As part of my Master’s Degree I wrote a thesis on some research I did. You can download it if you want. It’s about Situational Leadership, which is an interesting old-school model for management and one connected to many similar models that have shared origins in time and concept. I wrote up a basic explanation of Situational Leadership over at this page, if you’re interested. I’d like to write up what I learned in an essay format in some way, and this is the beginning of that effort.

These two-factor theories of management from which Situational Leadership emerged have lost some luster in recent decades as models such as Transformational Leadership have come into favor, but I find them to still be useful. I’m also interested in learning and thinking a little bit more about how the various models relate to one another. There was a nice relatively modern study about the current relevance of the two-factor theories, but I haven’t been able to relocate it yet since I finished my dissertation.

I’ve done a training at work in the past where I try to expand the concept of management/leadership slowly from a singularity of authority into a binary of democratic or authoritative, and then into a spectrum of the two, and then into two spectrums which form a grid. It’s not a true history of how these models emerged, but it is a convenient way I’ve come to understand the 2-factor models and approachable for new managers. I’m trying to distill this idea into a slide-show to post to LinkedIn at the moment (early 2024), but am finding it requires too many words to make a compelling slide show so far. Might just have to be a video.