The Situational Leadership Model: 4 Styles With Examples

The situational leadership model says there is no single best way to lead. Instead, you adjust how much direction and how much support you give to a person based on how able and willing they are to do one specific task. A beginner needs clear instructions, a learner who is losing confidence needs coaching, a capable but hesitant person needs encouragement, and an experienced, confident person needs to be left alone to deliver.

The idea comes from Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard. This guide explains the four styles, shows how to read readiness, walks through situational leadership examples and is honest about where the model falls short.

What is the situational leadership model?

Hersey and Blanchard first presented the idea in 1969 as the “Life Cycle Theory of Leadership”, while writing their textbook Management of Organizational Behavior. It was renamed Situational Leadership in the 1970s. The core claim is simple: the right leadership style depends on the follower and the task, not on the leader’s personality.

Two kinds of behaviour make up every style.

• Task behaviour (direction): telling people what to do, how, when and where. Setting goals, explaining steps, checking work.
• Relationship behaviour (support): listening, encouraging, explaining the why, involving the person in decisions.

The model asks you to read the person’s readiness, then choose the mix of the two.

Later, the two authors developed separate versions. Hersey kept the Situational Leadership® model through his Center for Leadership Studies. Blanchard developed SLII®, introduced in 1985 in Leadership and the One Minute Manager. SLII is a trademark of The Ken Blanchard Companies. The two versions share the same logic but use different labels, which we compare below.

What are the four leadership styles?

The four styles come from combining high or low direction with high or low support.

The four situational leadership styles

Directive behaviour

High directionLow direction

S1 DirectingClear instructions and close follow-up. For people new to the task.

S2 CoachingDirection plus explanation and encouragement. For keen learners who still lack skill.

S4 DelegatingHand over the task and stay available. For able, confident, willing people.

S3 SupportingListen, ask, share decisions. For able people who lack confidence or commitment.

Low supportSupportive behaviourHigh support

S1: Directing (telling)

High direction, low support. You define the task, explain the steps and check the work closely. This is not about being harsh. It is about removing guesswork for someone who does not yet know what good looks like.

S2: Coaching (selling)

High direction, high support. You still make most decisions, but you explain why, invite questions and encourage effort. This fits a person who has started to learn the task and may feel frustrated that it is harder than expected.

S3: Supporting (participating)

Low direction, high support. The person knows how to do the task. Your job is to listen, ask questions, share decisions and build confidence. Telling them what to do here can feel like an insult.

S4: Delegating

Low direction, low support. The person is able, confident and committed. You agree on the outcome and step back, staying available if they need you. This is where our guide on how to delegate tasks effectively picks up.

How do you read a person’s readiness?

Hersey’s version calls it performance readiness: the combination of ability (knowledge, experience and skill) and willingness (confidence, commitment and motivation) for a specific task. Blanchard’s SLII calls it development level, based on competence and commitment.

Readiness levels and the matching style

	Ability or competence	Willingness or commitment	Matching style
R1 / D1	Low: new to the task	Unsure, or keen but inexperienced	S1 Directing
R2 / D2	Some, still learning	Willing or confident, though it may dip	S2 Coaching
R3 / D3	Moderate to high	Variable: insecure or unwilling	S3 Supporting
R4 / D4	High	High: confident and committed	S4 Delegating

Three rules help you diagnose readiness well.

1. Diagnose per task, not per person. Your best account manager may be R4 for client meetings and R1 for building a budget spreadsheet. Labelling a person “an R2” misses this.
2. Look at evidence, not impressions. What has the person actually delivered on this task? How did they react last time it got hard?
3. Ask them. “How confident do you feel about this, from 1 to 10? What would help?” People are often more accurate about their own readiness than managers expect, and asking turns the model into a shared conversation.

Situational leadership examples

The examples below are hypothetical, designed to show how the styles change over time and across tasks.

The second example shows why the model matters for experienced people too. Treating Tom as “fully delegated” on everything would leave him unsupported on the one task where he needs help.

What do you say in each style?

Knowing the styles is easy. Sounding natural in each one is harder. These phrases are a starting point you can adapt to your own words.

Directing. Be specific about the what, how and when, and make checking feel normal.

• “Here is exactly what a good result looks like. Let me show you one I did last month.”
• “Do the first two this way, then send them to me before they go out.”
• “We will look at your work together on Wednesday at 10.”

Coaching. Keep the direction, add the reasons and the encouragement.

