welcome to this video on fiddler's contingency theory of leadership by watching you will learn how the model works as well as understand its advantages and disadvantages in the end we will show you a graph that you can use to match the right leadership behavior to one of eight different situations before we start please like this video and subscribe to our channel in the 1960s when situational leadership theories started to emerge fred fiedler an american business and management psychologist combined the results of several studies into a formula known as fiddler's contingency theory of leadership or fiedler's situation leadership theory according to this model a leader's contribution to performance is depending on the form of leadership and the level of compliance with the circumstances of each situation the novelty with the fiddler model was that it stated that a leader could be effective in one situation and not in another a leader is not necessarily successful when heading different organizations or in all types of situations to cover this aspect fiedler established numerous leader situation combinations in order to increase understanding and to guide leaders in their work since a leader cannot be effective all the time in all kinds of situations fiedler suggested the person with the appropriate style should be leading and that each person only has one stable behavior regardless of training or willingness to change this points in the direction of switching out an organization's leader if the wrong type of situation emerges fiedler realized this would be highly impractical instead he recommended that the situation be changed to suit the leader's behavior to be honest i'm not sure how it would be easier to change the situation rather than changing the leader luckily the feedler contingency theory provides us with a few levers to push the situation in the needed direction a three-stage evaluation is required to use the model and understand whether there is a good match between a specific leader in a certain situation step one identification of the leadership style by using fiedler's least preferred co-worker scale or lpc a leader comes out as either relationship oriented or task-oriented which style a leader uses is established by a questionnaire with 18 questions with opposite answers the leader thinks of the least preferred team member and answers questions with a scale from one to eight ranging from unpleasant to pleasant or unfriendly to friendly or similarly a high score on the lpc scale means that the leader is pleasant and nice to work with and therefore assumed to be a relationship-oriented leader a low score means that the leader is difficult and cares less about people indicates that the leader uses a task-oriented leadership style fiedler's theory is limited since it assumes only two general leadership behaviors and that the leader's behavior is static a relationship-oriented leader develops bonds and relationships with a team this behavior leads to trust friendship and a supporting team climate at the other end of the scale the task-oriented leader cares less about the people and more about getting the job done such as securing task execution quality output and other non-human aspects as mentioned a leader is one of the two and can't switch between styles according to fiedler's contingency model before we get to step two please remember to like this video and subscribe to our channel remember to turn on notifications so you don't miss any of our videos about leadership and management step 2 defining the situation once the basic leadership behavior is established it's time to evaluate and identify the involved situation this is done according to three different dimensions the first dimension is called leader-member relations and describes how well the team and its leader work together including trust levels willingness to follow the leader etc if the followers respect and trust their leader they are more likely to follow this essentially means that the leader has more power and a stronger possibility to influence the team the stronger the influence and the willingness to follow the less official authority the leader will need to get the job done this makes a lot of sense a good leader gets people to follow through inspiration and a poor leader depends more on formal authority to get people to listen this is similar to max weber's classification of authority where charismatic leadership builds on the leader's persona and rational legal authority builds on bureaucracy and formal power refer to our separate videos on those topics the leader member dimension has two possible assessment outcomes good and poor the second dimension task structure is rather straightforward in high task structure situations the input process output policies job descriptions and any other defining rules are well known this means that it's very clear what needs to be done when how and by whom low task structure requires more judgment improvisation and frequent decisions since many of the parameters needed to execute the task are unknown the task structure of a situation can be assessed as low or high position power is the third and last dimension this concept refers to the leader's possibilities to reward and punish employees combined with other aspects of the leader's authority if your manager has the right to change your salary or even fire you but your supervisor doesn't you're more likely to listen to the former it's as simple as that generally the higher the position in the hierarchy the higher authority and the stronger position power the leader has position power is designated as either strong or weak let's put it all together and check the outcome of our assessment here's the graph which shows what fiedler's study showed and ended up as the feedler's contingency theory of leadership let's take a look at two simplified examples example one is an advertising agency where there's a good relationship between management and employees this is needed since the creation process requires good guidance and support from the leader who needs to know the team members well to understand their strengths weaknesses and capabilities this indicates that the leader member relation is good the advertising agency is built on artistic work that is difficult to define and regulate beforehand this is a low task structure situation where work can't be done according to preset rules and detailed instructions the leader we are assessing is a project manager who leads the work but has no possibility of firing or replacing people at best she can give a poor assessment to the line managers this indicates weak position power according to fiedler's contingency theory this fits the parameters of situation four and that situation is best handled by a relationship-oriented leader the steering group that's responsible for appointing the project manager should have this in mind the second example is a fast food restaurant there's little bonding between manager and employee due to high turnover little care of the people since they are easily replaced and the fact that everybody knows exactly what they're supposed to do thanks to recipes standard working processes and detailed division of labor essentially one person makes burgers a second handles fries a third handles sodas and a fourth person takes the order this indicates poor leader member relations and high task structure so far this indicates two possible situations namely situations five and six a leader with strong position power such as the franchise owner can be a relationship-oriented leader but the performance will be lower for a leader with weak position power such as a team leader in fact the model indicates that there is no real high-performing behavior in that situation this can be fixed by trying to shift one of the three dimensions to another situation category ensure strong position power to obtain situation five or improve leader relations to obtain situations one or two where position power doesn't matter a task-oriented leader fits best for both situations these are the levers try to adjust the situation slightly to end up in another situation this is what fiedler suggested you to do adjust the situation to fit the leader in order to maximize performance before going into pros and cons i'd like to recommend our video on leadership theories over time it describes 16 theories and over 30 leadership styles and puts fiddler's theory into an overall context click the link up top to check it out there are some obvious disadvantages of feedler's contingency model 1. it assumes static leadership behaviors and can end up limiting leaders from even trying to change their ways 2. the lpc scale and situation dimensions are all based on subjective judgment assess any part the wrong way and the guidance is likely to be wrong 3. only two behaviors mean that a high or low lpc score gives clear guidance if you end up getting an in-between score your behavior is inclusive 4. it assumes that leaders are either relationship or task-oriented modern research concludes that a leader can in fact be both the advantages are 1. the model is easy to understand and gives clear guidance 2. it underlines differences in situations and helps leaders to assess their environment 3. it takes situational aspects into account in the 60s most of the leadership models disregarded the situation completely i suggest you don't use the feedler model in your leadership it provides understanding of certain aspects but you are better off using a more flexible and modern framework instead i've used the six leadership styles based on emotional intelligence by daniel goleman for years when i've headed organizations of more than 1 000 people it works well for me and i'm positive it can be very useful to you too check out our video on that model there's a link at the top of the screen i hope you enjoyed this introduction to the fiedler contingency model of leadership what do you think is the most useful portion of the model please let us know in the comments please show your support by liking this video and subscribing to our channel remember to turn on the notifications thanks for watching this video from leadershipahoy.com