When you design software, one of the first questions you ask yourself is, what is the user trying to do right now? And how can I, as the designer, help them do that the most efficiently and effectively as possible? Now, what's fascinating is that great leaders ask themselves the same question, but about people. What is my staff member trying to do right now and how can I help them do it most efficiently and most effectively? This episode is going to show you how to lead the same way that great designers design, whether that's software or some other product. And that's by choosing the right leadership approach for the context, the task and the specific person and where they are in their development, rather than defaulting to a one size fits all approach or style.

So this episode isn't about leadership styles at all. It's about leadership choices. And it's about how user experience thinking, or UX thinking as I like to call it, gives us a powerful lens for making those choices intentionally. You see, one of the programs that I teach is situational leadership, and I'll talk more about that in a minute. But as I was doing some prep work for an upcoming program on situational leadership, it just struck me over and over and over how much situational leadership truly is like designing a great product. Now, I want to just share a couple of UX principles before we get into making the parallel to the leadership process. So good user experience design is not about personal preference. The designer doesn't say, I'm going to choose a dropdown menu because I like dropdown menus. No, there are actual principles undergirding the decisions they make. It's not about consistency for its own sake, or about using the coolest new feature. It's really about taking into consideration what is the context, what is the person trying to do, what constraints do they have on them, and what constraints do I need to build into the software so that I keep the person on task moving towards their ultimate goal.

I also want to think about what's up, what's going on in their mind, what else is happening. So we need to think about their cognitive load. We also need to think about their experience level. Have they done this a whole bunch of times, or is this the first time that they're trying to complete this task? And then we also need to think about risk, and that is what's the risk of doing it wrong? What's the risk of making a mistake, both to the software and of course to the task that the person is trying to accomplish. So we want to create software that just doesn't break or doesn't break easily. So that users can make mistakes, but we also want to make it easy for them to recover from those mistakes. And likewise, in organizational life, there's risk as well. Now, when you take all that into account, you can actually help the user perform the task efficiently and effectively, ideally having fun along the way.

Or at least if not fun, I mean, imagine something like renewing your tabs at the dmv. Not necessarily a fun task, but in a case like that, then we want to do it with the least amount of friction as possible while they're completing the task. Now, designers don't ask like, how do I control this? They ask, what will help this user succeed in this task. So let's hang there for a moment and think about again, going back to that designer mindset, that UX thinking and thinking about what will help this user succeed in this task. Now, when we layer that onto leadership, it starts to shed some really important insights on how to lead well. So leadership, especially excellent leadership, uses that same logic. We just don't often talk about it that way.

So think about this. Leaders are constantly designing experiences that could be an onboarding experience when they are hiring a new employee. And those first few weeks, it could be the interview experience before the employee is even hired. Now, yes, your human resources team handles a lot of those onboarding experiences and even the interview experiences. But if you are the leader who has just hired a new employee, you have a lot of influence over how that goes. Not just the regulatory piece and like the, you know, here's your benefits package and so on that your HR team is going to handle. But just what does it feel like to be part of this team? What does it feel like to work with you and feel for you? So there's a lot of decision making experiences that happen along the way. There's feedback, there's autonomy or lack thereof. Okay, all of these things really play into the experience that a leader is creating for their staff member.

Now, most leaders have a lot of tools in their toolbox, but no one teaches you how to select the right tool for the moment. Or I shouldn't say no one teaches that. I teach that a lot. But that is not something that gets taught often. And this is really where situational leadership comes in. Not as an assessment, a personality framework, if you will. But really, I want you to think about it more as a design framework. Now, situational leadership, you may have heard of this before, you may even have some training in it situational leadership has been around literally for decades.

