Individual Attributes
Returning to Figure 3.2, the box on the left identifies four individual attributes
that have an impact on leadership skills and knowledge: general
cognitive ability, crystallized cognitive ability, motivation, and personality.
These attributes play important roles in the skills model. Complex problem
solving is a very difficult process and becomes more difficult as people move
up in the organization. These attributes support people as they apply their
leadership competencies.
General Cognitive Ability. General cognitive ability can be thought of as a
person’s intelligence. It includes perceptual processing, information processing,
general reasoning skills, creative and divergent thinking capacities, and memory
skills. General cognitive ability is linked to biology, not to experience.
General cognitive ability is sometimes described as fluid intelligence, a type
of intelligence that usually grows and expands up through early adulthood
and then declines with age. In the skills model, intelligence is described as
having a positive impact on the leader’s acquisition of complex problemsolving
skills and the leader’s knowledge. Crystallized Cognitive Ability. Crystallized cognitive ability is intellectual
ability that is learned or acquired over time. It is the store of knowledge we
acquire through experience. We learn and increase our capacities over a
lifetime, increasing our leadership potential (e.g., problem-solving skills,

conceptual ability, and social judgment skills). In normally functioning
adults, this type of cognitive ability grows continuously and typically does
not fall off in adulthood. It includes being able to comprehend complex
information and learn new skills and information, as well as being able to
communicate to others in oral and written forms (Connelly et al., 2000,
p. 71). Stated another way, crystallized cognitive ability is acquired
intelligence: the ideas and mental abilities people learn through experience.
Because it stays fairly stable over time, this type of intelligence is not diminished
as people get older (Rose & Gordon, 2015).
Motivation. Motivation is listed as the third attribute in the model.
While Kerns (2015) identified three categories of motivations (selfinterest,
career considerations, and higher purposes) that propel leaders,
the skills model takes a different approach, instead suggesting there are
three aspects of motivation—willingness, dominance, and social good—that
are essential to developing leadership skills (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding,
et al., 2000, p. 22).
First, leaders must be willing to tackle complex organizational problems.
This first step is critical. For leadership to occur, a person must want to
lead. Second, leaders must be willing to express dominance—to exert their
influence, as we discussed in Chapter 2. In influencing others, the leader
must take on the responsibility of dominance because the influence component
of leadership is inextricably bound to dominance. Third, leaders
must be committed to the social good of the organization. Social good is a
broad term that can refer to a host of outcomes. However, in the skills
model it refers to the leader’s willingness to take on the responsibility of
trying to advance the overall human good and value of the organization.
Taken together, these three aspects of motivation (willingness, dominance,
and social good) prepare people to become leaders.
Personality. Personality is the fourth individual attribute in the skills
model. Placed where it is in the model, this attribute reminds us that our
personality has an impact on the development of our leadership skills. For
example, openness, tolerance for ambiguity, and curiosity may affect a
leader’s motivation to try to solve some organizational problems. Or, in
conflict situations, traits such as confidence and adaptability may be beneficial
to a leader’s performance. The skills model hypothesizes that any personality
characteristic that helps people to cope with complex organizational
situations probably is related to leader performance (Mumford, Zaccaro,
Harding, et al., 2000).
Leadership Outcomes
In the right-hand box in Figure 3.2, effective problem solving and performance
are the outcomes of leadership. These outcomes are strongly influenced
by the leader’s competencies (i.e., problem-solving skills, social
judgment skills, and knowledge). When leaders exhibit these competencies,
they increase their chances of problem solving and overall performance.
Effective Problem Solving. As we discussed earlier, the skills model is a
capability model, designed to explain why some leaders are good problem
solvers and others are not. Problem solving is the keystone in the skills
approach. In the model (Figure 3.2), problem-solving skills, as competencies,
lead to effective problem solving as a leadership outcome. The criteria
for good problem solving are determined by the originality and the quality
of expressed solutions to problems. Good problem solving involves creating
solutions that are logical, effective, and unique, and that go beyond given
information (Zaccaro et al., 2000).
Performance. In the model, performance outcomes reflect how well the
leader has done her or his job. To measure performance, standard external
criteria are used. If the leader has done well and been successful, the leader’s

