BUS603: Managing People

Stogdill and Mann found that while some traits were common across a number of studies, the overall evidence suggested that persons who are leaders in one situation may not necessarily be leaders in other situations. According to this approach, called contingency theory, no single psychological profile or set of enduring traits links directly to effective leadership. Instead, the interaction between those individual traits and the prevailing conditions is what creates effective leadership. In other words, contingency theory proposes that effective leadership is contingent on factors independent of an individual leader. As such, the theory predicts that effective leaders are those whose personal traits match the needs of the situation in which they find themselves. Fiedler's contingency model of leadership focuses on the interaction of leadership style and the situation (later called situational control). He identified three relevant aspects of the situation: the quality of the leader's relationships with others, how well structured their tasks were, and the leader's amount of formal authority.