Matt Barnes Week 3 – Theories in Action

After several weeks at Behavior Design Media, I believe that Hershey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership model fits very closely to the leadership model here.

I believe two different interactions with Amy, the president of BDM, and the head of the development team illustrate her as a situational leader and represent the situational model that BDM follows. First, in my interactions with Amy, Amy has taken on more of a coaching leadership style. When starting new projects, Amy has made sure to either provide examples, learning material, or rough guidelines to guide what I will be doing. Following Hershey and Blanchard’s model, this fits coaching leadership where I have the motivation to do the work, but not necessarily the experience or knowledge to do it sufficiently. As a result, Amy is more involved when working with me.

However, Amy has a more hands off style with other team members. For example, when working with Steven, who is a social science research scholar at Stanford, Amy takes a more collaborative, delegating style of leadership. This follows because Steven is a highly motivated individual who is extremely knowledgeable in his area. As a result, when Amy and Steven work together it is more collaborative because there is not the same skill/knowledge gap that is between me and Amy.

Additionally, I think the structure of the company and covid have made situational leadership the most advantageous style for BDM. I’ve explained before that the development team for Sunny follows a more horizontal structure rather than a standard hierarchical nature of leadership. This is because many of the members are pulled in as consultants or contractors for the various parts of Sunny’s development. As a result, there are many different people with different skills, knowledge bases, and expertise. In addition to the diversity in talent, the team is spread around the country and world. This culminates in the need for flexible leadership for collaboration to be effective on the project. Overall, I think Amy is an example of an effective situational leader because of how she is able to pull together the team to work effectively despite the challenges faced through covid.