Managing Organizations and Leading People Assignment 2022

Managing Organizations and Leading People
Assignment on
Managing Organizations and Leading People
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Managing Organizations and Leading People
Introduction to Role of Situation in Leadership
Leadership changes with every situation. Each situation has a different aspect to leadership, be it
challenges or problem-solving techniques (Wookey, 2017). Situations shape the behavior of a
leader. A leader should be able to analyze, as to what type of leadership style is best suited in any
given situation where he thrives in. Now, let us look into the basic assumptions and foundations
of a contingency theory called Fiedler’s Contingency Model.
Fiedler’s Contingency Model
Fred Fiedler has put forward one of the most interesting contingency theories. This theory
articulates and deals with both the aspects: leader’s traits in a given situation and the situational
variables. According to Fiedler, there are two types of leaders which make up the foundation of
this theory. They are relationship-oriented leaders and task-oriented leaders. The Task-oriented
leaders would be more directive in nature, set accurate deadlines, and they structure the
situations. On the contrary, relationship-oriented leaders focus more on enhancing people
relations, are considerate with work timelines and are not that directive in nature. While
experimenting the contingency theory by combining the dichotomous variables, Fiedler
concluded and assumed that no style of leadership is inherently superior and leadership style is
not subject to adaptation or change but rather is an enduring characteristic (Sinha, n.d.).
Fiedler’s theory defines 3 factors that determine the situation’s favorableness (accipio.com,
2018). They are:
The level of trust, confidence and respect that exists between the followers and leaders
The level of freedom given by the leaders to the followers and precision of the tasks
defined.
The level of acceptance of leader’s power by followers (Vroom & Jago, 2007)
Fiedler concluded that task-oriented leaders perform better in very favorable or highly
unfavorable situations whereas relationship-oriented leaders perform better in intermediately
favorable situations. There can be no single way to behave as a leader; it is situation dependent.