So Hersey and Blanchard, the two who, the researchers who came up with this situational leadership model, did so by intentionally focusing on the follower or, you know, thinking of it from a UX thinking standpoint, the user, but the follower, and they thought about how competent are they, how confident are they when either or both are low, like low levels of competence, like they just don't know how to do this thing, or low levels of confidence. Maybe they technically know how to do it, but they haven't done it enough times to really feel strong and confident in it. Well, in those cases, they need more guidance. But I'm getting deep into the weeds a little bit into Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership theory. But let's just back up a bit. So again, as I mentioned before, leaders have multiple tools available to them. And the leader's effectiveness in choosing which task to use with which follower at any given time depends upon the task that the employee is needing to complete, the person themselves.

And the stakes, again, going back to that sense of risk, how risky is this that they get it right the first time? Do we have a little bit of affordance to make some mistakes here? Or is time pressure or, or the visibility of this project or this task really high and we don't have a lot of room for mistakes? And then the specific moment in time, like, how is this all situated in terms of this person's learning, where they're at, in terms of their career growth and their completion of similar tasks and so on in the past? So there's an important reframing here. Situational leadership isn't asking leaders to change who they are. It's asking them to be responsive to, as the name suggests, the situation. So in a very real sense, they are designing an experience for their employee to live into.

Okay, so you're not like mapping out. Exactly. And precisely. This employee has done this like six times. They've put in six reps. And so on the seventh rep, I back off a little bit. No, it's not that. It's not that precise. It's a little bit of, you might think it is as much science as it is art or as much art as it is science. And I think you'll get a sense of that as we go through the situational leadership model here in just a second.

So we're not mapping things out directly now, before I get into the four different types of leading that come through the situational leadership model, I want to just kind of take you through a really high level, a couple of things about situational leaders. So situational leadership is very much focused on the task at hand and really thinking about how much guidance and direction does a leader need to provide, you know, in order for that employee to successfully complete that task. Now let's just back that up a minute and, and make the parallel with user experience design. So again, we're thinking about the task, and let's just say it is renewing your tabs at the DMV on the DMV's website. So there's a series of screens you need to go through, a certain amount of information you need to put in. This is a relatively infrequent task, I mean, unless you're managing a fleet of automobiles and you're doing this many times a year, most of us just do this once, or perhaps if we own a couple of vehicles, once or twice a year. Um, so it is a somewhat infrequent task. And so we're going to have to give the user more control and, and more, I should say, more guidance over how they complete the task compared to something that maybe you do on a very regular basis.

Maybe you make documents in Microsoft Word and you just fly through, you know, how to create a document, how to save it as a PDF, how to, you know, format the document, and so on. And so if you were giving instructions to somebody on how to do that, it would probably be a much more minimal set of instructions because this would be a task that, that somebody completes very regularly, as opposed to a task that somebody completes on an irregular basis. Or if we want to take it back to an online task, as opposed to, you know, a Microsoft Word document would be in an app. But let's just say we're going more apples to apples here. Let's say doing a transaction in your online banking versus doing a transaction on the Department of Motor Vehicles website. Again, most of us are logging into our online banking system, if not daily, at least once a week or a couple times a month, and doing things like moving money from one account to another or paying bills or paying someone else directly from an account. And so those kinds of things that we do very regularly don't need as much guidance and direction as a task that we complete on an irregular basis, like a once or twice a year task. Okay, so task emphasis is common in both how a leader leads as well as how we design software.

All right, the next piece is social emotional emphasis. So this is how much of a relationship is being cultivated here. So again, obviously, when it is a leader, follower situation, a leader and their staff member, there is obviously a social emotional relationship that's being created. Now in the world of software, there is also a social emotional relationship. We don't want things to be too cold and sterile. We want the software to seem polite and friendly. And so we're building various things in through the language that we're using in the instructions and in the prompts, as well as in the colors and the design. The whole aesthetic needs to have a social, emotional relationship building component to it.

So again, we've got that parallel track going as well. Well, and then here is where the real crux of the matter comes in. Situational leadership. And that is the readiness level. And this is the level of, and we can think of it a couple of different ways, the level of readiness that the individual demonstrates in performing that specific task or function or objective. So how ready are they to do this all by themselves? How ready are they to do this even with our help? So we want to think about that from, you know, from a leadership standpoint. Again, this is a part and parcel of situational leadership. But then if we look on a parallel track at the design, you know, user experience thinking and user experience design, we're also designing for how ready is this user to complete this task.