evaluations will be positive. Leaders who are effective receive good annual
performance reviews, get merit raises, and are recognized by superiors and
followers as competent leaders. In the end, performance is the degree to
which a leader has successfully performed the assigned duties.
Taken together, effective problem solving and performance are the two ways
to assess leadership effectiveness using the skills model. Furthermore, good
problem solving and good performance go hand in hand. A full depiction of
the comprehensive skills model appears in Figure 3.4. It contains two other
components, not depicted in Figure 3.2, that contribute to overall leadership
performance: career experiences and environmental influences.
Career Experiences
As you can see in Figure 3.4, career experiences have an impact on the characteristics
and competencies of leaders. The skills model suggests that the
experiences acquired in the course of leaders’ careers influence their knowledge
and skills to solve complex problems. Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al.
(2000, p. 24) pointed out that leaders can be helped through challenging job
assignments, mentoring, appropriate training, and hands-on experience in
solving new and unusual problems. In addition, the authors think that career
experiences can positively affect the individual characteristics of leaders. For
example, certain on-the-job assignments could enhance a leader’s motivation
or intellectual ability.
In the first section of this chapter, we discussed Katz’s (1955) work, which
notes that conceptual skills are essential for upper-level administrators.
This is consistent with Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al.’s (2000) skills
model, which contends that leaders develop competencies over time.
Career experience helps leaders to improve their skills and knowledge over
time. Leaders learn and develop higher levels of conceptual capacity if the
kinds of problems they confront are progressively more complex and more
long term as they ascend the organizational hierarchy (Mumford, Zaccaro,
Connelly, et al., 2000). Similarly, upper-level leaders, as opposed to firstline
supervisors, develop new competencies because they are required to
address problems that are more novel, that are more poorly defined, and
that demand more human interaction. As these people move through their
careers, higher levels of problem-solving and social judgment skills become
increasingly important (Mumford & Connelly, 1991).
So the skills and knowledge of leaders are shaped by their career experiences
as they address increasingly complex problems in the organization. This
notion of developing leadership skills is unique and quite different from
other leadership perspectives. If we say, “Leaders are shaped by their experiences,”
then it means leaders are not born to be leaders (Mumford, Zaccaro,
Harding, et al., 2000). Leaders can develop their abilities through experience,
according to the skills model.
Environmental Influences
The final component of the skills model is environmental influences,
which is illustrated at the bottom of Figure 3.4. Environmental influences
represent factors that lie outside the leader’s competencies, characteristics,
and experiences. These environmental influences can be
internal and external.
Internal environmental influences affecting leadership performance can
include such factors as technology, facilities, expertise of subordinates, and
communication. For example, an aging factory or one lacking in high-speed
technology could have a major impact on the nature of problem-solving
activities. Another example might be the skill levels of followers: If a leader’s
followers are highly competent, they will definitely improve the group’s
problem solving and performance. Similarly, if a task is particularly complex
or a group’s communication poor, the leader’s performance will be affected.

External environmental influences, including economic, political, and
social issues, as well as natural disasters, can provide unique challenges to
leaders. In March 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated
large parts of Japan, crippling that nation’s automobile manufacturing
industry. Toyota Motor Corp. alone had more than 650 of its suppliers
and component manufacturers wiped out, halting worldwide production of
Toyota vehicles and devastating the company’s sales. At the same time, this
disaster was a boon to American carmakers, which increased shipments and
began outselling Toyota, which had dominated the market. Leaders of these
automobile companies, both Japanese and American, had to respond to
unique challenges posed by external forces completely beyond their control.
The skills model does not provide an inventory of specific environmental
influences. Instead, it acknowledges the existence of these factors and recognizes
that they are indeed influences that can affect a leader’s performance.
In other words, environmental influences are a part of the skills model but
not usually under the control of the leader.

Summary of the Skills Model
In summary, the skills model frames leadership by describing five components
of leader performance. At the heart of the model are three competencies:
problem-solving skills, social judgment skills, and knowledge. These three
competencies are the central determinants of effective problem solving and
performance, although individual attributes, career experiences, and environmental
influences all have impacts on leader competencies. Through job
experience and training, leaders can become better problem solvers and
more effective leaders.

HOW DOES THE SKILLS APPROACH WORK? _________
The skills approach is primarily descriptive: It describes leadership from a
skills perspective. Rather than providing prescriptions for success in leadership,
the skills approach provides a structure for understanding the nature
of effective leadership. In the previous sections, we discussed the skills
perspective based on the work of Katz (1955) and Mumford, Zaccaro,
Harding, et al. (2000). What does each of these bodies of work suggest
about the structure and functions of leadership?
The three-skill approach of Katz suggests that the importance of certain
leadership skills varies depending on where leaders are in a management
hierarchy. For leaders operating at lower levels of management, technical and
human skills are most important. When leaders move into middle management,
it becomes important that they have all three skills: technical, human,
and conceptual. At the upper management levels, it is paramount for leaders
to exhibit conceptual and human skills.
This approach was reinforced in a 2007 study that examined the skills needed
by executives at different levels of management. The researchers used a fourskill
model, similar to Katz’s approach, to assess cognitive skills, interpersonal
skills, business skills, and strategic skills of 1,000 managers at the junior,
middle, and senior levels of an organization. The results showed that interpersonal
and cognitive skills were required more than business and strategic
skills for those on the lower levels of management. As one climbed the career
ladder, however, the execution of higher levels of all four of these leadership
skills became necessary (Mumford, Campion, & Morgeson, 2007).
In their skills model, Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al. (2000) provided a
more complex picture of how skills relate to the manifestation of effective
leadership. Their skills model contends that leadership outcomes are the direct
result of a leader’s competencies in problem-solving skills, social judgment

skills, and knowledge. Each of these competencies includes a large repertoire
of abilities, and each can be learned and developed. In addition, the model
illustrates how individual attributes such as general cognitive ability, crystallized
cognitive ability, motivation, and personality influence the leader’s competencies.
And finally, the model describes how career experiences and environmental
influences play a direct or indirect role in leadership performance.
The skills approach works by providing a map for how to reach effective
leadership in an organization: Leaders need to have problem-solving skills,
social judgment skills, and knowledge. Workers can improve their capabilities
in these areas through training and experience. Although each leader’s
personal attributes affect his or her skills, it is the leader’s skills themselves
that are most important in addressing organizational problems.

