Situational Leadership is a concept developed for managers so that they do not waste their time and resources on people who don’t need it. The way this concept is organized is by putting sales representatives into four categories, which are abbreviated as D1-D4. Similarly, the managers style of leadership is also broken into four categories. The four sales representative categories are as follows: D1 – Enthusiastic Beginner, D2 – Disillusioned Learner, D3 – Capable but Caution Performer, D4 – Self Reliant Achiever. These four categories of sales reps line up with the four categories of leadership a manger should use to guide them. The four include S1 – High Direction/Low support, S2 – High direction/High Support, S3 – Low Direction/ High Support, and S4 – Low Direction/Low Support. These four are fairly self explanatory on how a manger should treat sales reps when they are categorized. Naturally S1 pairs with D1 and so on. This style of management ensures that managers do not get burnt out trying to show high attention and support to all their sales reps.
By Elias Reay
BoweryJE22 5 thoughts on “Situational Leadership”
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I completely agree Elias! having it to where leadership leads according to how sales representatives works is a great idea. The one thing that I think that could throw a wrench in that is if the manager prefers one method, cause that’s how the majority of the sales personnel work, or if the way the process is requires more or less interaction from the management side. It does make sense to still try and do it your way though!
Great post Elias! You made a lot of excellent points in the post and I really agree with your perspective. I think it is incredibly important to maintain the idea that so much of a business is situational. Great work!
Elias, this is a great post. We often do not talk about how best to manage different types of employees and rather we focus on a holistic management perspective. However, what you have written makes sense and I can see how implementing this strategy could save a manager a great deal of time and stress.
What a great post this is. A very interesting topic with a great explanation. What i think is that this approach could work in most cases. But some managers only prefer one type or are only good at one way. So this could cause problems in certain enviorments.
Awesome post Elias. You did a great job explaining Situational Leaderships, which is a great concept for managers!