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Situational Approach To Leadership

The document summarizes Peter G. Northouse's situational approach to leadership. It outlines five strengths of the approach, including that it is intuitive, easily applied, prescriptive, and focuses on subordinates' needs. However, it also notes weaknesses such as a lack of research supporting the approach's assumptions and that it fails to account for how demographics influence leader-subordinate relationships. It concludes that questionnaires used to collect data for the approach contain biased answers.

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178 views4 pages

Situational Approach To Leadership

The document summarizes Peter G. Northouse's situational approach to leadership. It outlines five strengths of the approach, including that it is intuitive, easily applied, prescriptive, and focuses on subordinates' needs. However, it also notes weaknesses such as a lack of research supporting the approach's assumptions and that it fails to account for how demographics influence leader-subordinate relationships. It concludes that questionnaires used to collect data for the approach contain biased answers.

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Running head: SITUATIONAL APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP

Situational Approach to Leadership


Rogelio Nava Jr.
Concordia University Texas

SITUATIONAL APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP

Situational Approach to Leadership


Author Peter G. Northouse in his text titled Leadership Theory and Practice, explains
the situational approach to leadership in a very personable way. The humanistic nature of the
situational approach to leadership lends itself to being intuitively sensible, easily applied as well
as easy to understand. This strength listed by Northouse describes the approach as straight
forward, easy to apply and easily applicable to various contexts and situations. A second strength
of this approach is that it has stood the test of time and remains an approach to leadership that
many people engage in regularly. This approach to leadership is so established that it is well
known enough that successful Fortune 500 companies regularly use the approach in the training
of effective leaders. Northouse continues to assert the third strength as it being prescriptive in
nature by providing a framework and guidelines for what to do in various situations- this can
then enhance leadership. The last two strengths listed by the author are both subordinate
focused. The fourth states that the leader must identify the subordinates needs and adjust in
order to remain flexible. The last strength is related to the previous as it states the leader must
treat each subordinate differently based upon the task at hand and seek opportunities to help him
or her learn new skills and become more confident in their work.
Although this approach has been widely accepted, especially by big business, it remains
largely unsupported by research that has yet to prove the assumptions and propositions set forth
by the situational approach. This approach is also flawed in that it is described as ambiguous in
terms of its conceptualization of subordinates developmental levels. This second weakness
mirrors the first in that it asserts further research must be conducted in order to establish how
competence and commitment are conceptualized for each of the subordinates developmental
levels. Northouse goes on to state that another criticism of the approach is that it fails to

SITUATIONAL APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP

account for how certain demographic characteristics influence the leader-subordinate


prescriptions of the model, (p. 108). This then puts the emphasis on education and experience
desired thereby creating a less structured environment. One final criticism offered by the author
is that the leadership questionnaires used for data in association with the model contain
predetermined answers, which creates an inherently biased stance.

SITUATIONAL APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP


Works Cited
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

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