STRENGTHS ______________________________________
In several ways, the skills approach contributes positively to our understanding
about leadership. First, it is a leader-centered model that stresses the
importance of developing particular leadership skills. It is the first approach
to conceptualize and create a structure of the process of leadership around
skills. Whereas the early research on skills highlighted the importance of skills
and the value of skills across different management levels, the later work
placed learned skills at the center of effective leadership performance at all
management levels.
Second, the skills approach is intuitively appealing. To describe leadership in
terms of skills makes leadership available to everyone. Unlike personality traits,
skills are competencies that people can learn or develop. It is like playing a
sport such as tennis or golf. Even without natural ability in these sports, people
can improve their games with practice and instruction. The same is true with
leadership. When leadership is framed as a set of skills, it becomes a process
that people can study and practice to become better at performing their jobs.
Third, the skills approach provides an expansive view of leadership that
incorporates a wide variety of components, including problem-solving skills,
social judgment skills, knowledge, individual attributes, career experiences,
and environmental influences. Each of these components can further be
subdivided into several subcomponents. The result is a picture of leadership
that encompasses a multitude of factors. Because it includes so many variables,
the skills approach can capture many of the intricacies and complexities
of leadership not found in other models.
Last, the skills approach provides a structure that is very consistent with the
curricula of most leadership education programs. Leadership education programs
throughout the country have traditionally taught classes in creative
problem solving, conflict resolution, listening, and teamwork, to name a few.
The content of these classes closely mirrors many of the components in the
skills model. Clearly, the skills approach provides a structure that helps to
frame the curricula of leadership education and development programs.

CRITICISMS _______________________________________
Like all other approaches to leadership, the skills approach also has certain
weaknesses. First, the breadth of the skills approach seems to extend beyond
the boundaries of leadership. For example, by including motivation, critical
thinking, personality, and conflict resolution, the skills approach addresses
more than just leadership. Another example of the model’s breadth is its inclusion
of two types of intelligence (i.e., general cognitive ability and crystallized cognitive ability). Although both areas are
studied widely in the field of cognitive
psychology, they are seldom addressed in leadership research. By including
so many components, the skills model of Mumford and others becomes more

general and less precise in explaining leadership performance.
Second, related to the first criticism, the skills model is weak in predictive
value. It does not explain specifically how variations in social judgment skills
and problem-solving skills affect performance. The model suggests that
these components are related, but it does not describe with any precision just
how that works. In short, the model can be faulted because it does not
explain how skills lead to effective leadership performance.
In addition, the skills approach can be criticized for claiming not to be a trait
model when, in fact, a major component in the model includes individual
attributes, which are trait-like. Although Mumford and colleagues describe
cognitive abilities, motivation, and personality variables as factors contributing
to competencies, these are also factors that are typically considered to be
trait variables. The point is that the individual attributes component of the
skills model is trait driven, and that shifts the model away from being strictly
a skills approach to leadership.
The final criticism of the skills approach is that it may not be suitably or
appropriately applied to other contexts of leadership. The skills model was
constructed by using a large sample of military personnel and observing their
performance in the armed services. This raises an obvious question: Can the
results be generalized to other populations or organizational settings?
Although some research suggests that these Army findings can be generalized
to other groups (Mumford, Zaccaro, Connelly, et al., 2000), more
research is needed to address this criticism.

APPLICATION _____________________________________
Despite its appeal to theorists and academics, the skills approach has not
been widely used in applied leadership settings. For example, there are no
training packages designed specifically to teach people leadership skills
from this approach. Although many programs have been designed to teach
leadership skills from a general self-help orientation, few of these programs
are based on the conceptual frameworks set forth in this chapter.
Despite the lack of formal training programs, the skills approach offers valuable
information about leadership. The approach provides a way to delineate
the skills of the leader, and leaders at all levels in an organization can use it.
In addition, this approach helps us to identify our strengths and weaknesses
in regard to these technical, human, and conceptual skills. By taking a skills inventory such as the one provided at
the end of this chapter, people can gain
further insight into their own leadership competencies. Their scores allow
them to learn about areas in which they may want to seek further training
to enhance their overall contributions to their organization.
From a wider perspective, the skills approach may be used in the future as a
template for the design of extensive leadership development programs. This
approach provides the evidence for teaching leaders the important aspects of
listening, creative problem solving, conflict resolution skills, and much more.

SUMMARY _______________________________________
The skills approach is a leader-centered perspective that emphasizes the
competencies of leaders. It is best represented in the early work of Katz
(1955) on the three-skill approach and the more recent work of Mumford
and his colleagues (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al., 2000), who initiated
the development of a comprehensive skills model of leadership.
In the three-skill approach, effective leadership depends on three basic personal
skills: technical, human, and conceptual. Although all three skills are
important for leaders, the importance of each skill varies between management
levels. At lower management levels, technical and human skills are

