Situational leadership: the model explained, and where it creaks in 2026

Situational leadership is one of the world’s most widely used leadership models, and one of the most misunderstood. Here’s the model explained briefly and concretely. And an honest look at where it creaks now that you no longer see your people every day.

What is situational leadership?

Situational leadership is a leadership model that says there’s no single right leadership style. The right style depends on the employee’s “maturity” on the task in hand, meaning the combination of competence and commitment. The leader’s job is to read that maturity and adapt their style to it: from close instruction to full delegation.

The model was developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in the late 1960s and now exists in several versions, the best known being Blanchard’s further development, SLII. The details vary, but the basic idea is the same: good leadership isn’t a personality trait. It’s a repertoire.

Why the model became a classic

The model is easy to understand and easy to remember, and it shifts the focus from the leader’s personality to the leader’s behaviour. It puts into words something good leaders have always done by instinct: meeting people differently. And it gives new leaders permission to give instructions without feeling like control freaks, because close direction is a legitimate style for a particular situation, not a character trait.

The model has also been criticised: the research base is thinner than its popularity suggests, and the boundaries between the levels are more fluid in practice than on the slides. Use it as a shared language and a checklist for the conversation, not as an exact science.

The four leadership styles

The model combines two levers: how directive you are (direction, instruction, follow-up) and how supportive you are (listening, encouragement, involvement). That gives four styles:

1. Directing (S1). You set the direction, explain how, and follow up closely. High direction, low support. The right style for tasks the employee is completely new to.
2. Coaching (S2). You still give instructions, but you explain why, ask questions and encourage. High direction, high support. For the employee who’s under way but not there yet.
3. Supporting (S3). The employee can do the task; your role is to listen, back them up and remove obstacles. Low direction, high support.
4. Delegating (S4). You hand over both the decisions and the doing. Low direction, low support, but still clear ownership and follow-up on what’s been agreed.

The four development levels

The style has to match the employee’s development level on the task in hand, a combination of competence (can they?) and commitment (do they want to, and do they believe in it?):

1. D1, the enthusiastic beginner. High commitment, low competence. Needs instruction and direction (S1), not freedom.
2. D2, the disillusioned learner. Some competence, falling commitment. The task turned out harder than expected. Needs coaching and encouragement (S2). This is where most people drop off, and where most leaders miss it.
3. D3, the capable but cautious performer. High competence, wavering confidence or motivation. Needs support and trust (S3), not more instructions.
4. D4, the self-reliant achiever. High competence, high commitment. Needs delegation (S4), and is demotivated by micromanagement.

The point most people miss

Maturity isn’t a trait of the person. It’s a trait of the person on the task in hand. Your most experienced specialist is D4 in their field and D1 on the new system you’re rolling out. The new colleague may be D1 in your processes, but D4 in the discipline itself. So situational leadership doesn’t mean putting people into four boxes once and for all. It means reassessing every time the task changes.

This is also where fairness comes in: leading everyone the same way isn’t fair. It’s just easy. Fair is giving each person the leadership the task calls for. But that depends on the differences being transparent. Otherwise they look like favouritism.

Where the model creaks in 2026

The model was developed at a time when leaders and employees shared an office every day. The whole mechanism rests on one assumption: that you can observe maturity, see the uncertainty, hear the questions, pick up the energy. And that’s exactly the assumption that’s gone in hybrid work.

1. You’re judging from a sample

If you see an employee two days a week, your judgement rests on those two days. You see the finished memo, not the three detours, the deleted draft and Thursday’s panic. Output looks like competence, even when the process was chaos. And the other way round: the person who asks a lot of questions can seem less mature than the one who keeps quiet and struggles alone.

2. Proximity bias skews the judgement

People instinctively judge those they see often as more competent and more committed. The consequence in the model is systematic: the people in the office are rated D3–D4 and get freedom and the interesting assignments, while the people working away from the office get either micromanagement or invisibility. It’s the same mechanism we work with in leading at a distance: distance distorts the data unless you consciously correct for it.

