Leadership and the One Minute Manager: Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Leadership

Overview
Ken Blanchard’s 1985 parable blends the plainspoken simplicity of The One Minute Manager with the adaptability of Situational Leadership to show how leaders can raise performance by matching their style to the needs of their people. Rather than advocating a single best way to lead, it argues that effectiveness comes from diagnosing each person’s readiness on a specific task and flexing between directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. The result is a compact, story-driven guide to turning intent into results through clarity, feedback, and partnership.

The Story and the Framework
A manager visits the One Minute Manager to figure out why some talented people thrive while others stall. The answer unfolds through conversations that outline two leadership behavior dimensions, directive and supportive, and four corresponding styles. When people are new to a task and lack competence, leaders must be highly directive. As competence grows but confidence wobbles, leaders keep direction high and raise support to teach, motivate, and correct. With capable but cautious performers, the balance shifts to high support and lower direction to build ownership. When individuals are self-reliant and committed, minimal direction and support let them run.

Development Levels and Diagnosis
A central insight is that development level is task-specific and dynamic. Someone might be expert at one responsibility and a beginner at another. Readiness blends competence (knowledge and skill) and commitment (confidence and motivation). Early enthusiasm with low skill often dips as reality sets in; later, capability improves while commitment can vary; ultimately, both competence and confidence stabilize. Leaders begin by clarifying the task and goals, then jointly assessing where the person stands for that task. This diagnosis is the hinge: choose the wrong style and performance suffers; match it well and growth accelerates.

One Minute Practices
The book embeds the situational model in three simple habits. One-minute goals make expectations unmistakable: brief, visible agreements about what good looks like and by when. One-minute praising catches people doing things right, reinforcing progress quickly and specifically to build competence and confidence. When performance goes off course, a swift, respectful redirection realigns actions with goals, separating the person from the behavior and focusing on what to do next. Because these interactions are short, frequent, and factual, they lower anxiety and keep attention on performance rather than personality.

Partnering for Performance
A distinctive emphasis is on contracting, open, adult-to-adult conversations where leader and direct report agree on goals, diagnose development level honestly, and select the matching style. This turns leadership into a collaborative process rather than a top-down prescription. The leader’s role is to provide just enough direction and support to promote learning and ownership, then to let go as readiness rises. Over time, people should migrate toward self-direction on more tasks, freeing leaders to delegate and focus on broader priorities.

Common Pitfalls and Corrections
Two errors recur: over-supervising capable people, which stifles initiative, and under-supervising novices, which breeds confusion and mistakes. The cure is to revisit goals frequently, reassess readiness as new tasks or changes emerge, and adjust style without defensiveness. Feedback loops should be immediate and specific, anchored in the agreed goals so that praise and redirection feel fair and actionable.

Impact
By combining a memorable storyline with a pragmatic model, the book demystifies leadership flexibility and makes it teachable. Its vocabulary of direction, support, and readiness helps teams talk about what they need to succeed right now. The promise is practical: clearer goals, faster development, more accountable and engaged performers, and leaders who see their job as accelerating others’ growth rather than proving their own importance.