Leading at a Higher Level

Chapter 5Situational Leadership^® II: The Integrating Concept

The Founding Associates:Ken Blanchard, Margie Blanchard,Don Carew, Eunice Parisi-Carew,Fred Finch, Laurence Hawkins,Drea Zigarmi, and Pat Zigarmi

Empowerment is the key to treating people the right way and motivating them to treat your customers right. Therefore, having a strategy to shift the emphasis from leader as boss and evaluator to leader as partner and cheerleader is imperative. But what, exactly, is the right strategy or leadership style?

For a long time, people thought there were only two leadership styles—autocratic and democratic. In fact, people used to shout at each other from these two extremes, insisting that one style was better than the other. Democratic managers ...