3. “Freedom with responsibility” has become the default setting

The culture of hybrid work pushes everyone towards S4 from day one: self-management is the norm, and close follow-up feels like mistrust. But a D1 employee with S4 leadership isn’t getting freedom. It’s neglect with a clear conscience. We’ve written a whole article on why it hits new employees in particular: New to a hybrid team? Why “freedom with responsibility” fails from day one.

4. Commitment is hard to read through a screen

Competence at least shows in what people deliver. Commitment, the other half of maturity, shows in energy, initiative and small signals. And those signals rarely get through a video meeting with the cameras off. So the D2 dip, where enthusiasm has given way to doubt, is spotted too late: not when it happens, but when the resignation arrives.

How to use the model anyway: four steps

1. Make the judgement a conversation, not an observation. Ask directly when you hand over a task: “How confident are you about this one?” and “What do you need from me?” The answers are your maturity assessment, and they’re more accurate than your gut feeling.
2. Agree on the style explicitly. Say it out loud: “I’ll follow up closely for the first three weeks, not because I’m worried, but because the task is new to you. Then we’ll scale it back.” That way, close follow-up becomes scaffolding, not surveillance.
3. Reassess with every new task. Maturity follows the task, not the person. A new system, a new client or a new role resets the assessment, for the veterans too.
4. Calibrate in the leadership team. Test your judgements against proximity bias: do you systematically rate the people you rarely see lower? Review the team together once a quarter. It reveals patterns that individual leaders can’t see for themselves.

“The biggest risk in hybrid leadership isn’t that you lead too little. It’s that you lead everyone the same way.”

A quick example from a hybrid team

Take a team with two employees. Anna is new to the organisation but strong in her field, and she has to write her first decision paper for the executive team. Omar has been there ten years and has written papers like that many times, but now faces his first task in the new analytics tool. On paper, Omar is “the experienced one” and Anna “the new one”. In the tasks, it’s the other way round: Anna is D1 on the executive paper and needs close instruction: who reads it, what usually sinks papers like this, and what a good paper looks like in your organisation. Omar is D1 on the tool and needs the same there, even though it feels awkward to instruct a veteran.

Now add the hybrid layer: Anna is in the office three days a week and easy to keep track of. Omar works mostly from home and “is probably fine”. Without a conscious model, Anna ends up with attention where she does not need it and Omar with too little, not because anyone decided it, but because visibility steers where leadership lands. That’s exactly what an explicit maturity assessment for each task prevents.

Want to take the model further?

In Situational leadership at a distance, we go into depth on how to actually assess maturity in people you don’t see every day. And you can read how the model works together with our own framework for hybrid leadership in Situational leadership meets the 5 pillars.

Want to practise it with your leadership team? In our hybrid leadership programme, we work on leading differently, and leading fairly, as part of the module on relationships and wellbeing at a distance. If you’re new to the whole field, start with the guide What is hybrid leadership?

Frequently asked questions

What is situational leadership?

Situational leadership is a leadership model developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard. It says the right leadership style depends on the employee’s competence and commitment on the task in hand, and that the leader should switch between four styles: directing, coaching, supporting and delegating.

What are the four leadership styles in situational leadership?

S1 directing (high direction, low support), S2 coaching (high direction, high support), S3 supporting (low direction, high support) and S4 delegating (low direction, low support). The style is matched to the employee’s development level on the task, from D1 to D4.

Is situational leadership outdated?

The basic idea, that leadership has to be adapted to the individual and the task, still holds. What’s under pressure is the assumption that the leader can observe maturity day to day. In hybrid work, the assessment has to be made as a conversation instead of an observation.

Does situational leadership work in a hybrid workplace?

Yes, but it needs adjusting: make the maturity assessment explicit in one-to-ones, agree the leadership style openly with the employee, reassess with new tasks, and watch out for proximity bias when you assess people you rarely see.