most important. For middle managers, the three different skills are equally
important. At upper management levels, conceptual and human skills are
most important, and technical skills become less important. Leaders are
more effective when their skills match their management level.
In the 1990s, the skills model was developed to explain the capabilities
(knowledge and skills) that make effective leadership possible. Far more complex
than Katz’s paradigm, this model delineated five components of effective
leader performance: competencies, individual attributes, leadership outcomes,
career experiences, and environmental influences. The leader competencies at
the heart of the model are problem-solving skills, social judgment skills, and
knowledge. These competencies are directly affected by the leader’s individual
attributes, which include the leader’s general cognitive ability, crystallized
cognitive ability, motivation, and personality. The leader’s competencies are
also affected by his or her career experiences and the environment. The model
postulates that effective problem solving and performance can be explained
by the leader’s basic competencies and that these competencies are in turn
affected by the leader’s attributes, experience, and environment.
There are several strengths in conceptualizing leadership from a skills perspective.
First, it is a leader-centered model that stresses the importance of
the leader’s abilities, and it places learned skills at the center of effective
leadership performance. Second, the skills approach describes leadership in
such a way that it makes it available to everyone. Skills are competencies that
we all can learn to develop and improve. Third, the skills approach provides
a sophisticated map that explains how effective leadership performance can
be achieved. Based on the model, researchers can develop complex plans for
studying the leadership process. Last, this approach provides a structure for
leadership education and development programs that include creative problem
solving, conflict resolution, listening, and teamwork.
In addition to the positive features, there are some negative aspects to the
skills approach. First, the breadth of the model seems to extend beyond the boundaries of leadership, including, for
example, conflict management, critical
thinking, motivation theory, and personality theory. Second, the skills
model is weak in predictive value. It does not explain how a person’s competencies
lead to effective leadership performance.
Third, the skills model claims not to be a trait approach; nevertheless,
individual traits such as cognitive abilities, motivation, and personality play
a large role in the model. Finally, the skills model is weak in general application
because it was constructed using data only from military personnel.
Until the model has been tested with other populations, such as small and
large organizations and businesses, its basic tenets must still be questioned.
sharpen your skills with saGe edge at edge.sagepub.com/northouse8e
REFERENCES ______________________________________
Bass, B. M. (2008). Bass and Stogdill’s handbook of leadership: A survey of theory and
research (4th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.
Connelly, M. S., Gilbert, J. A., Zaccaro, S. J., Threlfall, K. V., Marks, M. A., &
Mumford, M. D. (2000). Exploring the relationship of leadership skills and
knowledge to leader performance. The Leadership Quarterly, 11(1), 65–86.
Gasiorek, J., & Ebesu Hubbard, A. (2017). Perspectives on perspective-taking in
communication research. Review of Communication, 17(2), 87–105.
Katz, R. L. (1955). Skills of an effective administrator. Harvard Business Review,
33(1), 33–42.
Kerns, C. D. (2015). Motivations to lead: A core leadership dimension. Journal of
Organizational Psychology, 15(1), 9–23.
Mumford, M. D., & Connelly, M. S. (1991). Leaders as creators: Leader performance
and problem solving in ill-defined domains. The Leadership Quarterly, 2, 289–315.
Mumford, M. D., Hester, K. S., Robledo, I. C., Peterson, D. R., Day, E. A., Hougen,
D. F., & Barrett, J. D. (2012). Mental models and creative problem-solving: The

relationship of objective and subjective model attributes. Creativity Research
Journal, 24(4), 311–330.
Mumford, M. D., Todd, E. M., Higgs, C., & McIntosh, T. (2017). Cognitive skills
and leadership performance: The nine critical skills. The Leadership Quarterly,
28(1), 24–39.
Mumford, M. D., Zaccaro, S. J., Connelly, M. S., & Marks, M. A. (2000). Leadership
skills: Conclusions and future directions. The Leadership Quarterly, 11(1), 155–170.
Mumford, M. D., Zaccaro, S. J., Harding, F. D., Jacobs, T. O., & Fleishman, E. A.
(2000). Leadership skills for a changing world: Solving complex social problems.
The Leadership Quarterly, 11(1), 11–35.

CHAPTER 5

Situational Approach
DESCRIPTION _____________________________________
One of the more widely recognized approaches to leadership is the situational
approach, which was developed by Hersey and Blanchard (1969a) based on
Reddin’s (1967) 3-D management style theory. The situational approach
has been refined and revised several times since its inception (see Blanchard,
1985; Blanchard, Zigarmi, & Nelson, 1993; Blanchard, Zigarmi, &
Zigarmi, 2013; Hersey & Blanchard, 1977, 1988), and it has been used
extensively in organizational leadership training and development.
As the name of the approach implies, the situational approach focuses on leadership
in situations. The premise of the theory is that different situations demand
different kinds of leadership. From this perspective, to be an effective leader
requires that a person adapt his or her style to the demands of different situations.
The situational approach is illustrated in the model developed by Blanchard
and his colleagues (Blanchard et al., 1993; Blanchard et al., 2013), called the
Situational Leadership® II (SLII®) model (Figure 5.1). The model is an
extension and refinement of the original model developed by Hersey and
Blanchard (1969a). This chapter focuses on the SLII® model.
The situational approach stresses that leadership is composed of both a
directive and a supportive dimension, and that each has to be applied appropriately
in a given situation. To determine what is needed in a particular
situation, a leader must evaluate her or his followers and assess how competent
and committed they are to perform a given goal. Based on the assumption
that followers’ skills and motivation vary over time, situational leadership
suggests that leaders should change the degree to which they are directive or
supportive to meet the changing needs of followers.
In brief, the essence of the situational approach demands that leaders match
their style to the competence and commitment of the followers Effective leaders are those who can recognize what
followers need and then
adapt their own style to meet those needs.
The dynamics of this approach are clearly illustrated in the SLII® model,
which comprises two major dimensions: leadership style and development level
of followers.
Leadership Style
Leadership style consists of the behavior pattern of a person who attempts
to influence others. It includes both directive behaviors and supportive
behaviors. Directive behaviors help group members accomplish goals by giving
directions, establishing goals and methods of evaluation, setting timelines,
defining roles, and showing how the goals are to be achieved. Directive
behaviors clarify, often with one-way communication, what is to be done,
how it is to be done, and who is responsible for doing it. Supportive behaviors
help group members feel comfortable about themselves, their coworkers,

