Real Estate and Construction
Situational leadership
How to tailor your leadership style to the situation at hand
By Erik Cassano
Smart Business Indianapolis | July 2008
Page 1 of 2
Eric Ellsworth
President and CEO, YMCA of Greater Indianapolis
Eric Ellsworth believes in
being a situational leader.
Whatever the situation calls for
from a leadership standpoint —
be it a collaborator or a consensus builder or having a more
take-charge mindset — the president and CEO of the $33 million
YMCA of Greater Indianapolis
wants to react with the right
approach.
Ellsworth says that having an
adaptable leadership approach
begins with an ability to assess any given situation, and that
begins with taking time to think
and mentally prepare before
you step into a situation. That
can be difficult, especially as
business leaders find themselves with more and more
responsibilities, but it can be
accomplished with some solid
organizational skills, an appointment calendar and the services
of a good administrative assistant.
Smart Business spoke with
Ellsworth about the importance
of taking a situational approach
to leadership and how that can
be accomplished.
Take the time to assess. There are
different kinds of leaders who
have different natural styles, but
I try to be a situational leader. I
know that different situations
call for different kinds of leadership. Depending on what the
situation calls for, hopefully, I
walk in as a different leader.
Knowing what leadership
mentality you need to bring is
about assessing, taking the
time to think and be ahead on
the front end, and be able to
ask yourself some mental questions before going in and saying
what kind of leadership this situation requires.
The real key is really about
making the time to think. In
today’s business climate, it’s so
easy to be busy doing that you
don’t have the time to mentally
process leadership issues. One
of the best coaching tips I’ve
had is simply to take time to
think.
I ask my assistant if she’ll
help me to produce blocks of
time on my calendar, at least a
couple of hours at a time and at
least two to three times per
week. Appointments are
arranged around those thinking
and processing times.
It’s sometimes very difficult to
find time on the schedule with
everything else going on. The
size of the organization sometimes determines how much
you have to jump into the fray
from time to time.
When you’re in a larger organization, sometimes you have a little bit more liberty to hold your
schedule. With a smaller organization, it’s much more difficult.
