Situational Leadership : How to effectively lead and motivate employees through each development stage

Abstract

This thesis was written on the subjects of Situational Leadership and Motivation. The first objective of the thesis was to give a clear theoretical overview of Hersey’s and Blanchard’s theory on Situational Leadership, Herzberg’s theory on Motivation and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The second objective was to examine the Situational Leadership theory and Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs closer in order to be able to demonstrate with the help of those two theories how to efficiently lead and motivate a company’s personnel in a way that equally benefits the company and the company’s employees. The third objective of the thesis was to apply the theory to three companies from different industries by using case studies in order to detect possible industry-specific differences in leadership styles. As case study companies, the writer selected H&M from the fashion industry, Google from the technology industry and Hilton Worldwide from the hospitality industry. The company-specific information used for the case studies was taken from the companies’ websites and from documents and reports published by the companies. This thesis is purely based on desk research, analysis of different theoretical models and analysis of content published by the case study companies. The results and conclusions of the thesis are that leadership skills can be learned, good leadership leads to happy employees which in the long run leads to a company’s success, and that applying the Situational Leadership model is beneficial for every company, but in order to be able to apply that model as well as motivational techniques correctly, leaders must get to know their subordinates and make themselves a part of their teams.