An exploratory content analysis of situational leadership

Purpose – Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership (SL) model is widely utilised, but it has limited empirical support. This paper aims to investigate the model through content analysis of the transcripts of supervision sessions.Design/methodology/approach – Eight transcripts of successful supervision interviews are subjected to in‐depth content analysis to investigate the validity of aspects of the SL model, principally that successful leadership interactions would vary systematically according to the level of supervisee experience. The supervisees consist of a novice, four training therapists, and three post‐graduate therapist practitioners. Statistical analyses are undertaken to investigate fundamental, predicted differences between the speech behaviours associated with the different developmental levels of these supervisees.Findings – The findings offer only partial support for the model. As predicted, an increased proportion of supervisor speech is observed in the supervision of increasingly les...