The Fiedler Contingency Model: Matching Leadership Style to the Situation

In any professional setting, the question of leadership is something that can linger over an entire team or organization. If you're in a management position, there's a good chance you've struggled from time to time with how to handle complex situations and strike the right tone to keep your team motivated and productive.

The Fiedler Contingency Model organizes this idea into the full-blown theory that no one leadership style is universally effective. This model was developed by Austrian psychologist Fred Fiedler in the 1960s. He studied leaders’ personalities and characteristics and came to the conclusion that leadership is most effective when a leader’s style is matched to the situation, a key tenet of this theory.

Understanding the Fiedler Contingency Model

Fiedler’s Contingency Model, also known as Fiedler’s Contingency Theory or Fiedler’s Theory of Leadership, emphasizes that there is no single best style of leadership.

Still, your leadership style can incredibly difficult to change because it is forged over a lifetime. As a result, the most effective leader for a given situation is one that fits well with that situation. Put another way, because a leader’s style is hard to change, it's often best to put a leader into a situation that matches their leadership style.

There are two factors that are thought to determine a leader’s ability to succeed: situational favorableness and leadership style.

Situational Favorableness in Fiedler's Theory

Situational favorableness, or situational control, refers to how favorable a situation is to a particular leadership style. Dr. Naomi Ben-Ami, PsyD, of Williamsburg Therapy Group, says, “Situational favorableness in Fiedler’s theory refers to the extent that a situation enables a leader to have influence on their group.”

There are three factors that determine situational favorableness:

• Leader-member relations, which has to do with trust between the team and the leader. The more trust the team places in a leader, the more favorable the situation.
• Task structure, which relates to how clearly the tasks required to complete a project have been communicated. The more clear-cut the tasks are the higher the task structure, and the higher the task structure, the more favorable the situation.
• Position power, which refers to the amount of authority the leader has over their team. When the leader’s power position is high, the leader will be best positioned to usher the team through reward or punishment. Higher position power makes for a more favorable situation.

“Higher situational favorableness will enable the leader to exert more influence and be more effective,” says Ben-Ami. Therefore, the higher you can get on all three factors, the better your situation will be.

Leadership Styles in Fiedler's Theory

There are two kinds of leaders in Fiedler’s Contingency Model: Task-oriented leaders and relationship-oriented leaders. To determine your leadership style, the Fiedler model measures leadership on the Least-Preferred Co-Worker (LPC) scale. On this scale, you rate your feelings about the co-worker you least preferred to work with.

Relationship-oriented leaders, explains Ben-Ami, “build strong interpersonal connections, engender trust, and emphasize collaboration. [However,] they… could struggle with maintaining task efficiency that can be required in some situations.”

On the other hand, task-oriented leaders, says Ben-Ami, “focus on achieving goals, emphasizing efficiency, and ensuring task completion. These leaders… excel in providing structure and direction. However, they may struggle in situations that are more ambiguous and where relationships are more central.”

Examples of Fiedler's Contingency Theory

Fiedler’s Contingency Theory can be applied in any situation where leadership is needed. For example, in a creative group, like a group of graphic designers at an ad agency, the group may have low task structure, the leader’s position power is weak, and there will be good leader-member relations. As a result, you “want a relationship-oriented leader to get these creative minds to work together rather than a task-oriented leader trying to impose… decisions on the group.”

On the other hand, with a newly hired manager at a start-up tech company, the task structure is low, the new manager’s position power is low, and leader-member relations are poor because the leader is new. This scenario calls for a task-oriented leader because the situation is highly unfavorable. A relationship-oriented leader would have trouble getting things done because they’d want to get team members' buy-in. Task-oriented leaders don’t have this problem.

Task-oriented leaders can also be useful when task structure is high. For instance, for a basketball team or a commercial flight, the leader's desire to take charge will work in the situation's favor.

Based on these examples, it can be understood that different leadership styles are required depending on the situation. “[Leadership] training programs will focus on increasing a leader’s understanding of situational favorableness” through task structure, power position, and leader-member relations, says Ben-Ami, “and providing them with skills to be more flexible with their leadership style.”

Fiedler’s Contingency Model encourages leaders to practice self-awareness, an essential tool for a leader, and take account of the situation, not just the leader, something other theories don’t often do.

Potential Downsides of Fiedler's Theory

However, the theory has been criticized for being far too strict. The model says if you can’t change the situation, you must give up leadership. There are no other options.

Also, self-assessment isn’t always a reliable way to determine one's leadership style. We all have biases that can interfere with personal assessment, including on the LPC, even if it's subconscious.

Finally, it’s unclear what people who score in the middle of the LPC should do. The theory says these people should just pick one leadership style or the other, but there has to be another way for them to handle this.

Takeaways

Since its introduction in the 1960s, Fiedler’s Contingency Model has been a significant theory of leadership. With its emphasis that no single style of leadership is most effective, Fiedler’s model reminds us that leadership isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition.

If your team isn’t performing well, it just might be that you have a leader who isn’t effective in the environment. This doesn’t mean the leader is bad generally, but that they may just be bad for the situation. As a result, fitting the leader to the situation is of paramount importance, with task-oriented and relationship-oriented leaders fitting into different environments.