The Role of Context

What Is the Role of the Context? Contingency Approaches to Leadership

What is the best leadership style? By now you have probably realized this may not be the right question. A better question is: under which conditions are different leadership styles more effective? After the disappointing results of trait and behavioral approaches, several scholars developed theories that explicitly built in the role of the environment. Researchers began following a contingency approach to leadership—rather than searching for traits or behaviors effective under all conditions, attention shifted toward specifying the situations in which different styles work best.

Fiedler's Contingency Theory

The earliest and one of the most influential contingency theories was developed by Frederick Fiedler. In this theory, a leader's style is measured by the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) scale. People completing the survey think of the coworker they least prefer, then rate that person on how friendly, nice, and cooperative they are. Imagine someone you did not enjoy working with—can you still describe them in positive terms? If so, you would have a high LPC score, meaning you have a people-oriented personality and can separate liking a person from working with them. If instead you rate that coworker negatively on a personal level too, you would have a low LPC score, indicating a task-oriented personality.

According to Fiedler, different people are effective in different situations. The LPC score acts like a personality trait and is unlikely to change. Therefore, placing the right people in the right situation—or changing the situation—is what improves a leader's effectiveness. The theory predicts that in highly "favorable" and highly "unfavorable" situations, a low-LPC (task-oriented) leader succeeds. When situational favorableness is moderate, a high-LPC (people-oriented) leader is more likely to succeed.

How does Fiedler judge whether a situation is favorable, moderate, or unfavorable? Three conditions create situational favorableness: (1) leader–subordinate relations, (2) position power, and (3) task structure. When the leader has good relationships, high position power, and a structured task, the situation is very favorable. When relations are poor, position power is low, and the task is unstructured, the situation is very unfavorable.

Research partially supports Fiedler's theory. There is stronger support for its predictions about when low-LPC leadership works than for when high-LPC leadership is more effective. Even where it is not fully supported, the theory is a useful framework for thinking about when task- versus people-oriented leadership fits—and it is notable for explicitly recognizing the importance of leadership context.

Situational Leadership

Another contingency approach is Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey's Situational Leadership Theory (SLT), which argues that leaders must vary their style according to their followers' development level. In this model, employee readiness—a combination of competence and commitment—is the key factor determining the proper style. The approach has been remarkably popular, with some 14 million managers across 42 countries trained in SLT and roughly 70% of Fortune 500 companies using it.

The model maps how much directive and supportive behavior a leader should show. To be effective, leaders must apply the right behaviors at the right point in each employee's development. Employees in the earliest stages are typically highly committed but low in competence, so leaders should be highly directive and less supportive. As competence grows, leaders should shift toward coaching. Supportive behaviors fit employees at moderate-to-high competence. Finally, delegating suits employees who are both highly committed and highly competent. While SLT is popular, easy to use, and long-lived, research support for its core assumptions has been mixed—so it is a helpful lens, but relying on it to the exclusion of other models is premature.

Situational Leadership Theory helps leaders match their style to followers' readiness levels.

Path–Goal Theory of Leadership

Robert House's path–goal theory is grounded in the expectancy theory of motivation, which holds that employees are motivated when they believe (1) their effort will lead to high performance, (2) high performance will be rewarded, and (3) those rewards are valuable to them. The leader's main job is to ensure all three conditions exist—creating satisfied, high-performing employees by linking effort to performance and performance to reward, removing roadblocks, and shaping a motivating environment.

The theory also predicts which leader behaviors work under which circumstances. It identifies four leadership styles, each effective depending on employee characteristics (ability, preferences, locus of control, achievement motivation) and work-environment characteristics (role ambiguity, stress, how unpleasant the tasks are).

Four Leadership Styles

Directive leaders give specific direction—clarifying role expectations, setting schedules, and ensuring employees know what to do. This style works well when employees face role ambiguity, but it can hurt motivation when roles are already clear, jobs are routine and structured, or employees are highly skilled professionals (where it can feel low-empowerment).

Supportive leaders provide emotional support—treating employees well, caring about them personally, and encouraging them. This style is effective when employees are under heavy stress or performing boring, repetitive, or unpleasant jobs.

Participative leaders involve employees in important decisions. This is more effective when employees have high ability, when decisions are personally relevant, and when employees have a high internal locus of control, since participation gives them an indirect way to influence organizational decisions.

Achievement-oriented leaders set goals and challenge employees to reach them, focusing attention on work-related goals. This style works best when employees have both high ability and high achievement motivation.

Path–goal theory has received partial but encouraging support. Because it is highly complex, it has not been fully tested. Its biggest contribution may be highlighting a leader's ability to change styles with the circumstances. Unlike Fiedler's theory—where the leader's style is fixed and only the environment can change—House's theory stresses varying one's style to fit the situation.

Vroom and Yetton's Normative Decision Model

Yale School of Management professor Victor Vroom, with colleagues Philip Yetton and Arthur Jago, developed a decision-making tool to help leaders determine how much involvement to seek when making decisions. Leaders answer a series of key questions and work their way through a funnel based on their responses.

Let's try it. Suppose you want to help employees lower stress to reduce absenteeism. Options include gym memberships, employee assistance programs, a nap room, and more. Answering each question as high (H) or low (L), follow the matching path down the funnel:

1. Decision significance. High—the chosen approach must effectively reduce stress for premiums to drop, so there is a quality requirement. Follow H.
2. Importance of commitment. High—employees may ignore the resources if they dislike them, so you need their cooperation. Follow H.
3. Leader expertise. Low—you lack information about what employees need or prefer. Follow L.
4. Likelihood of commitment. Low—based on experience, employees would likely ignore a decision you make alone. Follow L.
5. Goal alignment. High—employee and organizational goals align, since both want healthier employees. Follow H.
6. Group expertise. Low—the group knows little about which options cost more or are more user-friendly. Follow L.
7. Team competence. Low—this new team has little demonstrated ability to work together effectively. Follow L.

Given these answers, the normative model recommends consulting employees as a group: the leader gathers information from employees, then decides—rather than delegating the decision to the team or deciding alone with no input.

The model is somewhat complex, but research supports its validity: on average, leaders using the recommended style make more effective decisions than those who don't.

Key Takeaway

Contingency approaches describe the role the situation plays in choosing the most effective leadership style. Fiedler's contingency theory argues task-oriented leaders are most effective when a situation is most and least favorable, while relationship-oriented leaders excel at moderate favorableness. Situational Leadership Theory accounts for follower readiness. House's path–goal theory says the leader's job is to ensure employees see effort leading to performance and performance leading to reward—using directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented styles as needed. Vroom and Yetton's normative decision model guides how participative a leader should be given the decision environment.

Exercises

1. Do you believe the least-preferred-coworker technique is a valid way to measure leadership style? Why or why not?
2. Can leaders vary their style—directive, supportive, achievement-oriented, participative—across different employees? Or does each leader tend to have one personal style used with everyone?
3. What do you see as the limitations of the Vroom–Yetton decision-making approach?
4. Which leadership theories in this section seem most useful, and least useful, to practicing managers? Why?

 This text was adapted by Saylor University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work's original creator or licensor.