and the situation. Supportive behaviors involve two-way communication
and responses that show social and emotional support to others. Examples
of supportive behaviors include asking for input, solving problems, praising,
sharing information about oneself, and listening. Supportive behaviors are
mostly job related. Leadership styles can be classified further into four distinct
categories of directive and supportive behaviors (Figure 5.1). The first
style (S1) is a high directive–low supportive style, which is also called a directing
style. In this approach, the leader focuses communication on goal
achievement, and spends a smaller amount of time using supportive behaviors.
Using this style, a leader gives instructions about what and how goals are to
be achieved by the followers and then supervises them carefully.
The second style (S2) is called a coaching approach and is a high directive–
high supportive style. In this approach, the leader focuses communication on
both achieving goals and meeting followers’ socioemotional needs. The
coaching style requires that the leader involve himself or herself with followers
by giving encouragement and soliciting follower input. However, coaching
is an extension of S1 in that it still requires that the leader make the final
decision on the what and how of goal accomplishment.
The third style (S3) is a supporting approach that requires that the leader
take a high supportive–low directive style. In this approach, the leader does
not focus exclusively on goals but uses supportive behaviors that bring out
followers’ skills around the goal to be accomplished. The supportive style
includes listening, praising, asking for input, and giving feedback. A leader
using this style gives followers control of day-to-day decisions but remains
available to facilitate problem solving. An S3 leader is quick to give recognition
and social support to followers. Last, the fourth style (S4) is called the low supportive–low directive style, or
a delegating approach. In this approach, the leader offers less goal input and
social support, facilitating followers’ confidence and motivation in reference
to the goal. The delegative leader lessens involvement in planning, control of
details, and goal clarification. After the group agrees on what it is to do, this
style lets followers take responsibility for getting the job done the way they
see fit. A leader using S4 gives control to followers and refrains from intervening
with unnecessary social support.
The SLII® model (Figure 5.1) illustrates how directive and supportive leadership
behaviors combine for each of the four different leadership styles. As
shown by the arrows on the bottom and left side of the model, directive behaviors are high in the S1 and S2
quadrants and low in S3 and S4, whereas
supportive behaviors are high in S2 and S3 and low in S1 and S4.
Development Level
A second major part of the SLII® model concerns the development level of
followers. Development level is the degree to which followers have the competence
and commitment necessary to accomplish a given goal or activity
(Blanchard et al., 2013). Stated another way, it indicates whether a person
has mastered the skills to achieve a specific goal and whether a person has
developed a positive attitude regarding the goal (Blanchard et al., 1993). In
earlier versions of the model, this was referred to as the readiness or maturity
of the follower (Bass, 2008; Hersey & Blanchard, 1969a, 1969b, 1977, 1996).
Followers are at a high development level if they are interested and confident
in their work and know how to achieve the goal. Followers are at a developing
level if they have little skill for the goal at hand but believe that they have
the motivation or confidence to get the job done.
The levels of development are illustrated in the lower portion of the diagram
in Figure 5.1. The levels describe various combinations of commitment and
competence for followers on a given goal. They are intended to be goal specific
and are not intended to be used for the purpose of labeling followers.
On a particular goal, followers can be classified into four categories: D1, D2,

D3, and D4, from developing to developed. Specifically, D1 followers are
low in competence and high in commitment. They are new to a goal and do
not know exactly how to do it, but they are excited about the challenge of it.
D2 followers are described as having some competence but low
commitment. They have started to learn a job, but they also have lost some
of their initial motivation about the job. D3 represents followers who have
moderate to high competence but may have variable commitment. They
have essentially developed the skills for the job, but they are uncertain as to
whether they can accomplish the goal by themselves. Finally, D4 followers
are the highest in development, having both a high degree of competence
and a high degree of commitment to getting the job done. They have the
skills to do the job and the motivation to get it done.

HOW DOES THE SITUATIONAL
APPROACH WORK? _______________________________
The situational approach is constructed around the idea that followers
move forward and backward along the developmental continuum, which represents the relative competence and
commitment of followers. For leaders
to be effective, it is essential that they determine where followers are on
the developmental continuum and adapt their leadership styles to directly
match their followers’ development levels.
In a given situation, the first task for a leader is to determine the nature of the
situation. Questions such as the following must be addressed: What goal are
followers being asked to achieve? How complex is the goal? Are the followers
sufficiently skilled to accomplish the goal? Do they have the desire to complete
the job once they start it? Answers to these questions will help leaders
to identify correctly the specific development level at which their followers
are functioning. For example, new followers who are very excited but lack
understanding of job requirements would be identified as D1-level followers.
Conversely, seasoned followers with proven abilities and great devotion to an
organization would be identified as functioning at the D4 level.
Having identified the correct development level, the second task for the
leader is to adapt his or her style to the prescribed leadership style represented
in the SLII® model. There is a one-to-one relationship between the
development level of followers (D1, D2, etc.) and the leader’s style (S1, S2,
etc.). For example, if followers are at the first level of development, D1, the
leader needs to adopt a high directive–low supportive leadership style
(S1, or directing). If followers are more advanced and at the second development
level, D2, the leader needs to adopt a high directive–high supportive
leadership style (S2, or coaching). For each level of development, there is a
specific style of leadership that the leader should adopt.
An example of this would be Rene Martinez, who owns a house painting
business. Rene specializes in restoration of old homes and over 30 years has
acquired extensive knowledge of the specialized abilities required including
understanding old construction, painting materials and techniques, plaster
repair, carpentry, and window glazing. Rene has three employees: Ashley, who
has worked for him for seven years and whom he trained from the beginning
of her career; Levi, who worked for a commercial painter for four years before
being hired by Rene two years ago; and Anton, who is just starting out.
Because of Ashley’s years of experience and training, Rene would classify her
as primarily D3. She is very competent, but still seeks Rene’s insight on some
tasks. She is completely comfortable prepping surfaces for painting and
directing the others, but has some reluctance to taking on jobs that involve
carpentry. Depending on the work he assigns Ashley, Rene moves between
S3 (supporting) and S4 (delegating) leadership behaviors.