Because we're going to make different choices. If we've got somebody who is a novice or this is an infrequent task like the dmv, we're going to assume a very low level of readiness compared to if this is a transaction in online banking and somebody has been a super user of their bank account online, we're going to have a totally different level of readiness that doesn't need nearly as much instruction and guidance. So as we think about follower readiness, okay, now here we're going to go way, we're going to go right back into situational leadership. So situational leadership is really asking how competent is the employee and how confident are they at doing this task? So, and again, not how competent is the employee just in general, but this is very much situational to this situation. So let's say it is, you know, troubleshooting a customer experience pro a customer service problem. In fact, I just had a customer service problem that I took care of earlier today where my clinic keeps calling me and telling me I have an outstanding balance and then tells me to go to the website and pay the balance. And I go to the website and it says I have zero balance. So I had to call and have a human interaction with somebody in the finance office.

And so as you think about how ready was that person to take that call? I mean, this wasn't their first day on the job. They were able to, at least I don't think it was, they were able to very easily within just a few short, I think, keystrokes, look at my account, find out there was no past due balance and then reset it so that I wasn't going to get those notifications anymore. Now, I would presume if I had reached a less competent customer service representative at my healthcare system, it would have taken more time. They might have needed to put me on hold and then ask someone how to troubleshoot my specific issue. But the person that I got seemed very competent at handling a transaction like this. They also seemed very confident. So that's the other piece. And again, as we're thinking from a situational leadership standpoint, we're looking at how competent is the person at this task as well as what is their confidence level on this task.

And so it ranges from having low competence and low confidence all the way up to having high competence and high confidence. And that's what creates the four different types of situations that situational leadership, the situational leadership model addresses. Now obviously there are more than four types of situations, but broadly speaking, you know, as many models do, this makes a nice two by two matrix. And so we can plot competence and competence across these two. Yeah, confidence and competence across the X and Y axis and make a nice little two by two grid here. So in fact, while we're talking about the nice little two by two grid, why don't I just walk you through it since if you're not familiar with situational leadership, this will give you a really good grounding in it. Okay, so let's just imagine you've got an employee who has low levels of competence and low levels of confidence.

They're not good at doing this thing and they're not confident that they're good at doing this thing. And so that person is what we would call in situational leadership in the S1 block. And they're going to need a lot more instruction, a lot more direction and support as they complete that task. And so that in the Hersey Blanc Blanchard situational leadership model is called directing. So if you are the leader in that situation, you are going to have to give a lot more direction to the person that you are leading as compared with if they have higher levels of competence or confidence or both, but we're going to start with directing. Now in directing, you could imagine that this is somebody who is relatively new to the role, maybe new to the role and new to the organization. So they need a lot more guidance in order to be able to get their tasks completed. And you know, we have a lot of different metaphors for this.

We call it learning the ropes or, you know, getting on board. All of those kinds of metaphors for the person who is newly in that role. Now once a person gets some confidence and some competence and usually these two things go hand in hand, as you start to learn something better, you become more confident in doing it. So now we've got somebody who is more able to receive coaching. We don't have to give them the direct, specific step by step instructions like we did in that first square, the S1. Now we've moved up to somebody who has just needs supportive behavior. They don't need as much direct instruction. So now we're going to move into the coaching style of leadership or the situational coaching, if you will.

It’s not necessarily a style per se, it's a tool in your toolbox. Think about it that way. Now you've got this employee who's done this task a number of times. They just need a little bit of coaching. And maybe each time they do this task, it's a little bit different or they do it a little bit more effectively, a little bit faster. So you can just give them some fine tuning. Now once we get somebody who is a little bit further along in this process and they still need a bit of, let's say that supportive behavior, but they don't need nearly as much of the step by step. So we've gone now from coaching to supporting.

