> Knowledge hub > Three key leadership principles from Ken BlanchardIn May 2024, my son Scott and I gave a presentation at the annual Association for Talent Development (ATD) conference. It was about six principles of exceptional leadership. This blog article introduces three of these principles, explaining their origin and meaning.
Contrary to a common misconception, leadership is not about one person calling the shots and another person responding. This is the top-down model of leadership, whose days are numbered.
Today, leadership is a partnership based on mutual trust between two people working together to achieve common goals. Both leader and led influence each other and play a role in how things get done.
When Paul Hersey and I began writing and speaking about leadership as a partnership in the 1960s, our approaches were seen as revolutionary. The idea behind our situational approach was that the best leadership style is the one that meets the developmental needs of the person being led. Sometimes a person needs direction, sometimes support. The leader adapts their style to the situation, and leadership becomes a partnership between leader and led.
When leaders adopt this mentality, they are aware that they and those they lead are important parts of the same team. Instead of leading through control, they gain people’s trust, ask for their ideas and work with them to achieve results. This partnership approach leads to impressive results that are simply not possible when all authority is shifted up the hierarchy and leaders shoulder all the responsibility for success.
When I started studying leadership, managers were widely regarded as people whose job it was to catch their subordinates making mistakes. Managers evaluated a person’s performance, reprimanded them, demanded improvements and disappeared – until the next mistake. To me, that sounded like the opposite of a motivating environment.
Back then, people rarely saw their boss as a partner or friend. When people saw their boss coming, they hid for fear of getting into trouble. For many employees, the only time the boss showed up was to correct them for wrong behavior.
That got me thinking: what if it was the other way around? What if the boss went around, caught people doing things right, praised their progress and motivated them?
These reflections led to the second secret in my book “The Minute Manager”: One Minute Praise. When my Blanchard colleagues and I developed SLII®, we realized that praise is the key to helping people move from one level of development to the next. By observing behavior and motivating, the manager helps the leader move from Enthusiastic Beginner (D1) to Independent Achiever (D4).
This does not mean that a manager should ignore mistakes. A good manager will review the mistake with the person and show them how to get back on track – so that they can praise them again!
The best leaders know that leadership is not about power, but about relationships. They treat people with respect and show them that they are a special part of their team. They lead with love.
People get nervous when they hear the word love in the workplace. They doubt that the harsh reality of managing people and organizations can be approached with something as soft and fluffy as love. What happens when things get tough? What happens when people don’t behave well or when financial results don’t meet expectations? Many leaders think that emotional distance is more useful than love in the business world.
We disagree. We believe that only when leaders offer the grace of unconditional positive regard – in other words, love – do colleagues feel safe, valued and ready to give their best at work.
Love and respect for the people you work with leads to meaningful relationships and long-term positive results. The old business model of playing it safe by keeping people at arm’s length doesn’t inspire the kind of engagement that creates great organizations.
Margie Blanchard sums it up wonderfully: “Leadership is not about love, leadership is love. Leadership is about loving your mission, loving your team, loving your customers and loving yourself enough to get out of the way so other people can be great .”
Partnership, praise and love: Practice these three principles as you lead people every day. Not only will you see extraordinary results, but you will also experience more joy and fulfillment at work!
