Fiedler Contingency Model: What Is It And What Is It For?
Leadership style refers to how a leader influences his followers and how he works to achieve his goals. There are different theoretical models of leadership within social and organizational psychology.
One of them is Fiedler’s Contingency Model, a model that maintains that group productivity depends on leadership style and situational control. In this article we will analyze the components of the model and explain how it works.
Fiedler’s Contingency Model, also called leadership effectiveness theory , is a model that we find within social psychology and organizations. Its creator was Fred E. Fiedler, an important researcher of social and organizational psychology in the 20th century, born in Vienna (Austria).
This model talks about leadership within organizations, and proposes that group productivity depends on two variables: the leader’s leadership style and situational control.
Situational control refers to a leader who is secure and confident that the task can be accomplished. It is based on three dimensions, which we will see later: the leader’s reliable relationships with the members, the task being structured, and the leader’s supervision and capacity for reinforcement/punishment (i.e., power).
Characteristics
Roughly, What does Fiedler’s model propose and what does it consist of?
Fiedler’s Contingency Model aims to describe how high group productivity (that is, results) is obtained through leadership (the way in which the leader “leads”), the characteristics of the leader and the situation in which question.
In your model, Fiedler proposes two types of leadership, as we will see later: one more oriented to people (socio-emotional) and another more oriented to productivity (task) The model also maintains that the leader’s ability to influence his followers will depend, among others, on how favorable the situation in question is.
The objective of this model was to predict the effectiveness of different types of leadership To do this, it was first necessary to correctly identify the leader’s leadership style and the situation within the organization. If these two variables were correctly matched, according to Fiedler, the results were assured.
Fiedler believed that a person’s leadership style was something quite fixed, difficult to modify, although not impossible. This thought led him to consider what was already mentioned, and that is that perhaps it was a good idea to match the different leadership styles with the most favorable situations for obtaining results (effectiveness of the leader), and this is what the Contingency Model of Leadership proposes. Fiedler.
Components
The Fiedler Contingency Model proposes two components that interact with each other, to give the group’s productivity as a final result This productivity has to do with the results obtained by the group within the organization.
Thus, the components referred to in Fiedler’s Contingency Model are the following.
1. Leadership style of the leader
Leadership style refers to the way the leader achieves his or her goals and the goals of the group. It is related to the way you treat workers (or followers) and how you achieve (or not) what you propose
Fiedler, in his contingency model, speaks of two types of leaders or leadership: the leader motivated towards the task (task leader) and the leader motivated towards interpersonal relationships (socio-emotional leader).
The task leader will focus, as his name indicates, on the group’s tasks, that is, on the performance and results obtained by the group. This leader aims to increase group productivity, working directly through it.
On the other hand, the socio-emotional leader will focus on ensuring that relationships between workers are satisfactory, in order to increase group performance. Later we will see what relationship the type of leader has with situational control (the second component of Fiedler’s Contingency Model).
2. Situational control
As we already mentioned, the second component of the Fiedler Contingency Model is situational control, which It has to do with the degree of control of the situation This variable has two poles within a continuum: the “low” pole and the “high” pole. In the middle of the continuum appears the “moderate” label.
The greater the situational control, the greater the leader’s assurance that the task in question will be performed correctly.
Situational control depends, in turn, on three other variables or dimensions (necessary to analyze situational control):
2.1. Trusted Member Relationships
This variable refers to how the leader relates to the members of the group. It is related to loyalty, mutual support and, ultimately, to the quality of the relationships between the leader and his followers. If these relationships are good, this will have a positive impact on the effectiveness and power of the leader.
2.2. Degree of structuring of the task
For situational control to be high, the task must be well structured. Specifically, this variable refers to whether or not the tasks are well defined; It also has to do with objectives and work procedures.
23. Supervision and reinforcement/punishment capacity
Finally, there must be supervision by the leader towards the members of the group, and he must also have a good ability to offer reinforcements (rewards) and punishments based on the results (group productivity).
This third dimension also refers to the power that the leader has in his position. This power is legitimate. The following relationship has also been found: the power of high-ranking officials facilitates the leader’s influence task, but the power of lower-ranking officials makes it difficult.
Relationship between components
But, How does whether the leader is task or socio-emotional, and whether situational control is low, moderate or high, influence the leader’s effectiveness? Let’s explain these interactions.
Fiedler’s Contingency Model proposes a kind of graph, which explains the possibilities of relationships between the two previous components. 6 possibilities are proposed, which arise from the two types of leadership.
1. Socio-emotional leader
When the leader is socioemotional (focused on interpersonal relationships), three situations can occur:
2. Task leader
On the other hand, when the leader is a task leader (focused on production), three other situations can also occur:
Final reflection
Fiedler’s Contingency Model does not actually have sufficient empirical support to support it in research However, it is considered an important model within organizational psychology, which continues to be transmitted and taught.
This is because it provides a series of complete and well-argued theories in relation to leadership, leader effectiveness and group productivity. Furthermore, it incorporates elements of the environment (situation), and not only the characteristics of the leader (leadership style, personality…), to explain its effectiveness and its repercussions on the results.
