There is no single best leadership style! The SL Theory is the most sophisticated of the conditional fit theory systems.
SL theory was proposed by P. Hershey and K. Blanchard in 1977, and is an acronym for Situational Leadership.
The following table illustrates SL theory.
SL theory narrows human behavior, which is extremely complex, down to two variables, “skill” and “motivation,” and explains the subject’s situation in terms of the pattern of highs and lows (D1 to D4 below). Since skills can be quantified, they can be considered a sharable criterion.
D1→D4 represents the process of growth of the subject, the subordinate, with maturity increasing toward the left. The orange curve in the table represents the change in preferred leadership style according to the maturity level of the subordinate.
For a subordinate with high motivation but low skills (D1), S1 means that the subordinate’s performance will improve if the leadership style is “Directive – Directive (more) + Support (less)”.
Starting from S1, the model moves to the four quadrants of S2, “Coach Type – More Instructions + More Support,” S3, “Supportive Type – Less Instructions + More Support,” and S4, “Delegating Type – Less Instructions + Less Support”.
Blanchard describes the leadership style appropriate for the S2 quadrant as “coach-type,” but in coaching, it seems more appropriate to think of it as “teaching-type”.
One of the three principles of coaching is “individualized response,” and SL theory is a leadership style that flexibly adapts to the maturity level of subordinates. Therefore, it is a leadership theory that has a high affinity with coaching.
（The above English translation is for a reference purpose only and a re-translation of the Japanese into English. Accordingly, please refer to the original text as appropriate.）
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This article was written in Japanese and converted into English using a translation tool. We hope you will forgive us for any inadequacies.
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