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2.3.2 Situated leadership styles

Other authors argued for leadership to be placed in a situation or organisational context because a leader and thus leadership was not vested in the individual, but in the collective. Beyond individual traits and roles, the concept of leadership required a sense of multiple players contributing to 'leadership' and multiple players performing the role of followers or subordinates.

By its very nature the effective workplace leader is reliant upon the successfully orienting individuals towards and agreed vision and then working with staff members to translate this vision to action.

Fiedler (1967), differentiated situation from contingency. He emphasised that fact that differing roles, traits and behaviours of leaders did not just require an specific understanding of interactions with subordinate, it also required favourable conditions.

Figure 1 Fiedler's Contingency Theory for Leadership

Figure 1 Fiedler's Contingency Theory for Leadership

Fiedler's contingency leadership model promotes three factors:

  1. Leadership Style = personality of the leader
  2. Task-motivation/ structure = the degree which gives the leader control and influence. This model is measured by a high (good) and low (bad) ranking of a (LPC) Least Preferred Co-worker. This scale helps measure the leader-member relations, task structure, and position power.
  3. Position power - The ability of a leader to control subordinates through reward and punishment.
By using a questionnaire called the least preferred co-worker (LPC) Fiedler was able to identify leadership styles in given situations. A leader was asked to describe the characteristics of the person with whom they were least able to work with - ie. The least preferred co-worker. This yielded not only characteristics for leaders in situations and with particular styles but also the preconditions for these factors applied to a positive working relationship.

 

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