Situational Leadership Role-Play and Debrief: An Exploration of Useful Components and Limitations

Abstract

Situational leadership is a popular management training tool, yet scholars criticize the model’s limitations and conflicted empirical support. Management educators are left with a lack of clarity on how to present situational leadership, and this article seeks to address the gap in teaching practice. The experiential role-play activity presented, intended for late-undergraduate and graduate students, provides a basic understanding of situational leadership and its application. The ensuing debrief and discussion explores critical perspectives, limitations, and empirically supported components of the model. Following this experience, students have a complex understanding of situational leadership as they consider thoughtful, cautioned future application. This article also explores recent literature that provides some empirical evidence for using components of situational leadership as well as important leadership concepts highlighted by the model. Management educators could immediately implement this activity and discussion in the classroom.