---
title: "Situational leadership in change: direct or support?"
description: "Hersey and Blanchard's four leadership styles applied to a change programme: who needs direction, who needs support, and why the evidence is thin."
url: "https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/blog/lanh-dao-tinh-huong-khi-thay-doi"
lang: en-GB
author: "Lê Quốc Khôi"
date: 2026-11-03
updated: 2026-11-03
topics: ["Change management"]
tags: ["Change management", "Leading change", "Situational leadership", "Leadership style", "Follower readiness"]
---

# Situational leadership in a change programme: direct or support?

## Key takeaways

- Situational leadership picks one of four styles (directing, coaching, supporting, delegating) from a follower's ability and willingness for one specific task (Graeff, 1997).
- A change makes most tasks new for most people, so one person can need two styles for two tasks. The 36-person furniture workshop below is my own hypothetical.
- Oreg and Berson (2019) identify three functions of leader behaviour that recur in change research: communicating, supporting and involving (Oreg and Berson, 2019, p. 295). In one NHS study both people-oriented and task-oriented behaviours were needed, each for a different job (Oreg and Berson, 2019, p. 283).
- The evidence for the model is thin. Graeff (1997) found five published tests and very weak support; Thompson and Vecchio (2009) found the 2007 revision predicted worse than the original (Graeff, 1997; Thompson and Vecchio, 2009).
- I could not read the 1988 textbook. My description of the model comes from Graeff and from the library's framework page.

Should the owner of a 36-person furniture workshop in Binh Duong stand beside every worker for the first fortnight of a new rule, or leave people to work it out? From next month no drawing goes to the saw until a designer has signed it off on a new form. The workshop and its people are hypothetical. The owner sees four kinds of worker. A carpenter three months in wants to get it right but cannot yet read the form. A master carpenter with twenty-five years behind him cuts without drawings and takes the form as a sign of distrust. A good designer has never had the authority to hold up the master's cutting order. A foreman has never stopped a cutting order. [Situational leadership (Hersey–Blanchard)](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/framework/situational-leadership) swaps the owner's question for another: how ready is this person for this task?

## How does situational leadership choose between directing and supporting?

It looks at two things: how much the leader directs and how much the leader supports, and the right mix depends on the follower's [readiness](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/glossary#follower-readiness) for one specific task.

> **Figure:** [Situational leadership (Hersey–Blanchard)](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/framework/situational-leadership) The four situational leadership styles by level of direction and level of support (Hersey and Blanchard; redrawn from the library framework).

The model first appeared in 1969 as the "life cycle of leadership" and has been relabelled several times since. According to Graeff, Blanchard's group in 1985 changed "telling, selling, participating, delegating" to "directing, coaching, supporting, delegating", and changed "ability and willingness" to "competence and commitment" (Graeff, 1997). This post uses the later labels, as the framework page does.

## In a 36-person workshop, who needs which style in week one?

The same person needs different styles for different tasks. The table is hypothetical. The middle and right columns are mine; the framework supplies only the four boxes.

| Person and task | Readiness (hypothetical) | Style to try first |
|:--|:--|:--|
| Young carpenter, reading the sign-off form | Keen, cannot read it yet | Directing: point to each box, sit beside him for the first few sessions |
| Young carpenter, two weeks on, drawings bounced twice | Starting to flag, half-learned | Coaching: explain why each was bounced, say what was already right |
| Master carpenter, cutting and fitting | Fluent and confident | Delegating: no need to check every panel |
| Master carpenter, filling in the form | Able, but feels his standing is questioned | Supporting: ask where the form slows him down and change it with him |
| Designer, holding up the master's cutting order | Strong on drawings, unsure of her authority | Supporting: the owner states her authority in front of the whole workshop |
| Foreman, first time stopping a cutting order | Willing, never done it | Short, firm direction in week one, then delegate |

The master carpenter has two rows and two styles. Graeff notes that the authors repeatedly stress that readiness belongs to a task, not to a person or a job title (Graeff, 1997). The second row for the young carpenter follows Blanchard and colleagues' argument (1985): newcomers start with high commitment, commitment falls once they find the work harder than they thought, and that is the moment for coaching (Graeff, 1997). Critics doubt that assumption; see the FAQ.

