Fred E. Fiedler's Theory Of Leadership Effectiveness

This theory is one of the first studies that concentrated on situational factors and the relationship between leadership and organization effectiveness. Fred E. Fiedler who noted his findings from his study in his book Theory of Leadership Effectiveness (1967) contended that if an organization made an effort to achieve team effectiveness by using leadership then it was necessary to assess the leader with respect to underlying traits, assess the situation the leader is in and find the similarities between the two.
Fiedler noted that the attitudes of leaders needed to be considered and developed a scale that could be used to assess these attitudes. The scale was called the Least Preferred Co-worker scale and was used to ask leaders about the

James McGregor Burns in his book Leadership (1978) defined transformational leadership as a process where leaders and their followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation. This type of leadership is not only expected from the upper echelon but throughout all levels in the organization. Transformative leaders are expected to be creative, fearless and thoughtful and charismatic. They must have the ability to change the way an organization operates and reinforce those changes in accordance with internal and external factors that influence the employees and the organization. Former President of the United States of America, Barack Obama is a renowned transformational

Contingent reward - the process of setting expectations and assigning rewards for workers who meet them.
2. Passive management by exception - where a manager only interjects workflow if a problem occurs.
3. Active management by exception - where managers are proactive expecting issues to occur and monitor and correct progress where required.
4. Lassiez-faire - where the leader creates an environment that allows employees numerous opportunities to make decisions. The leader takes a background position and provides no direction to the employees and abstains from giving guidance which often leads to chaos.
Transactional leadership differs from transformational leadership in structure and method where transactional leadership uses approaches that include positive and negative reinforcement while transformational leadership is based on motivation and inspiration.
Some characteristics of transactional leaders are:
Focus on short term achievements
Strive on structured policies and procedures
Efficient
Are opposed to change
Inflexible
Transactional leaders fare well in organizations where structure and order are pertinent to its operation and the employee composition is diversified. This type of leadership does not require much training and is easy to understand and