Situational Leadership in Agile

For anyone line managing as well as performing technical leadership, the term situational leadership may have come up in an HR lecture you really don't care about! Join the club.

However, this was once explained to me in terms that really struck home to me and is something that I have learned the hard way in my teams.

Agile works because the team is empowered to succeed - to a certain degree a lot of responsibility is delegated onto the team.

Situational leadership is the theory that there is no right way to manage - but effective leaders effectively bounce between styles. The styles are:

• Telling/directing - the leader tells subordinates what to do.
• Selling/coaching - the leader sells an idea so that subordinates will do it.
• Participating/supporting - the leader will work with subordinates to get the desired outcome.
• Delegating - subordinates are essentially able to pick up the work themselves. 

At its most effective, Agile works when most of the team are at the delegation stage. The team responds well to the responsibility and will work efficiently and take ownership of their tasks. This however can cause conflicts when the leader suddenly treats subordinates at the tell or sell stage. Why does he/she no longer trust us to do this work? 

This can usually be explained as either of the following reasons:

1. The work is urgent and the leader needs to get involved closely to ensure it is done.
2. The work is new or a change in direction in the team, and the leader needs to explain to the team why we need to make the changes. 

What I have learned the hard way is that you need to explain to your team this model so they understand why you are no longer delegating this specific task. If you can explain to the team you are currently at the stage where you need to tell for some reason, explain you are in the tell stage, why, and that normal service will be resumed soon and it will switch back to delegate. I find teams respond well to this and it removes any tension or hurt feelings in the team. 

Another thing that it's vital to remember as the team are acting in the delegate stage is that ultimately you are responsible. This means that even though you trust them to do the work, you need to take responsibility for it and that to do that you need them to report back with what they are doing and why decisions are made. Explain the situational leadership model to them and they will appreciate this. Reporting back to you helps you defend their decisions if they are questioned. 

The Tannenbaum and Schmidt's leadership model is a slightly different visualization of situational leadership but it explains the delegation/responsibility issue above really well.

Note that in the top right, the line never reaches the top right. That is because no matter how much you delegate, you as the leader/scrum-master/development manager are always responsible. Again explain this to the team and it will help resolve any conflicts.