When it comes to painting, Levi is a developed follower needing little direction
or support from Rene. But Levi has to be trained in many other aspects
of home restoration, making him a D1 or D2 in those skills. Levi is a quick learner, and Rene finds he only needs to
be shown or told how to do something
once before he is able to complete it easily. In most situations, Rene
uses an S2 (coaching) leadership behavior with Levi. If the goal is more
complicated and requires detailed training, Rene moves back into the
S1 (directing) behavior with Levi.
Anton is completely new to this field, developing his skills but at the D1 level.
What he lacks in experience he more than makes up for in energy. He is always
willing to jump in and do whatever he’s asked to do. He is not as careful as he
needs to be, however, often neglecting the proper prepping techniques and
cleanup about which Rene is a stickler. Rene finds that not only he, but also
Ashley, uses an S1 (directing) behavior with Anton. Because Levi is also fairly
new, he finds it difficult to be directive with Anton, but likes to give him help
when he seems unsure of himself, falling into the S3 (supporting) behavior.
This example illustrates how followers can move back and forth along the
development continuum, requiring leaders to be flexible in their leadership
behavior. Followers may move from one development level to another rather
quickly over a short period (e.g., a day or a week), or more slowly on goals
that proceed over much longer periods of time (e.g., a month). Leaders cannot
use the same style in all contexts; rather, they need to adapt their style to
followers and their unique situations. Unlike the trait approach, which
emphasizes that leaders have a fixed style, the situational approach demands
that leaders demonstrate a high degree of flexibility.
With the growing cross-cultural and technical influences on our society, it
appears that the need for leaders to be flexible in their leadership style is
increasingly important. Recent studies have examined situational leadership in
different cultural and workplace contexts. In a study of situational leadership
and air traffic control employees, Arvidsson, Johansson, Ek, and Akselsson
(2007) assessed leaders in different contexts and found that the leader’s style
should change in different group and individual situations. In addition, they
found that the most frequently used leadership style was high supportive–low
directive and the most seldom-used style was high directive–low supportive.
In another study, Larsson and Vinberg (2010), using a case study approach,
found that successful leaders use a relation orientation as a base but include
along with it a structure orientation and a change orientation.

STRENGTHS ______________________________________
The situational approach to leadership has several strengths, particularly for
practitioners. The first strength is that it has a history of usefulness in the
marketplace. Situational Leadership® is well known and frequently used for
training leaders within organizations. Hersey and Blanchard (1993).
reported that it has been a factor in training programs of more than 400 of
the Fortune 500 companies. It is perceived by corporations as offering a
useful model for training people to become effective leaders.
A second strength of the approach is its practicality. Situational Leadership®
is easy to understand, intuitively sensible, and easily applied in a variety of
settings. Whereas some leadership approaches provide complex and sophisticated
ways to assess your own leadership behavior (e.g., the decision-making
approach in Vroom & Yetton, 1973), Situational Leadership® provides a
straightforward approach that is easily used. Because it is described at an
abstract level that is easily grasped, the ideas behind the approach are quickly
acquired. In addition, the principles suggested by this approach are easy to
apply across a variety of settings, including work, school, and family.
Closely akin to the strength of practicality is a third strength: It has prescriptive

value. Whereas many theories of leadership are descriptive in nature, the
situational approach is prescriptive. It tells you what you should and should
not do in various contexts. For example, if your followers are very low in
competence, Situational Leadership® prescribes a directing style for you as
the leader. On the other hand, if your followers appear to be competent but
lack confidence, the situational approach suggests that you lead with a supporting
style. These prescriptions provide leaders with a valuable set of
guidelines that can facilitate and enhance leadership. For example, in a recent
study, Meirovich and Gu (2015) reported that the closer a leader’s style is to
the prescribed style, the better the performance and satisfaction of the
employees.
A fourth strength of Situational Leadership® is that it emphasizes leader
flexibility (Graeff, 1983; Yukl, 1989). The approach stresses that leaders need
to find out about their followers’ needs and then adapt their leadership style
accordingly. Leaders cannot lead using a single style: They must be willing
to change their style to meet the requirements of the situation. This approach
recognizes that followers act differently when doing different goals, and that
they may act differently during different stages of the same goal. Effective
leaders are those who can change their own style based on the goal requirements
and the followers’ needs, even in the middle of a project. For example,
Zigarmi and Roberts (2017) reported that when followers perceive a fit
between the leader’s behavior and their own needs, it is positively related to
job affect, trust, and favorable work intentions.
Finally, Situational Leadership® reminds us to treat each follower differently
based on the goal at hand and to seek opportunities to help followers
learn new skills and become more confident in their work (Fernandez &
Vecchio, 1997; Yukl, 1998). Overall, this approach underscores that followers
have unique needs and deserve our help in trying to become better at
doing their work.

