Trait Theorist.

Effectiveness of a leader depends on their personality & the situation under consideration. Some leaders may be effective in one type of

situation but not in another.

He said Leaders effectiveness depended on the interaction of 2 factors

1. Trait/Style [people focus] with 2. Situation [task focus]

He came up with his idea of Least Preferred Co-worker Quiz

The idea was not to test the Co-worker but to test the QuizTaker.

LOW LPC scores means you are a Task-Orientated Manager, HIGH scores a Relations-Orientated Manager

A high LPC leader generally scores the other person as positive and a low LPC leader scores them as negative. High LPC leaders tend to have close and positive relationships and act in a supportive way, even prioritizing the relationship before the task. Low LPC leaders put the task first and will turn to relationships only when they are satisfied with how the work is going.

His theory rests on 3 principles that determine the most effective style for any given situation

Relationships. - how well leader & worker trust one another.

Situation. - the nature of the task, degree of difficulty, predictability etc.

Authority. - how much power, control, authority a leader has.

Feidler says both can be effective if their orientation fits the situation

When there is a good leader-worker relation, a highly structured task, and high leader position power, the situation is considered a "favorable situation." Fiedler found that HIGH-LPC leaders (Relations Orientated) are more effective in extremely favourable or unfavourable situations, whereas LOW-LPC leaders (Task Orientated) perform best in situations with intermediate favourability.

Wikipedia.com

#Leader-Member Relations

Task structure /situation

Leader's Position- power

Most Effective leader

1 Good Structured Strong LOW LPC

2 Good Structured Weak LOW LPC

3 Good Unstructured Strong LOW LPC

4 Good Unstructured Weak HIGH LPC

5 Poor Structured Strong HIGH LPC

6 Poor Structured Weak HIGH LPC

7 Poor Unstructured Strong HIGH LPC

8 Poor Unstructured Weak LOW LPC

Since personality is relatively stable, the contingency model suggests that : improving

effectiveness requires changing the situation to fit the leader.

This is called "job engineering."

Likert

Democratic

ParticipativeParticipative

Benevolent Autocratic

Exploitative Autocratic

Found that many leaders tend to switch styles depending on situations – despite having a preferred or natural style of their own. They created a grid which gave rise to 5 different style of management. The grids were labelled ‘concerns’ : Y axis is ‘for relations with people’ and X axis is ‘for completing the task’

Donald Trump has been known to say he looks for ‘Team Management’ leaders when recruiting for his organisation.

Read and summarise their theory p254.