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Patton's Picks from the PMA Library: Leadership and the One Minute Manager
October 2020"Leadership and the One Minute Manager: Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Leadership" by Ken Blanchard
If you're looking for book recommendations in the productivity and professional development genre, Patton offers a weekly summary of some of the essential and emerging titles from the PMA Library.
Ken Blanchard's classic title on leadership is a great guide to maximizing your leadership skills by tailoring your relationship to each of your employees. This is a business "fable" that illustrates the concept of "Situational Leadership" that Blanchard and his colleagues have prompted since the original One-Minute publication. Blanchard's method shows how to recognize which types of employees you work with, and identify which leadership tactic would best lead each person to success.
1. You don't treat everyone the same; your style should adapt to their developmental stage. Blanchard outlines this great guide to the main developmental stages in your employees and defines them as follows. The first step to maximizing your relationship with your colleagues is to determine which category someone is in:
D1: Low competence, High Commitment (excited rookie)
D2: Some Competence, Low Commitment (early struggles)
D3: High competence, Variable Commitment (restless)
D4: High competence, High Commitment
2. You adjust your leadership style accordingly:
S1: Directing/Telling: they need close supervision
S2: Coaching/Selling: define roles/tasks but two-way communication
S3: Supporting/Participating: facilitate but let them decide
S4: Delegating Leaders: involved, but they decide
3. You understand deeply how to most effectively train others. The five steps in the training process are defined as follows: 1) Tell them what to do, 2) Show them how, 3) Let them try, 4) Observe, 5) Phrase/Direct.
Blanchard's key message is that there is nothing so unequal for your employees as the equal treatment of everyone. Once you acknowledge that your staff has very different and very particular needs from you, you can most effectively advise and lead them to succeed.