I.

INTRODUCTION
Contingency leadership theory is a practice of leadership. It
believes there is no singular best way to structure an organization.
Instead, the best leadership style will be contingent on the situation.
Effective leadership is one of the most attractive qualities in an employee.
There are a variety of theories that explore different leadership styles.
Each approach has its take on what works best to boost team productivity.
The contingency viewpoint will help us to; combine management
approaches in the best possible way, increase management’s ability to
align employees with the leaders, and focus on the concept of
adaptability.
Now, Let’s take a closer look at contingency leadership theory and
one its model which is the Fiedler’s Contingency Model.

II. OBJECTIVES

At the end of the discussion, the learners will be able to:

1. Describe Contingency Theory of Leadership

2. Explain the key concept of Fiedler’s Contingency Theory.
3. Apply the Contingency Theory of Leadership and Fiedler’s
Contingency Theory in real life examples.

III. DISCUSSION
Drowning Kids Metaphor
Contingent Leadership is needed in response to different
volume of work demand. Consider these scenarios side by side. The
first is a metaphor of life saving around a natural pool under a
small waterfall. The second one is an image about educating kids
at schooling age.
SCENARIO 1:
Imagine that you know life -saving, what would you do
when you pass by the pool and see one kid drowning?
1: You jump in and save. This is the personal level of help.
2: Well, that is how caring parents jump in to help their
kids on homework and revisions. Often their eagerness
damages their kids’ interest to learn.
 SCENARIO 2:
How about five more drowning kids at the same time?
1:You call for more helpers.
2: Team effort and grouping strategies work, that is what
remedial classes and tutorial schools exist for.
SCENARIO 3:
How about more frequent incidents of kids drowning?
1: Propose to the municipal or amenities bureau to have the
pool barred from access, or even change the landscape and at
least the meaning to the usage of the pool. Go political.
2: In education, the equivalent is relentless monitoring and
greater demand for curriculum reforms and urgent school
improvement.
ANALYSIS:
Whatever the choice might be, the metaphor demonstrates that
the best solution varies with the situation, more succinctly with
changing frequency and severity of like incidents. It is a question of
‘When to do what?’
Whatever the leadership action, effectiveness varies under
different situations at different times. No single style of
management seems appropriate for all schools.

WHAT IS CONTINGENCY THEORY OF LEADERSHIP?

The Contingency theory of Leadership supposes that a leader’s
effectiveness is contingent on whether or not their leadership style suits a
particular situation. According to this theory, an individual can be an effective
leader in one circumstance and an ineffective leader in another one. In most
cases, this requires you to be self-aware, objective and adaptable. To lead
their team well, managers and supervisors may need to either adapt their
leadership style to the current situation or delegate some of their leadership
responsibilities to a co-worker.
The Contingency theory of psychology is based on the assumption
there is no universal approach to structuring organizations and managing
people. The best path will depend on factors like the nature of the task,
personality traits of the people involved, and company culture, environment of
the organization,
Contingency theory calls for a situational approach. Contingency
theories emerged from real-life experiences of managers and leaders, who
found there is no single approach that works in every situation. Contingency
theory tries to find techniques appropriate for the present situation.
Contingencies are affected by the external and internal environment.
EXAMPLES:
1. A project manager named, Doug finds it much easier to
communicate in writing rather than in person, so he usually encourages
his team by sending them thoughtful emails at the end of every week.
However, there is a new employee in the office who is not very
receptive to written communication.
ANSWER:
To connect with this employee, Doug will need to either
make an effort to change his method and encourage this
employee in person or he will have to assign this task to the
assistant manager.
ANALYSIS:
In this example, Doug is not chronically ineffective leader.
He is a good leader who is facing an unexpected challenge. If
Doug accepts the fact that he will need to adapt his situation
instead of trying to force his usual methods, he can still be a
highly-productive leader who encourages his team effectively.