CRITICISMS _______________________________________
Despite its history of use in leadership training and development,
Situational Leadership® has several limitations. The following criticisms
point out several weaknesses in this approach and help to provide a more
balanced picture of the general utility of this approach in studying and
practicing leadership.
The first criticism of Situational Leadership® is that only a few research studies
have been conducted to justify the assumptions and propositions set forth by
the approach. Although many doctoral dissertations address dimensions of
Situational Leadership®, most of these research studies have not been published.
The lack of a strong body of research on this approach raises questions
about the theoretical basis of the approach (Fernandez & Vecchio, 1997; Graeff,
1997; Meirovich & Gu, 2015; Vecchio & Boatwright, 2002; Vecchio, Bullis, &
Brazil, 2006). Can we be sure it is a valid approach? Is it certain that this
approach does indeed improve performance? Does this approach compare
favorably with other leadership approaches in its impact on followers? It is difficult
to give firm answers to these questions when the testing of this approach
has not resulted in a significant amount of published research findings.
A second criticism that can be directed at the situational approach concerns
the ambiguous conceptualization in the model of followers’ development
levels. The authors of the model do not make clear how commitment is
combined with competence to form four distinct levels of development
(Graeff, 1997; Yukl, 1989). In one of the earliest versions of the model,
Hersey and Blanchard (1969b) defined the four levels of commitment
(maturity) as unwilling and unable (Level 1), willing and unable (Level 2),
unwilling and able (Level 3), and willing and able (Level 4). In a more recent

version, represented by the SLII® model, development level is described as
high commitment and low competence in D1, low commitment and some
competence in D2, variable commitment and high competence in D3, and
high commitment and high competence in D4.
The authors of Situational Leadership® do not explain the theoretical basis
for these changes in the composition of each of the development levels.
Furthermore, they do not explain how competence and commitment are
weighted across different development levels. As pointed out by Blanchard
et al. (1993), there is a need for further research to establish how competence
and commitment are conceptualized for each development level. Closely
related to the general criticism of ambiguity about followers’ development
levels is a concern with how commitment itself is conceptualized in the model.
For example, Graeff (1997) suggested the conceptualization is very unclear.
Blanchard et al. (2013) stated that followers’ commitment is composed of confidence
and motivation, but it is not clear how confidence and motivation combine to define commitment. According to the
SLII® model, commitment
starts out high in D1, moves down in D2, becomes variable in D3, and rises
again in D4. Intuitively, it appears more logical to describe follower commitment
as existing on a continuum moving from low to moderate to high.
The argument provided by Blanchard et al. (1993) for how commitment
varies in the SLII® model is that followers usually start out motivated and
eager to learn, and then they may become discouraged and disillusioned.
Next they may begin to lack confidence or motivation, or both, and last they
become highly confident and motivated. But why is this so? Why do followers
who learn a task become less committed? Why is there a decrease in commitment
at Development Levels 2 and 3?
Some clarification of the ambiguity surrounding development levels is suggested
by Thompson and Glasø (2015), who studied a sample of 80 supervisors
and 357 followers in financial organizations and found that the
predictions of the earlier model of situational leadership are more likely to
hold true when the leaders’ ratings and followers’ ratings of competence and
commitment are congruent. They stressed the importance of finding mutual
agreement between leaders and followers on these ratings.
Without more research findings to substantiate the way follower commitment
is conceptualized, this dimension of Situational Leadership® remains unclear.
A fourth criticism of the situational approach has to do with how the model
matches leader style with follower development levels—the prescriptions of
the model. To determine the validity of the prescriptions suggested by the
Hersey and Blanchard approach, Vecchio (1987) conducted a study of more
than 300 high school teachers and their principals. He found that newly hired
teachers were more satisfied and performed better under principals who had
highly structured leadership styles, but that the performance of more experienced
and mature teachers was unrelated to the style their principals exhibited.
Vecchio and his colleagues have replicated this study twice: first in 1997,
using university employees (Fernandez & Vecchio, 1997), and most recently
in 2006, studying more than 800 U.S. Military Academy cadets (Vecchio
et al., 2006). Both studies failed to find strong evidence to support the basic
prescriptions suggested in the situational approach.
To further test the assumptions and validity of the Situational Leadership®
model, Thompson and Vecchio (2009) analyzed the original and revised
versions of the model using data collected from 357 banking employees and
80 supervisors. They found no clear empirical support for the model in any
of its versions. At best, they found some evidence to support leaders being
more directive with newer employees, and being more supportive and less
directive as employees become more senior. Also, Meirovich and Gu (2015) found evidence that followers with
more experience indicated a more positive

