Today's most successful business leaders understand that they must manage their human capital as strategically as their financial capital. An employee’s ability to train a team effectively is a skill of its own that requires an understanding of different learning styles, group dynamics, and much more.

Effective HR leadership goes beyond managing all the tasks and responsibilities carried out by the HR function. It also requires the critical soft skills needed from any leader: courage, sound judgement, ability to influence others, political agility and effective communication.

Accredited training is not just about adding qualifications to your HR (or management) team. The real benefits lie in the value added to your whole organisation, such as improved productivity and leadership excellence. As well as being an investment for the organisation itself, and its employees, accreditation is also viewed as a prerequisite to success. As companies grow, often diversifying into sub-groups and departments in the process, first-class training becomes a vital component of an organisation’s consistency towards working standards and practices.

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; show him how to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

The success of a business, from SME’s right through to multinational companies, relies heavily upon employees’ effectiveness and consistency. Offering reliable accredited company training across an organisation instills loyalty in employees and confidence in those who come into contact with the business. Additionally, offering this training in-house reduces costs associated with travel time and being out of the office, thus improving efficiency.

Participants learn more effectively and efficiently in classes run by motivated trainers. All sorts of negatives are eliminated and all sorts of positives are realised. Simply put, people try harder and pay more attention when classes are led by competent and enthusiastic trainers. More importantly, when classes are finished those same people are more likely to continue to use what was taught well.

The benefits of embedding Situational Leadership® practice in businesses

Situational Leadership® is a proven and time-tested learning model and is designed to increase the frequency and quality of conversations about performance and development between managers and the people they work with so that competence is developed, commitment is gained, and talented individuals are retained.

Dr Paul Hersey’s task-specific, original Situational Leadership® Model is based on the relationship between leaders and followers and serves as a framework to analyse each situation based on the:

• amount of guidance and direction (task behaviour) a leader gives
• amount of socio-emotional support (relationship behaviour) a leader provides
• readiness level that followers exhibit in performing a specific task, function, or objective

Deployed in more than 70% of Fortune 500 companies, Situational Leadership® will equip leaders in your organisation with the tools necessary to skilfully navigate the demands of an increasingly diverse workforce and evolving global marketplace. Infinitely adaptable to any circumstance, the model prepares leaders to address the most pressing challenges pervasive in today’s work environment.

“Situational Leadership® helps leaders learn how to think, before it teaches them what to do”. Dr. Sam Shriver

Situational Leadership® is a model for developing individuals so they can reach their highest level of performance on a specific goal or task. It is a process that leaders and managers can use to help individuals ultimately become self-motivated and self-directed. In this model, the manager learns skills to assess an individual’s development level.

Situational leadership® is a leadership theory underlined by the belief that there is no one most effective leadership style, and that the best leaders adapt their leadership style to suit the task, people or project at hand. At the core of the theory are the four types of interchangeable leadership styles, as conceived by Hersey:

• S1: Telling – an authoritative, direct style where the leader communicates in a one-way capacity exactly what everyone’s roles are and what they need to do
• S2: Selling – similar to Telling, except the leader offers support and guidance to allow participants to buy into the process
• S3: Participating – a social style whereby the leader provides less behavioural guidance and instead focuses on shared decision-making
• S4: Delegating – the leader’s role is to participate and monitor – the main responsibilities have been passed onto others.

A manager’s natural characteristics are as diverse as the people they manage. How you deal with one of your team and how you speak to them in a specific situation may be different to the way that you would deal with another in the same situation. How they respond to you can be a direct reaction to how you have spoken or dealt with the issue. The old adage ‘it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it’ rings true in many instances, especially in a boss-subordinate relationship.

By analysing your predominant style and how it motivates or demotivates your staff may allow you to examine the interactions you have with staff members and develop more effective strategies for leadership. Situational Leadership®, which stresses flexibility and simplicity in execution, can equip leaders in your organisation with the tools necessary to skilfully navigate the demands of an increasingly diverse workforce and evolving global marketplace.