• “Here is why we do it in this order. What questions do you have?”
• “This part is hard for everyone at first. You handled the second call much better than the first.”
• “Try it this way next time and tell me what happens.”

Supporting. Step back from the how and focus on confidence and thinking.

• “What options do you see? Which one would you pick?”
• “You have done this well three times now. What is making you hesitate on this one?”
• “I am happy with your plan. What do you need from me?”

Delegating. Agree the outcome and how you will stay informed, then get out of the way.

• “This is yours. Tell me in our one-on-one how it is going.”
• “If a client asks for a refund over the usual limit, call me. Anything else, you decide.”

Notice that the questions grow as you move from directing to delegating. That shift is the model in action: your share of the thinking shrinks while theirs grows.

Situational leadership in a small company

In a team of 10 or 50 people, most employees wear several hats, so readiness changes from task to task within a single day. That makes the model more useful, not less, but it also makes it easy to slip into one default style because you are busy.

Two habits help. First, for each direct report, write down their three most important tasks and the style you are currently using for each. It takes ten minutes and often reveals that you are directing someone on work they mastered months ago. Second, revisit the list every quarter, or whenever someone takes on a new responsibility. In small companies, people grow fast when they are given room, and your style needs to keep up with them.

How to apply situational leadership in 5 steps

Using the model in a real conversation

1. 1Name the taskBe specific: one goal, one area of work.
2. 2Agree the outcomeWhat success looks like and by when.
3. 3Diagnose readinessLook at evidence and ask the person.
4. 4Agree the styleSay how much direction and support you will give.
5. 5Review and shiftMove toward delegating as readiness grows.

Step 1: Name the task

Pick one goal or area of responsibility. “Handling enterprise renewals” is a task. “Doing a good job” is not.

Step 2: Agree the outcome

Both of you should be able to describe what success looks like. Clear goals make readiness easier to judge, because you can compare actual work against a standard.

Step 3: Diagnose readiness together

Share what you have seen and ask how they see it. Disagreement here is useful information: a person who rates themselves much higher than the evidence suggests needs a different conversation from one who underrates themselves.

Step 4: Agree the style out loud

“For the next month, I will check your proposals before they go out and we will review every Friday” is directing, and it is fine to say so. Being explicit prevents the person from reading close supervision as distrust.

Step 5: Review and shift

Revisit the diagnosis regularly. A weekly one-on-one meeting is a natural place to do it. When results improve, reduce direction. When confidence drops, add support. Our guide to coaching employees to improve performance offers questions for the coaching and supporting styles.

Common mistakes with situational leadership

Check yourself against these five traps

• Using one favourite style with everyone, usually the one that feels natural to you
• Labelling people instead of diagnosing readiness for each task
• Jumping from directing straight to delegating, skipping coaching and supporting
• Staying in directing long after the person has proven they can do the work
• Changing style without telling the person why, which feels inconsistent

Over-supervising capable people is costly. It slows work, signals distrust and can drain the motivation that keeps good people engaged. Our guide on how to motivate employees without money explains why autonomy matters so much for motivation.

What does the research say about situational leadership?

The model is popular with practitioners, and the Center for Leadership Studies says it has trained more than 15 million leaders. Academic support is more mixed. Studies such as Robert Vecchio’s 1987 test in the Journal of Applied Psychology, and a later across-jobs study by Fernandez and Vecchio in 1997, did not support all of the model’s prescriptions.

Common criticisms include:

• Readiness is judged by the leader, which invites bias and inconsistency.
• The model is one-to-one. It says little about group dynamics, team norms or organizational culture.
• The matches between levels and styles are not strongly proven. Real people do not always move neatly from one level to the next.

None of this makes the model useless. Its main value is practical: it gives managers a shared vocabulary, reminds them to adapt rather than use one style for everyone, and prompts a conversation about what support each person needs. Use it as a lens, combine it with good judgment and keep asking the person what helps.

The model also links naturally to other leadership skills. Use the levels of delegation to decide how much decision authority to hand over at each stage. Use the SBI feedback model to give clear, specific feedback during the directing and coaching phases. If you are building these habits as a new manager in your first 90 days, start by diagnosing readiness for the three most important tasks each person owns.

Summary

The situational leadership model, created by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, asks you to match your style to each person’s readiness for a specific task. The four styles are directing, coaching, supporting and delegating, built from different mixes of direction and support. Diagnose readiness task by task, agree the style openly, and move toward delegating as skill and confidence grow. The research is mixed, so treat the model as a practical guide for conversations, not a strict rule.