response to autonomy and participation, a finding supporting the
importance of leaders being less directive with experienced employees.
A fifth criticism of Situational Leadership® is that it fails to account for how
certain demographic characteristics (e.g., education, experience, age, and
gender) influence the leader–follower prescriptions of the model. For example,
a study conducted by Vecchio and Boatwright (2002) showed that level
of education and job experience were inversely related to directive leadership
and were not related to supportive leadership. In other words, followers with
more education and more work experience desired less structure. An interesting
finding is that age was positively related to desire for structure: The
older followers desired more structure than the younger followers did. In
addition, their findings indicated that female and male followers had different
preferences for styles of leadership. Female followers expressed a stronger
preference for supportive leadership, whereas male followers had a stronger
desire for directive leadership. These findings indicate that demographic
characteristics may affect followers’ preferences for a particular leadership
style. However, these characteristics are not considered in the Situational
Leadership® approach.
Situational Leadership® can also be criticized from a practical standpoint
because it does not fully address the issue of one-to-one versus group leadership
in an organizational setting. For example, should a leader with a group
of 20 followers lead by matching her or his style to the overall development
level of the group or to the development level of individual members of the
group? Carew, Parisi-Carew, and Blanchard (1990) suggested that groups go
through development stages that are similar to individuals’, and that therefore
leaders should try to match their styles to the group’s development level.
However, if the leader matches her or his style to the mean development level
of a group, how will this affect the individuals whose development levels are
quite different from those of their colleagues? Existing research on Situational
Leadership® does not answer this question. More research is needed to
explain how leaders can adapt their styles simultaneously to the development
levels of individual group members and to the group as a whole.
A final criticism of Situational Leadership® can be directed at the leadership
questionnaires that accompany the model. Questionnaires on the situational
approach typically ask respondents to analyze various work situations and
select the best leadership style for each situation. The questionnaires are
constructed to force respondents to describe leadership style in terms of four
specific parameters (i.e., directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating)
rather than in terms of other leadership behaviors. Because the best answers
available to respondents have been predetermined, the questionnaires are
biased in favor of Situational Leadership® (Graeff, 1983; Yukl, 1989).

APPLICATION _____________________________________
As we discussed earlier in this chapter, Situational Leadership® is used in
consulting because it is an approach that is easy to conceptualize and apply.
The straightforward nature of Situational Leadership® makes it practical
for managers to use.
The principles of this approach can be applied at many different levels in an
organization. They can apply to how a CEO of a large corporation works with
a board of directors, and they can also apply to how a crew chief in an assembly
plant leads a small group of production workers. Middle managers can use
Situational Leadership® to direct staff meetings, and heads of departments
can use this approach in planning structural changes within an organization.
There is no shortage of opportunities for using Situational Leadership®.
Situational Leadership® applies during the initial stages of a project, when
idea formation is important, and during the various subsequent phases of a

project, when implementation issues are important. The fluid nature of
Situational Leadership® makes it ideal for applying to followers as they move
forward or go backward (regress) on various projects. Because Situational
Leadership® stresses adapting to followers, it is ideal for use with followers
whose commitment and competence change over the course of a project.
Given the breadth of the situational approach, it is applicable in almost any

type of organization, at any level, for nearly all types of goals. It is an encompassing
model with a wide range of applications.

SUMMARY _______________________________________
Situational Leadership® is a prescriptive approach to leadership that suggests
how leaders can become effective in many different types of organizational
settings involving a wide variety of organizational goals. This
approach provides a model that suggests to leaders how they should behave
based on the demands of a particular situation.
Situational Leadership® II classifies leadership into four styles: S1 is high
directive–low supportive, S2 is high directive–high supportive, S3 is low
directive–high supportive, and S4 is low directive–low supportive. The
model describes how each of the four leadership styles applies to followers
who work at different levels of development, from D1 (low in competence
and high in commitment), to D2 (low to some competence and low in
commitment), to D3 (moderately competent but lacking commitment), to
D4 (a great deal of competence and a high degree of commitment).
Effective leadership occurs when the leader can accurately diagnose the
development level of followers in a goal situation and then exhibit the prescribed
leadership style that matches that situation.
Leadership is measured in this approach with questionnaires that ask
respondents to assess a series of work-related situations. The questionnaires
provide information about the leader’s diagnostic ability, flexibility,
and effectiveness. They are useful in helping leaders to learn about how
they can change their leadership style to become more effective across
different situations.
There are four major strengths to the situational approach. First, it is recognized
by many as a standard for training leaders. Second, it is a practical
approach, which is easily understood and easily applied. Third, this approach
sets forth a clear set of prescriptions for how leaders should act if they want
to enhance their leadership effectiveness. Fourth, Situational Leadership®
recognizes and stresses that there is not one best style of leadership; instead,
leaders need to be flexible and adapt their style to the requirements of the
situation.
Criticisms of Situational Leadership® suggest that it also has limitations.
Unlike many other leadership theories, this approach does not have a strong
body of research findings to justify and support the theoretical underpinnings
on which it stands. As a result, there is ambiguity regarding how the
approach conceptualizes certain aspects of leadership. It is not clear in
explaining how followers move from developing levels to developed levels,
nor is it clear on how commitment changes over time for followers. Without
the basic research findings, the validity of the basic prescriptions for matching
leaders’ styles to followers’ development levels must be questioned In addition, the model does not address how
demographic characteristics
affect followers’ preferences for leadership. Finally, the model does not provide
guidelines for how leaders can use this approach in group settings as
opposed to one-to-one contexts.
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