There are numerous benefits to businesses that adopt the Situational Leadership® Model, namely: 

• It is a multi-directional model that can be leverages for influencing up, down and across the organisation
• Creates a common language of performance
• Accelerates the pace and quality of employee development
• Is a repeatable process that your leaders can leverage to effectively influence the behaviour of others
• Utilises task specificity to serve as a mechanism through which leaders maximise their influence-related impact
• Addresses situations where people are developing or regressing
• Situational Leadership® considers the entire lifecycle of a typical employee – from a new recruit who needs direction and support to learn new skills, to a seasoned employee performing tasks he or she has mastered long ago
• Regardless of an employee’s age or skill level, the Situational Leadership® model provides leaders with a framework to appropriately engage and influence follower behaviour

Leadership undeniably affects organisational performance, specifically employee outcomes and productivity. Job satisfaction, productivity and organisational commitment are also affected by leadership behaviours. Leaders, apart from their actions and personal influence, should be empowered to make critical decisions and keep operations running smoothly and effectively. They also need to constantly keep themselves up to date with current affairs and situations. It is critical for leaders to be aware of and be able to identify the new emerging markets, which may present new business opportunities they could consider venturing into.

Leadership training can be a powerful way to equip leaders with the tools to better understand why their own attempts to direct employee behaviour succeed or fail. Learning to adjust your approach, depending on the task and the people involved, is a highly successful way of ensuring you are the best leader you can be in any situation.

GBS can accredit your own staff as Situational Leadership® trainers

GBS Corporate Training is the sole UK provider of Situational Leadership® training. As well as providing a number of Situational Leadership courses, we also offer an accreditation in Situational Leadership® for managers, trainers and HR professionals who are responsible for facilitating leadership training programmes within their organisations.

In order to accomplish more with fewer resources, and in real-time, organisations need strong, yet flexible leaders. They require leadership principles that are understood and practiced by every member of the organisation. Immerse your trainers and HR professionals in a diverse learning environment that focuses on providing participants with the tools and knowledge required to build better leaders within your organisation.

Our Situational Leadership® accreditation (part of our suite of leadership and management courses) can be awarded to an organisation’s internal trainer(s) who successfully complete(s) the three day Situational Leadership® Train the Trainer programme.

The accreditation is designed to equip trainers with the necessary skills and knowledge to deliver licensed Situational Leadership® within their own organisation. A licensed ‘Administration Resource Kit’ is provided for each of the accredited trainers to deliver Situational Leadership® training in-house. Its use is restricted to the host organisation only and the licence remains valid as long as the organisation has their own accredited trainers.

The first part of the accreditation process involves experiencing the Situational Leadership® programme as a participant. The aim is to ensure participants understand how the Situational Leadership® model can become a tool to help them interact with others in a way that focuses on performance, helping realise potential. Self-assessment and 360° feedback (online pre-work) of preferred leadership styles are introduced to enable specific development actions to be planned.

Participants then undergo ‘teach-back’ where they prepare and deliver an agreed section of the Situational Leadership® programme. Accurate demonstration of knowledge and understanding of the model will result in accreditation. (It should be noted that individuals’ training skills are not assessed).

In attending our Situational Leadership® accreditation, you will benefit from the following:

• Accelerate learning so trainers feel competent, confident, motivated and supported
• Learn to use the facilitator guide and other materials to enhance the learning experience for your participants
• Observe a demonstration of the Situational Leadership® content and then practice using different styles of leadership
• Diagnose development levels and choose the appropriate leadership style
• Become highly skilled at goal setting, coaching, performance evaluation, active listening, feedback, problem solving, and linking goals to action plans

Business benefits of investing in Situational Leadership® Accreditation

Making the investment to accredit your own trainers and HR staff in Situational Leadership® through GBS offers many business benefits. Trainers can go on to impart their skills effectively to others, thereby building a strong internal support system where learning is part of an employee’s everyday experience.

Good leadership training can benefit everyone in your organisation, from top levels of management to supervisors and lower levels of management. With leadership training, leaders will learn how to manage their own time effectively, set realistic expectations and motivate employees. When the management of your business is strong at the top-Executive level, the positive effects will filter down and have a positive impact on all employees.

So, don’t’ hesitate – book yourself or your trainers onto a GBS Situational Leadership® accreditation course today

Next course date: London, 2nd - 4th October 2018