My last column provided the first part of a two-part piece about the need for leaders to look for opportunities to change their leadership styles.

This is nothing that should be done “willy-nilly” as me sainted grandmother used to say. Rather, leaders should remain keenly aware of not only their business environments, but also changes in the employment landscape.

I bring this subject up because by the end of this decade, the vast majority of employees will be entirely different than those in the past.

Situational ethics isn’t a bad thing. Situational ethics is all about making moral decisions based on the entirety of a situation. Instead of judging according to absolute moral standards, one must throw away all other reason and hold to the law of love in all things.

In other words, situational ethics is about making those decisions that best meet the needs of all based on the highest form of love and charity.

The realization forced me to throw out the window my belief situational ethics were a form of prostituting convictions. I’ve since come to appreciate situational ethics as a means of forcing me off my high horse and acknowledging I don’t have all the answers all the time.

That frees me to think of another term to round out the discussion: situational leadership.

Introduced by Paul Hersey and  Kenneth Blanchard in the 1960s, the situational leadership model is one of the most commonly used leadership styles. According to the model, leaders should use different leadership styles according to the situations they encounter.

From the Dictionary of Business Terms: Situational management is a method whereby the current state of the organization determines what operational procedures will be implemented to achieve desired outcomes. Situational management emphasizes an adaptive style.

Situational leadership is best represented through the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory, which promotes the situational leadership model. The theory focuses on the situation a team is in and the maturity of subordinates to arrive at what is closest to the right leadership style for a given situation.

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple, is often described as methodical and no nonsense. Unlike his maverick predecessor, Cook appears to delegate more effortlessly. While Cook’s leadership has sustained profitable iPhone and iPad product lines, his leadership has yet to produce the next groundbreaking product.

Merissa Mayer at Yahoo and Steve Ballmer at  Microsoft were branded with such words as autocratic and dictatorial at some stages in their leadership tenures.

The core question stands. How easy is it for leaders to change their leadership styles?

Leading people and situations isn’t a one-size-fits-all game. Leadership styles evolve, and different situations demand different styles.

Based on the situations they must address, leaders are expected to vary the degrees of two aspects of management — task orientation and people orientation. If a follower is of low maturity, the model suggests having a high task orientation and high relationship orientation. This model is widely used to teach the nuances of leadership.

It makes one basic assumption: A leader can learn to adapt to a new style or switch leadership styles quickly. While it might be natural for some, for the majority it’s not so effortless to change leadership styles from moment to moment. Leaders have to act like someone else when not dealing with their natural styles.

Leadership styles can and must change. But leaders must be taught. And they must be willing to change.