If the master's complaint sounds like fear of losing face, [the post on Kanter's ten reasons](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/blog/muoi-ly-do-khang-cu-kanter) has matching ways to answer it.

## Does the stage of the change alter the style you need?

Some indirect evidence points that way, though not in the way a four-box grid predicts. Oreg and Berson (2019) reviewed 94 articles on leadership and change, ten of them theoretical or review pieces. They identify three functions that shape how recipients respond: communicating effectively, being supportive and attentive to concerns, and involving people (Oreg and Berson, 2019, p. 295).

Two findings from the review bear on the question. First, in a study of 89 clinical, middle and top managers in the English National Health Service, Battilana and colleagues (2010) found that both person-oriented and task-oriented behaviours were needed. Person-oriented behaviour mattered for communicating the need for change; task-oriented behaviour mattered for evaluating the implementation (Oreg and Berson, 2019, p. 283).

Second, in a longitudinal study, the power of perceived supportive leadership to reduce resistance grew stronger as the change went on (Jones and Van de Ven, 2016) (Oreg and Berson, 2019, p. 292).

Laying these over the workshop is my own move, and no study has tested it:

- Before launch: tell each group why the form exists and listen to what worries them (people-oriented).
- Week one: direct step by step on the new tasks (task-oriented).
- Weeks three to eight: keep counting bounced drawings and cutting orders missing a signature (evaluating the implementation), and keep talking to whoever is stuck.

There is a warning attached. In Higgs and Rowland's study (2011) of 33 organisations going through change, "shaping" behaviours (leader-centred, controlling, domineering) harmed implementation, while facilitating and engaging behaviours worked best (Oreg and Berson, 2019, pp. 283-284). Furst and Cable (2008) found that hard tactics such as legitimation went with more resistance and softer tactics such as consultation with less (Oreg and Berson, 2019, p. 295). These are observed associations, not proof of cause.

In my reading, directing in the first box means being clear about which task comes first and how it is done; it slides towards control when applied to people who are already fluent, like the master carpenter cutting and fitting. When staff resist a change, the way I handle it is to fix the direction from the top, train people directly and check regularly, then delegate and coach. What the model adds to that is a different order for each person.

## How well has the model been tested?

Poorly. Graeff (1997) counted five published empirical tests of the original model and concluded that together they gave very limited support. Vecchio (1987) found support in the low-maturity condition, mixed results in the two moderate conditions and none in the high one. Blank and colleagues (1990) and Goodson and colleagues (1989) found no support (Graeff, 1997).

The versions also contradict each other. For a follower with low competence but high commitment, Situational Leadership II (SLII, Blanchard's version) advises high direction and low support, while the 1988 textbook advises high direction and high support for the same description (Graeff, 1997). According to Graeff, Hersey and Blanchard themselves wrote in 1988 that this is "a model, not a theory" (p. 170 of their book). SLII also gives advice for only four of the nine competence and commitment combinations that Graeff builds from three levels on each axis, while Hersey and colleagues (1996) write that most people at work sit in the two middle levels (Graeff, 1997).

Thompson and Vecchio (2009) tested three versions on 357 bank employees and 80 supervisors at ten Norwegian financial institutions. The 2007 revision predicted performance and attitudes worse than the original. A third version, built on the interaction between autonomy and job experience, looked worth pursuing but added little explanatory power (Thompson and Vecchio, 2009).

Oreg and Berson add that very little research in their review looked at what moderates leaders' effects on change (Oreg and Berson, 2019, p. 292). In line with a contingency approach, they suggest that one leadership style may produce different change outcomes for different sets of followers (Oreg and Berson, 2019, p. 298). So the question situational leadership asks is a fair one. The answers in the four-box grid are unconfirmed.

