One of the driving factors of an organization is its leaders and their leadership style. I selected to use the situational model of leadership to evaluate Director Roberts’ strengths and weaknesses as the leader of Region 2. Hersey and Blanchard originally came up with the situational model of leadership, which diagnoses the readiness level of followers and adopts the appropriate style—directing, coaching, supporting, or entrusting (Daft, 2014).
I observed that Director Roberts’ first strength is his ability to adapt his leadership style to each district office’s staff and performance. He closely micromanaged the Tacoma office (where its manager and attorneys consistently veered from regional guidance and showed dangerous behaviors during trials) where he showed a clear “directing” leadership approach, whereas he exhibited a hands-off, “entrusting” approach to managers and staff in the other offices who demonstrated a lot of past successes. Tacoma’s manager had to obtain his approval for all actions, whereas the other offices often made decisions independently. As a further example, he regularly checked and traveled to the Great Plains office more than the others but did not intervene with their regular duties. He exhibited a “supporting” role for them because the manager was reliable, but their shortage of staff and recent personnel
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I saw that he traveled frequently to all offices to gauge their performance in order to apply the appropriate leadership style. The region’s largest portion of its budget was for travel and the director regularly exhausted it and routinely asked agency headquarters for more funding. I believe this strength is an important aspect for a situational leader, who must be able to understand the needs of the followers and adjust his or her management style to meet those needs (Spahr,