Leadership is one of the most significantly observed and examined phenomena which has remained debatable since ancient civilisations. No social, political and organisational subject has been explored more fanatically than leadership.
Leadership is a complex group process by which an individual applies influence over other people and inspires, motivates and directs their activities to help their followers in achieving collective goals.
Modern concepts of leadership emerge through the diverse political processes, complex career progressions and exceptional societal contributions developed during the twentieth century. The twenty-first century offers several novel challenges to effective leadership meshed with the moral philosophies, hyper-competitiveness, commercialism, internal and external environments, digitisation, sustainable economic prosperity, revolutionising social values, recognising fabric of multiculturism and the expanding globalisation. Leadership is a vital and arduous task, and it is the cornerstone of overall organisational success.
Leadership is not a newly discovered wonder. In fact, it has been cultivated progressively through numerous developmental perspectives and theories to create an evolutionary tree of leadership. The formal study of leadership has spanned across many cultures, revolutionary phases and theoretical beliefs; navigating through the nineteenth century of personality era to the twentieth century of the transformational era. In recent times, leaders face multifaceted regional, national and global challenges; therefore, leadership has taken on greater importance than ever before. Great leaders have profound art to powerfully communicate a vision that animates, motivates and inspires their followers. Certainly, successful leaders are also getting more familiar with the norms and principles of organisational, behavioural, psychological and socio-political sciences in the present integrative era of global leadership.
What does Fiedler’s contingency theory suggest that we can and cannot do as leaders?
This leader-centered theory argues a lack of flexibility in the leadership approach and does not believe in leadership quality enhancement to fit in all situations. Instead, Fiedler believes that the leader’s effectiveness is focused on natural leadership style and situational favourableness. Fielder suggests that leaders are either task-oriented/low-LPCs or relation-focused/high-LPCs which is situational contingent and cannot be both.
The theory emphasises that leadership style is fixed and not interchangeable, therefore, demands a leader to either concentrate on completing tasks or focus on building relationships.
According to Fiedler, both leadership styles do not work simultaneously in any situation and the best thing for a leader is to either change the environment or select the favourable situation because a leader cannot change his/her leadership style. Theory guides that once, leaders understand their leadership style and determine the situational influence and control based on leader-member linkages, task structure, and leader’s position power; then they can match their natural style to the situation in which that style is the most effective.
Fiedler recommends that leaders cannot build leader-follower relations at the same time they distillate on accomplishing tasks in any organisation. Although, leaders can provide necessary directions in accomplishing tasks or relationship building, however, the same leader cannot be suitable for dealing complex decision-making and unstructured tasks as well as avoiding and managing conflicts while nurturing leader-member relationships. Therefore, different leadership orientations/styles can draw different contingency plans to achieve organisational productivity at different points along the favorableness extents. As per Fiedler:
Task-masters perform more effectively in very favorable and very unfavorable conditions, while relationship-builders perform more effectively in moderate circumstances. Contemporarily, both styles of effective leadership can manifest their primary functions in unfavorable situations, yet, it is expected to have a shifting tendency in leadership style upon increased influence and control over the improved situation.
When can we change our leadership styles to suit the given situations as per the Hershey-Blanchard Leadership Model?
Hershey-Blanchard Model provides necessary flexibility in molding different leadership styles depending upon the desired level of outcomes and team members’ developmental/ readiness levels. This situational model states that leaders instead of using only one fixed style, should adjust their leading approach based on the circumstances that surround the task and the people they are interacting.
This approach advises new leaders to adapt to the situation as quickly as possible to make all team members beneficial in the end.
Hershey-Blanchard model suggests leaders to carefully modify their original leadership style(s) when dealing with their followers during telling/directing, selling/coaching, participating/supporting and delegating processes. Leaders must precisely assess team members’ maturity levels to categorise them in four progressive levels (D1 to D4): enthusiastic beginners, disillusioned learners, cautious contributors and self-reliant achievers for the better selection of relationship behaviours. The key idea is that leaders must be cognisant of situational factors for avoiding conflicts and maximising group performance.
Moreover, leaders to classify their team members based on the varied level of confidence, willingness, competence, knowledge, motivation and previous performance and provided training etc., and then adopt appropriate style(s) to set goals and responsibilities based on the individual’s capacity. For instance, if some members are at D4-level, then most likely leaders to delegate their tasks, but if followers are on D1 development phase then leaders must direct and coach them to achieve targets. While doing so, leaders must be vigilant in changing behaviours among the team players.
Improper actions due to misjudgment of competence levels might create difficulties and team conflicts. Directing D4-level group members may offend them, and delegating D1-level persons may overwhelm their feelings.
Therefore, despite just trusting team members’ knowledge and skills to perform a task, leaders to spend valuable time creating a detailed list of members’ capabilities and accordingly provide complete instructions.
How does Path-Goal Leadership Theory take into account the situation?
Path-Goal Theory is a complex combination of situational, contingent, and expectancy leadership approaches which emphasises the significance of motivational, empowerment and satisfaction factors from followers’ perspectives. This theory guides specific leading styles (directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented) that are best suited to diverse situations in achieving established goals. It suggests:
Leaders to first determine the employees and work environment characteristics, then select suitable leadership styles and ultimately focus on motivational factors to encourage and stimulate team members.
According to given situations, leaders to explain scope, clarify responsibilities, simplify the path, remove obstacles, provide guidance, and extend psychological support in complementing the employees’ efforts with appropriate rewards. Path-Goal theory guides leaders to apply suitable leadership behaviours to have preferred impacts on team players in different situations developed by either followers’ confidence deficit, ambiguous job/complex tasks, lack of job challenges and/or incorrect reward.
Path-Goal Theory demands effective leaders to wisely scan the environment and proactively adapt the best-fitting leadership behaviors to increase employees’ effort, satisfaction and the performance. This theory recommends leaders to choose supportive leadership behaviour to increase employees’ confidence by creating a friendly environment; directive leadership style to explain tasks and clarify the paths by clear directives; achievement-oriented leadership behaviour to set and strive higher goals by encouraging performance excellence, and the participative leadership style to motivate followers in decision-making and operations. In case, leaders apply incorrect leadership styles to mismatched situations then outcomes would be ineffective with unfavourable impacts.
Apart from this, leaders to also evaluate employees’ expectations and find the proper motivational instruments such as recognition, respect, job security, positions, promotion, training and financial incentives to satisfy and inspire different employees.
Therefore, leaders must accurately distinguish situational factors to apply motivational tools through their effective leadership behaviours. Leader-member continual interaction is also essential to fine-tune leadership styles to balance the situation.