So in a coaching situation, we're still going to be there and be, I don't know, kind of by their side, but not necessarily as directing as the first, the first directing approach. So in this approach, we are not necessarily directing at all. We're basically supporting. And by that I mean we're just there to answer questions as they come up. We're not interjecting. We're in a more of a got your back kind of leadership style, if you will. And then the fourth part is when you've got somebody who is, has a high level of competence, like they've done the task a bunch of times, they're very well equipped to do it and they're confident, they know they can do it pretty well. They don't need nearly the help of the other three blocks.

In this particular case, we're just going to delegate something to them and we're just going to trust and believe that they can handle it. Okay, so that is the Hersey Blanchard situational leadership model. Now, as we think about that model, I want you to just remember that no two employees and no two situations are ever going to be exactly the same. And so you have to always be adjusting and fine tuning and switching up your approach in order to meet the employee on the task, where they're at in their own journey, in their own development. And so the main shared principle across both design as well, and that's user experience design, like think software, product design and so forth, and situational leadership. The main shared principle here is that we're optimizing for the task at hand. And this is the conceptual idea that I really want to drive home in user experience. The same user might need a high level of guidance in one workflow and nearly total freedom in another.

Again, we can go back to that idea, idea of in the dmv. In fact, I renewed license tabs just a couple of weeks ago and it was very much step by step. I think there were four or five screens worth of information. In the first screen it was just my name, address and, you know, some basic information about the vehicle. And then you go to the next screen and on that next screen you get the various choices and there's not a lot of choice. Um, but I think there were. They would have happily accepted a couple of extra dollars for me to donate to something or if I wanted to change the style of license plate I had or whatever. There were options for that.

But all I was doing was just doing the minimum to get the sticker that said the coming year so that my car would maintain current license tabs. And then I got to the third screen where it asked for payment information, and then the fourth screen where I had to double check everything and then the fifth screen for where there was an actual confirmation. So it was very high guidance through that workflow. And now I can also just think back to this morning when I moved some money from one account to another account in my online banking. There was like no guidance. Um, there's just. Because it's a quick task for me. My bank knows that I do this with some regularity and it's got it over on the right hand side under my quick tasks.

And so I go to that quick task and I just say from this account to this account and I select the date and I type in how much and I hit enter and boom, it's all done right there in one, not even a full screen, in one tiny little widget off to the side. Okay, so here's where you can see that the user in my case with online banking requires very little assistance. Now I have this in an online widget. I'm pretty sure that if it was the first time I was ever doing a transfer, there's another menu somewhere else that's going to walk me through that same T with a lot more guidance inside of my bank's user interface.

Okay, now let's just look at the parallel here. In leadership, the same employee might need clear direction in one moment and step by step instructions and then in the next moment, absolute space and autonomy to do it themselves again based on whatever the task is and the number of times they've done that task and so forth. So just like with software where we don't design software for users in general, we design software for specific users in a specific context who have a specific amount of contextual knowledge about that. And leadership works the same way.

You're going to choose your leadership approach not for a follower or an employee in general, but instead for a specific employee, doing a specific task at a specific point in time of their development and in the specific organizational or customer service context, whatever that context is. So this avoids reductionism to make people feel like you're speaking down to them, and it also avoids over instructing at a time when somebody doesn't need it. Now let's look at what context actually means in both of these parallels. So I want to break context in down a little bit so we can understand this better. So in user experience, design designers are going to consider a wide variety of things in to the context. So what's the user's familiarity with the task? What's the frequency with which they do that task? What are the consequences of making a mistake? How much time pressure might they be? Might there be? And they're going to take all those things into account and more. That's just like the tip of the iceberg. But then they're going to think about this and they're going to think about, well, for the experienced user, we need to build in some shortcuts because the experienced user does not need to go through all five screens, like me and the dmv, there can be a little widget with the shortcuts.

Now, for the novice user, we need to build in a lot of contextual help. And that might be breaking the task down into five discrete steps which show up on five discrete screens, just like the dmv. But again, going back to transferring money from one account to the next or another way that often gets handled in user experience. Design on user experience interface is again that contextual help. So if you ever see the little tiny circle with the little lowercase I in it and you hover over that and a little box comes up that gives you that extra context, that's what I mean by contextual help. So we can build that contextual help into the user interface in a way that doesn't slow down the experienced user, but is there for the novice user when they need it. Okay, so that's the user experience path.

