CONTINGENCY THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP:The Fiedler Model, Situational Leadership Theory, Path-Goal Theory

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Leadership & Team Management MGMT 623

Lesson 10

CONTINGENCY THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP

Both trait and behavioral theories tried to identify the one best leader or style for all situations. By the

late 1960s, it became apparent that there is no such universal answer. Predicting leadership success

involved something more complex than isolating a few traits or preferable behaviors. It was one thing

to say that leadership effectiveness depended on the situation and another to be able to isolate

situational conditions.

Leadership effectiveness depends on a combination of the:

Leader

Followers

Situational factors

During Last 5-6 decades, more than 65 leadership classification systems have been developed. Most

agree that leadership effectiveness depends on the leader, the followers, and situation variables. Leaders

in different situations need different interests, values, and skills. A leader in a bank differs from one in a

factory. Situational factors include the job performed, the workplace culture, and the overall

environment

Leadership results when... the ideas and deeds of the leader match the needs and expectations of the

follower in a particular situation e.g. Quaid-e-Azam, Nelson Mandela, Adolf Hitler, Sir Syed Ahmad

Khan. For leadership to take place, the leader, followers, and situation must match.

The Contingency Approach is based on four assumptions:

· The appropriate leadership style depends on the requirements of the situation.

· Leadership can be learned.

· Successful leadership involves understanding situational contingencies.

· The match between the leader's style, personality or behavior, and the situation leads to

effectiveness.

Leadership approaches

Contingency approach

Path-goal model

·Subordinate characteristics

·Task structure

·Leadership behaviour

·Performance satisfaction

Situational

leadership theory

·Subordinate readiness

·Delegating

Fielder LPC model

·Participating

·Leadership behaviour assessment

·Selling

·Situation favourability

·Telling

·Behaviour-situation match

The Fiedler Model

This is the first comprehensive contingency model for leadership.

Effective group performance depends on the proper match between the leader's style of

interaction and the degree to which the situation gives control and influence to the leader.

Leadership & Team Management MGMT 623

· Fiedler developed an instrument, the Least-Preferred Co-worker (LPC) questionnaire that

measures the leader's behavioral orientation-- either task oriented or relationship oriented.

· He isolated three situational criteria--leader-member relations, task structure, and position

power--that can be manipulated to create the proper match with the behavioral orientation

of the leader.

· This contingency leadership model is an outgrowth of trait theory.

· Fiedler, however, attempted to isolate situations, relating his personality measure to his

situational classification, and then predicting leadership effectiveness.

· Fiedler believed that an individual's basic leadership style is a key factor.

· The LPC questionnaire contains 16 contrasting adjectives, asks the respondent to think of

all the co-workers he or she has ever had, and rates that person on a scale of 1 to 8 for each

set of contrasting adjectives.

· What you say about others tells more about you than it tells about the other person.

· If the least-preferred co-worker was described in positive terms (a high LPC score), then the

respondent was primarily interested in good personal relations with co-workers.

· If the least-preferred co-worker is seen in relatively unfavorable terms, the respondent is

primarily interested in productivity and thus would be labeled task oriented.

· Fiedler argued that leadership style is innate to a person--you can't change your style.

· It is necessary to match the leader with the situation based on three criteria.

Leader-member relations--The degree of confidence, trust, and respect subordinates

have in their leader.

Task structure--The degree to which the job assignments of subordinates are structured

or unstructured.

Position power--The degree of influence a leader has over power variables such as hiring,

firing, discipline, promotions, and salary increases.

The next step is to evaluate the situation in terms of these three contingency variables.

The better the leader-member relations, the more highly structured the job, and the stronger

the position power, the more control or influence the leader has.

Fiedler concluded that task-oriented leaders perform best in situations that are very

favorable or very unfavorable to them.

A moderately favorable situation, however, is best handled through relationship-oriented

leadership.

Situational Leadership Theory:

Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard developed the leadership model.

· Which is Called situational leadership; it shows how a leader should adjust leadership style

to reflect what followers need.

A contingency theory that focuses on the followers.

· Successful leadership is contingent on the follower's level of readiness.

Why focus on the followers? And what do they mean by the term readiness?

o This emphasis reflects the reality that it is the followers who accept or reject the leader.

o Regardless of what the leader does, effectiveness depends on the actions of his or her

followers.

The term "readiness" refers to the extent that people have the ability and the willingness to

accomplish a specific task.

Hersey and Blanchard identify four specific behaviors.

