Introduction
In this episode of the One Minute Manager, an entrepreneur bemoans the fact
that she lacks devoted hardworking talent in her organization. As a result, she
complains that she has to do most of the work herself. She seeks advice from
the One Minute Manager who suggests she should work "smarter-not harder."
In the process the entrepreneur learns from the One Minute Manager how to use
"Different Strokes for Different Folks" and become a Situational Leader.
The acceptance of Situational Leadership as a practical, easy-to-understand-andapply
approach to managing and motivating people has been widespread
throughout the world over the last decade and a half.
Paul Hersey and I first described Situational Leadership as the "life-cycle theory
of leadership" and then wrote about it extensively in our Prentice-Hall text
Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources, now in its
fourth edition. Since then, Situational Leadership has been taught to managers
at all levels of most of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as to managers in
fast-growing entrepreneurial organizations.
Thus it is only fitting that the third book in THE ONE MINUTE MANAGER LIBRARY
be devoted to my thinking about Situational Leadership and be written with Pat
and Drea Zigarmi. The Zigarmis have been teaching, rethinking, and
implementing Situational Leadership concepts with me for over ten years.
Those of you who know Situational Leadership will see that we've made a
number of changes in the model - changes that reflect conversations with our
colleagues at Blanchard Training and Development Inc., our own experience, and
the ideas managers have shared with us. This book marks for us a new
generation of Situational Leadership thinking, which is why we now call it
Situational Leadership II.