Now let's look at that parallel track of leadership. And when we're thinking about leadership context, context is going to include experience with this task. Not just how long has the employee been in this role or with this organization, it's how many times have they done this task? What is their experience level? We're also going to draw on confidence. What is their confidence level in doing this task? Do I need to be right there beside them in case they have a question, or can I be at more of a distance, just giving that supportive approach as opposed to a coaching or a directing approach? What is the employee's desire for autonomy in completing this task? They feel ready to take it on in a more independent fashion. And then we also do have to take into account the relative risk. What's the impact of getting it wrong? And if the impact of getting it wrong is high, then we need to have a little bit more of a hands on approach. Now when you find yourself in situations like this as a leader, I want you to ask yourself, how much does the employee know how high the risk is? Because if the employee doesn't know that this is a relatively high risk situation, they may be wondering why you're hovering, why you're so involved, whether that's in a coaching, a supportive or in a directing kind of way. So I want you to be explicit. If there's a relatively high level of risk going on in this particular context or this particular situation, and you don't know that the employee necessarily knows how much organizational risk there is.

Now, across both of these two parallel tracks, I want you to recall and really remember that experience is task specific. It's not title specific and it's not tenure specific. It doesn't matter how long they've been there. It really comes down to the task and how competent and how confident they are at completing that task. All right, now I want to offer a practical takeaway, and that is, as you lead, I want you to ask yourself, and again, this is taking a page straight out of user experience design. What is the task this person is trying to accomplish? What is hard for them about this task right now? And what would success look like with the least amount of friction? Okay, so ask yourself those three questions. What's the person trying to accomplish? What's hard about it for them right now? And what would success look like with the least amount of friction? Once you've run through those questions, then you're going to choose from the situational leadership tools accordingly. So then you are going to choose whether you're taking that directing approach, the coaching approach, the supporting approach, or the delegating approach.

And again, even though situational leadership, this model carves it out into those four specific quadrants or those four specific ways of leading. Just know that those lines are blurry. Those lines are absolutely blurry depending on the employee's level. And maybe as you watch them, maybe as you watch them and you were thinking you needed to take a coaching approach, but then they're just whizzing right through it. Oh, and then you realize, okay, I can back off here a little bit. I don't need to take as much of a coaching approach until you see them mess something up and maybe it is high risk. And then you step in and then you give them the specific step, 1, 2, 3, for this little part of the task that maybe they were about to mess up on. And at other times, again, this is where the situational context is so important.

Because maybe in another case, it's okay for them to make a mistake and the risk isn't nearly as high. And in fact, they're going to learn better from making the mistake. So you let them make the mistake and learn from their mistake. Again, we're taking into the into account the situation, and this is where your flexibility as a leader comes in. Your flexibility demonstrates your responsiveness. Now, I just want to end with a quick note about how situational leadership does not treat everyone exactly the same. And sometimes leaders feel like I need to give the exact same approach to everybody. But user experience figured this out decades ago, and I think leadership is still catching up.

I want you to think back again to that idea of the novice user who hasn't done this task, maybe hasn't transferred money from one account to another many times or ever before compared to the expert user who does this very frequently. So good design adapts and good leaders adapt too. Designers don't fall in love with exact solutions. They fall in love with helping their users succeed. And I want you to be that kind of a leader as well. I want you to be the leader who does not fall in love with a specific way of leading in every single instance, but rather you fall in love with being adaptable and responsive to the specific situation that your employee is in as they complete a task. Again, considering that larger context. All right, so I will leave you with this question.

Where might your leadership be optimized? Not by doing more, but by choosing differently in the way you lead? All right my friends, the show notes as well as a little bit more information on situational leadership can be found @janelanderson.com/249 for episode 249 and I will catch you right here next week on the Working Conversations podcast. Be well my friends.