Follower: unable and unwilling

Leader: needs to give clear and specific directions (Selling).

Leadership & Team Management MGMT 623

Follower: unable but willing

Leader: needs to display high task orientation and high relationship orientation.

(Telling)

Follower: able but unwilling

Leader: needs to use a supportive and participative style. (participating)

Follower: both able and willing

Leader: a lenient approach will work (Delegating)

The most effective behavior depends on a follower's ability and motivations.

If a follower is unable and unwilling, the leader needs to display high task orientation.

At the other end of the readiness spectrum, if followers are able and willing, the leader

doesn't need to do much.

Situational leadership has an intuitive appeal--it acknowledges the importance of followers and

builds on the idea that leaders can compensate for the lack of ability and motivation of their

followers.

Research efforts to test and support the theory have generally been mixed.

Path-Goal Theory:

1. One of the most respected approaches to leadership is path-goal theory.

2. Developed by Robert House, a contingency model of leadership that extracts key elements

from the Ohio State leadership research and the expectancy theory of motivation.

The essence of the theory: the leader's job is to assist followers in attaining their goals and

to ensure that their goals are compatible with the overall objectives of the group or

organization.

A leader's behavior is acceptable to employees to the degree that they view it as an

immediate source of satisfaction or as a means of future satisfaction.

A leader's behavior is motivational to the degree that it

a) Makes employee need-satisfaction contingent on effective performance.

b) Provides the coaching, guidance, support, and reward necessary for effective

performance.

House identified four leadership behaviors;

a) The directive leader tells employees what is expected of them, schedules work, and

gives specific guidance as to how to accomplish tasks. It parallels initiating structure.

b) The supportive leader is friendly and shows concern for the needs of employees. It is

essentially synonymous with the dimension of consideration.

c) The participative leader consults with employees and uses their suggestions before

making a decision.

d) The achievement-oriented leader sets challenging goals and expects employees to

perform at their highest levels.

In contrast to Fiedler, House assumes that leaders are flexible.

a) Path-goal theory implies that the same leader can display any or all leadership styles,

depending on the situation.

path-goal theory proposes two classes of contingency variables:;

a) Those in the environment that are outside the control of the employee (task structure,

the formal authority system, and the work group).

1) Environmental factors determine leader behavior required if employee outcomes

are to be maximized.

b) Those that are part of the personal characteristics of the employee (locus of control,

experience, and perceived ability).

1) Personal characteristics determine how the environment and leader behavior are

interpreted.

Leadership & Team Management MGMT 623

c) The theory proposes that leader behavior will be ineffective when it is redundant to

sources of environmental structure or incongruent with subordinate characteristics.

9. Research to validate path-goal predictions is encouraging, although not all is found

positive.

The majority of the evidence supports the logic underlying the theory.

Path-Goal Leadership Model

Employee

Contingencies

Leader

Behaviors

Effectiveness

· Motivated

Directive

employees

Supportive

· Satisfied

Participative

employees

Achievement-

· Leader

oriented

acceptance

Environmental

Contingencies

A Brief History of Leadership Theory:

A Trait Approach (1900-1950s): Leaders are born, not made.

The focus of early leadership research was to find personal traits that distinguished leaders

from followers.

The search was not successful--100s of studies lead to the conclusion that there was no such set

of personal characteristics that by themselves distinguished leaders from non-leaders. A few

traits such as above average intelligence, responsibility, self confidence, and persistence were

associated with leaders, but they are not sufficient explanations.

Later studies of leadership characteristics led to the conclusion that there were a few general

traits that were associated with effective leadership such as self-confidence, stress tolerance,

emotional maturity, and integrity--but again no trait or set of traits by itself guaranteed leader

effectiveness.

Both the situation and skill also have a lot to do with leadership effectiveness.

II.

A Situational Approach: Leaders are made, not born.

For a short time in the 1950s sociologists tried to demonstrate that the situation determined

leadership, but they too were unsuccessful.

Like the trait approach, the situational approach was doomed to failure because it was too

narrow in its view.

Most contemporary leadership theories now subscribe to the position that traits, behaviors, and

situation interact to determine the effectiveness of a leader.

III.

A Contingency Approach

Contemporary approaches to leadership acknowledge the importance of matching the traits and

leadership behavior to situations to maximize effectiveness.

But the thorny questions are what traits or styles with what situations.

What are the basic situations?

What are the basic styles?

What are the matches that lead to effectiveness?

The Struggle to Explain Leadership

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