“Dreyer. New Leader, New Work: Using Situational Leadership To Navigate Business Changes” in “Dreyer. New Leader, New Work: Using Situational Leadership to Navigate Business Changes”
New Leader, New Work: Using Situational Leadership to Navigate Business Changes
Stacy Dreyer
The Leader
Jae has recently been hired in a director position at a well-established publishing company. She has a wealth of experience, having worked in the industry for 20 years for various competitors of the company, and her interviews went so well that she beat several internal candidates for the job, even though she would be working remotely from Chicago and the internal candidates all work at the New York headquarters.
The Team
Jae is tasked with leading a 10-person team, all of whom work onsite in New York. The company has a reputation as a great place to work and very low turnover, so everyone on the team has been there for 5+ years. Their previous director had a leadership style that the team didn’t always agree with but had become accustomed to. He set clear team and individual goals, assigned work according to experience, and evaluated individuals through detailed performance metrics. His style didn’t invite collaboration or innovation, but it did ensure that the work was understood, schedules were detailed, and an established process was followed.
Jae met with the team during her interview process, and they were largely impressed with her. She was smart and personable and asked a lot of questions about how the team worked; they were excited about the possibility of working with someone who might be more approachable than their previous director had been. Moreover, it was clear that Jae recognized the team’s collective expertise and was open to hearing their ideas.
Some team members have concerns about Jae working remotely since the rest of the team is onsite and the company only started hiring remote employees a few years earlier, but Jae has assured them that she had been working remotely for years and that her virtual door is always open.
The Situation
The team doesn’t know it yet, but the company is about to experience some big changes, including a push to digital publishing and interactive and multimedia content. Though the team will continue to take on the type of work they’ve traditionally completed, that work will slow down somewhat as they are charged with growing into a new area. Jae’s role will include a lot of change management over the next few years as the company transitions to ensure continued financial stability and long-term relevancy in an evolving industry. She will be charged with keeping current deliverables on track while also bringing the team up to speed on work that will be brand new to them.
Discussion Questions
Jae’s team presents high competence and high motivation when it comes to their current jobs, and low competence and varying motivation levels when it comes to the new work they’ll be tasked with doing. How might Jae apply situational leadership to manage this transition in a way that balances her team’s experience and institutional know-how with the need to push them forward?
Are there additional considerations that leaders must apply when working remotely themselves or with a team that’s largely remote? How might this dynamic affect different situational leadership styles?
License
This case study is licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.
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