Fred Fiedler: The Contingency Model Of Leadership

1. Introduction
People trying to find a way to decide what is a good leader or how to be one. In the past decade, a lot of scholar, researcher proposed different theory or model about the leadership quality. Some theory and model focus on the leadership style or the characteristic that are leader needed. However, a psychologist Fred Fiedler introduced the contingency model of leadership in mid-1960, which states a leader's effectiveness is based on the situation. (Fiedler, 1964, p. 152).

2. Fielder Contingency theory
According to the Fielder (1964, p.153) , he pointed out that there is no best leadership style but a leader's effectiveness is based on a situation. In other words, a situation can reflect a leader's ability to lead. As a result,

Fiedler believed that leadership style is fixed and it can be measure to see which type of leadership style you use. Therefore, Fiedler developed a scale called Least-Preferred Co-Worker Scale (LPC) , it allowed people using bipolar scales of 1 to 8 to rate the person that you can work least well or have the most difficulty to work together. Normally, there are 16 or 18 items to rate between 1 to 8 score. Those items included friendly or unfriendly; hostile or supportive; tense or relax, etc(Fiedler, 1964, p. 154) . The highest LPC score leader may tends to be a relationship-oriented leaders, while the lower LPC score most likely is a task-oriented leaders(1964, p. 157). To sum up, this scale result two types of leadership style. There is much more to discuss about the leadership style. However, this essay will explore and critically discuss more on situational favorableness.

2.2 Situational favorableness
Situational favorableness refers to the degree that a leader can influence the followers under different situation. Situational favorableness has three elements that dictate a leader's situational control which are the leader-member relations, task structure and leader's position power. Fielder believed the more favorable situation is better for a leader to lead and handle. This essay will be focus and critically discuss on the three elements of leader's situational favorableness

160). . If the task structure is good, the group goal will be more clear, follower may have a clear idea to approach the goal. In the construct, the task structure is ambiguous or complicated, the followers may have difficulties to complete the task and it may also cause difficulties for leader to lead.

Lastly, the leader position power factor is refer to the amount of the authority and power that a leader's have in their position(1964, p. 161). . For example, do the leader have the power to hire or fire a person, or can they reward their follower when they do well or give a punishment.

To sum up these three elements, there will occur eight different favourable situation from good leader-member relations, task structure and strong position power to poor leader-member relations, task structure and weak position power. In addition, four of the situations match task-oriented leader and the other four situations match relationship-oriented leader better. Getting a good leader-member relation, a high structure task and leader position power considers as a favorable situation. It means the leader have a good situation control and it is more easy for them to lead the