After studying the trait and the behavioral leadership theories it became apparent that there’s not a “best leadership style” to be applied in every possible situation. Thus the contingency theories appear as a response to solve this issue. Contingency means “it depends”. In other words, the theory deals with matching a leader style with the context (situation) that the leader faces.

There are several theories or approaches that can be treated as “contingency theories” these are:

• Leadership Continuum Theory, developed by Robert Tannenbaum and Warren Schmidt in the 1950s.
• Path Goal Leadership Theory, developed by Robert House in 1971.
• Normative Leadership Theory, developed by Victor Vroom and Philip Yetton
• Leadership Substitutes Theory, developed by Kerr and Jermier in 1978.
• Multiple Linkage Model, developed by Gary Yukl (1981, 1989)
• Cognitive Resources Theory, developed by Fiedler and Garcia (1987)
• Contingency Theory of Leader Effectiveness, developed by Fred Fiedler (1951)

In this article I’m going to review the “Contingency Theory of Leader Effectiveness” by Fred Fiedler, which is the most renonwed of the Contingency theories and models.

The LPC model

You can say that this model is the basis of all the theory. This model allows the leader to know his major leadership style. In the LPC model the leadership styles are task motivated or relationship motivated (Northouse, 2004).

A Task Motivated leader is primarly concerned with reaching a goal. While a Relationship Motivated leader is concerned with developing close interpersonal relationships.

To figure out which leadership style someone has. Fiedler developed a set of assessment questionnaires that identified the “dominant” leadership style. In a scale that assigned a High LPC score to a relationship oriented style and a low LPC score to a task oriented style.

Graphically a leader style is between these two opposites of a continuum

Once you have measured the LPC and identified the leadership style, you have to match the style with the situation. The question is then: How do you charact erize a situation? Fiedler’s answer to that question was based on three variables :

• Leader-Member Relationships:It’s the strongest of the situational variables. It goes from good to poor. A good relationship is said to be cooperative and friendly. On the other hand, a poor relationship is antagonistic and difficult.
• Task Structure:It’s the second strongest of the situational variables. It goes from structured to unstructured. A structured task is repetitive, routine and unambigous, while an unstructured task is at the opposite.
• Position Power:It’s the weakest variable. It goes from strong to weak. A leader has a strong position power, if he has the right to assign work, reward or punish, hire and fire, give raises, promotions to his employees. On the other extreme of the scale is the weak position power.

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