2. Teacher Anna has a student named, Sam who regularly submitted

his home works late and some of the times he has no outputs to
pass.What is the best approach does Teacher Anna could give?
ANSWER:
His teacher could have a written protocol for this situation
in which there is only one option: give his student a notice.
Teacher Anna will talk with Sam to determine why he is late in
submission before deciding the appropriate step, and she may
learn there are extenuating circumstances/ partial excuse to
Sam’s situation. Teacher Anna could give some penalties to
Sam such as point deductions and contacting the parents, or
could require the students to submit a written request for a
deadline extension rather than taking off points. The
contingency approach theory allows Sam to be not fail/ dropped
his subject to Teacher Anna.
ANALYSIS:
 Under the contingency viewpoint, however, Teacher
Anna may decide to better understand the situation by talking to
Sam about why he is late in submission and no outputs of
school works and then deciding on the most effective and
appropriate course of action. The value in this, lies in the
information the Teacher acquires about her student: maybe
there are extenuating circumstances that can be relatively easy
to work around. In this case, the contingency approach allows
Sam to not fail, be suspended or dropped the subject in Teacher
Anna’s class.
FIELDER’S CONTINGENCY THEORY
Fiedler’s contingency theory states that in order to maximize work
group performance, leaders must be matched to the right leadership situation,
because leadership styles are fixed. You cannot change your style to suit the
situation. Instead, it would be best if you put leaders into situations that match
their style, and will be more effective when their styles are matched to the
proper situation.
Fiedler believed the right leader must be chosen for each job based on
their skill set and the requirements of the situation. In order to best match
leaders with situations, each leader must first understand their natural
leadership style. Then, they need to evaluate whether their leadership style is
right for the situation. To put it simply, Fiedler determined that a leaders’
ability to succeed rests on two factors:
 Natural leadership style
 Situational favorableness

Fiedler’s Contingency Theory has two factors:
a) Leadership Style- leadership style, he means the way that leaders
generally behave toward their followers.
In this factor, you determine your style of leadership. Fielder
developed a scale called the least preferred co-worker scale (LPC).
The scale asks you to do the two simple things to understand your
leadership style-
 Think about the person who you’ve least enjoyed working with.
 Then rate how you feel about this person for each factor and
add up your scores.
According to this scale:

 The more you rate the person you least like to work with, the
more relationship-oriented you are.
 High LPC = Relationship-Oriented Leader.
 The less you rate the person you like the least working with, the
more task-oriented you are.
Low LPC = Task-Oriented Leader.
The more positively you rate your least preferred coworker on a
variety of different criteria, the more relationship-oriented you are. The
less favorably you rate them on the same criteria, the more task-
oriented you are.
1. Task-oriented leaders tend to be good at organizing teams and
projects and gettings things done. Rating your least preferred
coworker unfavorably suggests that you struggle to see their
contributions, since you value efficiency and effectiveness over
other attributes.
2. Relationship-oriented leaders tend to be good at building good
relationships and managing conflict to get things done. This means
that you see the best in people—even those who you wouldn’t
necessarily choose to work with.
b.) Situational favorableness
The second part of Fiedler’s model is determining situational
favorableness. To do this, you will evaluate three distinct factors:
1. Leader-Member Relations
This factor involves the amount of trust and confidence
that your team members have in you. If you are trusted and well-
liked by your entire team, your influence will increase and your
workplace will become a more favorable situation. However, if
your subordinates or members have doubts or they are
uncertain to you then the situation is not in favor.

2. Task Structure
This factor relates to whether the tasks your team
completes are clear and structured or vague and unstructured.
Unstructured tasks do not have a well-specified plan of action
and would be considered unfavorable.
Higher task structure results in a more favorable situation.
The more clear-cut and precise tasks are, the higher the
situation’s task structure—whereas the vaguer they are, the
lower the situation’s task structure.
3. Leader’s Position Power
 This is the amount of power a leader has over their team
and involves whether or not they have the authority to give out
rewards or punishment.
If you can reward them, punish them, or tell them what to
do, your position power is high. As you can imagine, higher
position power makes the situation more favorable. Typically,
the more power you have, the more favorable your situation.
USING AND APPLYING FIEDLER’S CONTINGENCY MODEL
Step 1: Understand your leadership style
 In order to identify your natural leadership style, we return to the
LPC scale.
 Calculate your LPC score by totaling all the numbers you
circled. You can interpret your score as follows:
o If you scored 73 and above (a high LPC score),
you are a relationship-oriented leader.
o If you scored 54 and below (a low LPC score), you
are a task-oriented leader.
o If you scored between 55 and 72, you have the
qualities of both a relationship-oriented and a task-
oriented leader. Deciding which style fits you better
will take further exploration through other
leadership theories.
Step 2: Assess the situation
 In order to assess situational favorableness to determine
leadership effectiveness in a specific environment, Fiedler poses
three questions:
o Is trust with your team high or low (member relations)?
o Are tasks vague or clear-cut and well understood (task
structure)?
o Is your authority low or high (position power)?
 On a scale of one to 10, with 10 representing the highest value.

