Fred Fiedler
Fiedler, F. E. (1958). Leader attitudes and group effectiveness. University Of Illinois Press.
Description:
Fred Fiedler was the first amongst leadership theorists to explore situational variables. According to him, the effectiveness of the leadership style depends on the situation, thus giving birth to what is defined as Contingency Theories of Leadership.
Fiedler came up with three situational variables: leader Member relations, Task Structure and Leader’s Position Power. The model creates a pretty complex view, but recommends a style linked to specific situation.
Fiedler argues that leaders should take a number of environmental or situational factors into account before deciding on the appropriate leadership style: task-oriented or relationship-oriented. Leaders would be very unlikely to be successful if they cannot ‘match’ their personal leadership style to the demands of the situation. With this model, Fiedler opened the path to many more Contingency or Situational based leadership model, many of which can be found in this article.