## How should you use it in a change programme?

Use it as a set of questions about each person and each task, not as a label to stick on people. Four steps:

1. List the new tasks, not the people. In the workshop: reading the form, filling it in, signing it off, holding a cutting order, bouncing a drawing.
2. For each pairing of person and task, ask two questions: can they do it today, and do they want to and feel confident? Ask them; do not guess.
3. Pick one style for a fortnight and tell them: "For two weeks I will sit beside you. After that you do it yourself and ask when you need to."
4. After the fortnight, count one visible measure, such as drawings bounced for missing information. If it has not moved, change the style or look again at the form itself.

This suits you if you can lead each person directly and the new work breaks into small steps. It does not suit a decision that hides a real threat: if the sign-off form will be used to dock the carpenters' pay, no leadership style will fix a complaint that is correct. In that case go back to [the four theories of resistance](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/blog/bon-ly-thuyet-khang-cu-thay-doi), especially the view of resistance as a product of the system.

## Going deeper: what I read and what I did not

I read Graeff (1997) in full from a PDF hosted on another website; it carries no journal page numbers, so I give none from this article. I read Oreg and Berson (2019) in full from a PDF hosted by the authors' university, and the page numbers follow that copy. For Thompson and Vecchio (2009) I read only the abstract, so I do not know how they measured autonomy and experience or how strong the effects were.

Battilana and colleagues (2010), Higgs and Rowland (2011), Furst and Cable (2008) and Jones and Van de Ven (2016) I know only through Oreg and Berson's description. I had no readable copy of Hersey and Blanchard's 1988 textbook, so everything said about its contents comes through Graeff.

Three limits. First, Graeff's review looks at versions before 1997, and I have not searched for research newer than Thompson and Vecchio (2009). Second, the studies cited above are mostly from large organisations, not small workshops in Vietnam. Third, the furniture workshop and the mapping onto stages of change are mine.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is situational leadership the same thing as Blanchard's SLII?

Not quite. Graeff (1997) separates two branches. Blanchard and colleagues published Situational Leadership II in 1985, while the textbook editions of 1993 and 1996 say the model in the book reflects Hersey's thinking and leaves out Blanchard's changes (Graeff, 1997). The branches use different labels and, in places, give different advice for the same kind of person. When you read anything on this model, check which branch it follows.

### Is the LEAD questionnaire a reliable way to find my own style?

Graeff quotes Blanchard and colleagues (1993) admitting that LEAD's failings had been known for some time. Of the five published tests Graeff reviews, four used the LBDQ12 questionnaire and one used LBA, a 20-item research version of LEAD (Graeff, 1997). I have not read the instrument itself, so I cannot judge it. I use none here; asking each person directly about each task is the cheap alternative.

### Does every newcomer start keen and then lose heart?

That is the second-generation model's assumption, and Graeff finds it shaky: people with a high need for achievement, or who were given a realistic preview of the job, may keep their commitment when the work turns out to be hard (Graeff, 1997). So the coaching box does not arrive automatically in week three. The simple check is to ask the person rather than wait for the dip.

### Does heavy direction cost the manager less time than heavy support?

Graeff notes that it might be argued that high direction with low support uses a leader's time more efficiently than high direction with high support, a comparison he makes between SLII and the 1988 textbook (Graeff, 1997). That is an argument, not a measurement. If you lead the team directly, your hours are a real limit, so choosing who gets close coaching first is a decision about time as well as about morale.

## References

- Graeff, C.L. (1997) ‘Evolution of situational leadership theory: a critical review’, *The Leadership Quarterly*, 8(2), pp. 153–170. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1048-9843(97)90014-x
- Oreg, S. and Berson, Y. (2019) ‘Leaders' impact on organizational change: bridging theoretical and methodological chasms’, *Academy of Management Annals*, 13(1), pp. 272–307. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2016.0138
- Thompson, G. and Vecchio, R.P. (2009) ‘Situational leadership theory: a test of three versions’, *The Leadership Quarterly*, 20(5), pp. 837–848. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.06.014

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