Fiedler Contingency Model: what is it and what is it for?

The 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: what is it?

Fiedler's Contingency Model, also called leadership effectiveness theory, is a model that we find within the Social psychology and of organizations. The creator of it was Fred E. Fiedler, an important 20th century social and organizational psychology researcher born in Vienna, Austria.

This model speaks of leadership within organizations, and proposes that group productivity depends on two variables: the leadership style of the leader and situational control.

Situational control refers to a confident and confident leader that the task can be accomplished. It is based on three dimensions, which we will see later: the trustworthy relationships of the leader with the members, task is structured and supervision and capacity for reinforcement / punishment by the leader (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 is obtained (that is, results), through leadership (the way the leader "leads"), the characteristics of the leader, and the situation at hand.

In his 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 other things, on how favorable the situation in question is.

objective

The objective of this model was to predict the effectiveness of different types of leadership. For 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, hardly modifiable, although not impossible. This thought led him to consider the aforementioned, and that is, 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 Fiedler Contingency Model raises.

Components

The Fiedler Contingency Model proposes two components that interact with each other, to give as a final result the productivity of the group. 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

The leadership style refers to the way the leader achieves his purposes and the purposes of the group. It is related to his way of treating workers (or followers) and how he achieves (or not) what he sets out to do.

Fiedler, in his contingency model, speaks of two types of leaders or leadership: the leader motivated towards the task (task leader) and the motivated leader 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.

Instead, the socio-emotional leader will focus on promoting satisfactory relationships between workers, in order to increase the performance of the group. 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 anticipated, the second component of Fiedler's Contingency Model is situational control, which 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 label “moderate”.

The greater the situational control, the greater the assurance on the part of the leader that the task in question is carried out correctly.

Situational control depends, in turn, on three other variables or dimensions (necessary to analyze situational control):

2.1. Reliable 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 relationships between the leader and his followers. If these relationships are good, it 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.

2.3. Supervision and reinforcement / punishment capacity

Finally, there must be supervision by the leader towards the members of the group, and also this must have a good ability to offer reinforcements (rewards) and punishments based on results (productivity group).

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 positions facilitates the leader's task of influence, but the power of low positions makes it difficult.

Relationship between components

But, How does the fact that the leader is task or socio-emotional, and that the situational control is low, moderate or high influence the effectiveness of the leader? We will explain these interactions.

Fiedler's contingency model proposes a kind of graph, which explains the relationship possibilities between the two previous components. There are 6 possibilities, which are born from the two types of leadership.

1. Socio-emotional leader

When the leader is socio-emotional (focused on interpersonal relationships), three situations can occur:

• That the situational control is low: then the effectiveness will be minimal.
• That the situational control is moderate: then the effectiveness will be maximum.
• That the situational control is high: then the effectiveness will be minimal.

2. Task leader

On the other hand, when the leader is on task (focused on production), three other situations can also occur:

• That the situational control is low: then the effectiveness will be maximum.
• That the situational control is moderate: then the effectiveness will be minimal.
• That the situational control is high: then the effectiveness will be maximum.

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 passed on and taught.

This is because it provides a series of complete and well-argued theories in relation to leadership, leader effectiveness, and leadership. productivity group. In addition, it incorporates elements of the environment (situation), and not only of the characteristics of the leader (leadership style, personality ...), to explain its effectiveness and its repercussions on the results.

Bibliographic references:

• Hogg, M. (2010). Social psychology. Vaughan Graham M. Pan American. Publisher: Panamericana.

• Palaci, F. (2005). Organizational psychology. Spain: Pearson education. "They are more effective in moderately favorable situations (some are favorable and others are unfavorable)."

• Stoner, J. (1998). Administration (sixth edition). Mexico: Hispanic-American Prentice Hall.