We’ve all seen them: leaders who’ve ended up in a leadership position based on pure technical skill alone, who have very little people or leadership skills. The good thing is, great leaders aren’t born, they’re made, and you can make a great leader out of less people focused middle managers yet.

The best leaders are situational leaders — they adapt their leadership style to the people they’re leading. Introduce your middle managers to the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory.

It covers four styles of leadership:

  1. Telling – high task and low relationship for staff less willing or able
  2. Selling – high task and high relationship for staff who are willing but not fully able
  3. Participating – low task and high relationship for staff who don’t need much direction
  4. Delegating – control shifts to the staff and leader steps out

Not everyone can master all four of these styles immediately, but if your technical leaders can master one at a time, then you’re one step closer to developing them into a people leader you can trust.

How do you prepare your technical leaders for people leadership? There are two biggest hurdles Introverts run into when they developing their leadership skills, read here. If you would like a free assessment of skills against the ENGAGE model, click here.

For this week’s chapter, click this link to download the free chapter on feedback.