Step 3: Decide whether you’re the leader for the job

 Now that you have a grasp on your leadership style and the
favorableness of the situation, you can determine whether
you’re the right leader for the situation.
o If you’re a task-oriented leader, you’re the best fit to
tackle highly favorable and highly unfavorable situations.
The extremes are where you’ll serve your team best.
o If you’re a relationship-oriented leader, your style is best
suited to lead in situations with moderate favorability.
 Step 4: Consider delegating to the right leader
 According to Fiedler, leadership style is fixed and cannot be
changed. This means that if a leader’s style isn’t right for a
situation, that leader may need to delegate leadership to the
right person.
While it can be challenging to admit that your skillset isn’t
right for a situation, there’s no shame in delegating leadership to
someone else. In fact, delegation is necessary for effective
leadership. If you’re a manager, consider promoting someone on
your team with the opposite leadership style to supervise the team
wherever needed. Alternatively, if you’re overseeing a cross-
functional project, see if one of the cross-functional team members
is a better fit for the situation.
Step 5: Try changing the situation
 Another way to ensure that your team is set up for success if
your leadership style doesn’t fit the situation at hand is to try to
change the situation. Here are a few ways to align situational
favorableness with your skillset:
o Improve leader-member relations. If it would help the
situation to improve leader-member relations, try focusing
on your transparency with the team or entrusting team
members with new responsibilities. 60% of leaders worry
about how their team perceives transparency. By
improving it wherever possible, leaders can feel confident
that their team members will trust them, which in turn
improves leader-member relations.
o Level up task clarity. Are tasks unclear simply because
that’s the nature of the job, or are there processes that
can be cleaned up a bit? Try outlining tasks to make them
easier for your team to accomplish.
o Increase your authority. If more power and influence
could help you lead better, try formulating an argument to
present to upper management. You may come out of it
with a promotion to a more senior role.
EXAMPLE #1:
Consider a commercial flight, in this scenario we expected that it has a
clear operating procedure to follow and a powerful authority to take in charge
on the whole flight, thus cabin crews and the passengers have this big trust to
have a smooth ride.
According to Fiedler’s Contingency Theory of Leadership, and using
our table on the side, what leadership style is best suited we want in a pilot?
 Trust will be low.
  Task structure is high.
 Position power is high.
According to Fiedler’s Contingency Theory of Leadership, and using
our table above, a relationship-oriented leader is best suited to this type of
role.

EXAMPLE #2:
Imagine that you have been newly hired as a teacher and appointed as a
class adviser. In this scenario, we might expect that you have the authority to
reward and punish the class, and have an extremely clear duties and
responsibilities to follow such as implementing consistently classroom/ school
rules and regulations in your advisory class.
According to Fiedler’s Contingency Theory of Leadership, and using our
table on the side, what leadership style is best suited we want in a pilot?
 Has a structured task
 A powerful leader
 Good leader-member relations
According to Fiedler’s Contingency Theory of Leadership, and using our
table on the side, what leadership style is best suited we want in a pilot?
Here, we want a task-oriented pilot to take charge; we don’t want a
relationship-oriented leader discussing with the group how best to land the
plane.

IV. GENERALIZATION
While contingency leadership models diverge on some points, they
all share a common thread. The overlying viewpoint of the contingency
theory of leadership is that effective leadership is contingent on the
situation, task and people involved.
Different leaders, each with their own leadership style, will respond
differently to a myriad of factors in the workplace. Among the factors that
can affect a leader’s effectiveness are things like project scope, the size of
their team, resources and deadlines. According to contingency theory,
leaders will always find particular situations that challenge them and must
be willing to acknowledge that their success partially depends on their
circumstances.
To be great leaders for their teams, leaders may need to adapt their
leadership style to the current situation. Leadership Education and training
 can help professionals understand and respond to the complexities of the
workplace and excel in their leadership roles.

V. SYNTHESIS
The contingency theory of leadership proposes that a leader's
success is dependent on the specific situation at hand. A leader's
effectiveness can be influenced by a variety of things. Those factors
include the task, the personality of the leader and the composition of the
group that is meant to be led.
The basic assumption is that leadership, success or failure depends
on circumstances. Different leaders with unique leadership styles respond
differently to these variables. No matter how successful a leader is, there
will always be certain circumstances that will challenge him. Therefore,
leaders must be willing to accept that their success depends not only on
individual or personal skills, but also on circumstances.
Leaders may need to modify their leadership style to the present
scenario or outsource part of their leadership tasks to a coworker in order
to effectively lead their teams.

VI. REFERENCES

Asana n.d. (2021). Fiedler’s Contingency Theory: Why leadership isn’t

uniform. Retrieved from, https://asana.com/resources/fiedlers-
contingency-theory

Isaac. P et. al., (2004). Contingent leadership - Paraphernalia to school

administration in chaotic times. Retrieved from,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253209337_Contingen
t_leadership_-
_Paraphernalia_to_school_administration_in_chaotic_times

Kendra C. (2017). What is the Contingency Leadership Theory? .

Explore Psychology. Retrieved from,
https://www.explorepsychology.com/contingency-theory-
leadership/

Patrick W. (2021). Fiedler’s Contingency Theory: Summary with

Examples. Retrieved from,
https://nanoglobals.com/glossary/fiedlers-contingency-theory/