Reference no: EM133922651
Contingency Leadership Theory
Contingency Leadership Theory was the original situational leadership theory and belongs to a man by the name of Fred Fiedler. Study the model in your book and take notice of the three factors:
1. Leader-member Relations: How are the leader and followers getting along?
2. Position Power: How strong is the leader's power?
3. Task Structure: Is the task stable and structured or dynamic and changing?
Depending on the situational favorableness, Fiedler teaches that you need either a task oriented leader (what he calls low LPC) or people oriented (high LPC). The LPC category comes from your score on his Least Preferred Coworker Questionnaire (LPCQ) which I, for one, find highly marginal to predict anything. Nevertheless, I think you can categorize people into either task-oriented or people-oriented. Get online assignment help-AI & plagiarism-free-now!
The theory concludes that if the situation is highly favorable or highly unfavorable you need a task person to lead. Likewise if the situation is moderately favorable or unfavorable, you need a people person. This seems to make sense. If things are very bad, you need a take-charge, goal-oriented leader before you go out of business. If things are very good, interpersonal relations are already smooth, and a goal-setter can take you to the next place. I think, however, that most situations are somewhat in the middle and might demand someone with human relations skills.
The secret according to Fiedler is to match the person to the situation. Analyze the situation and hire or promote the right type of leader. Nor does he think that the average leader can change from one style to another. Leadership style, according to Fielder, is very much a matter of personality and hard to change. I agree. By the way, research to validate Fiedler's model is generally positive.