In 1951, Fred E. Fiedler began to develop the first situational approach to leadership—the contingency theory of leader effectiveness. Fiedler believed that one’s leadership style reflects one’s personality and remains basically constant. The contingency model determines if the leadership style is task or relationship oriented. The first step is to determine whether your leadership style is task or relationship oriented. To do so, you fill in what Fiedler called the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) scale.

The LPC essentially answers this question: “Do you use a more task-oriented or relationship-oriented leadership style in working with others?” After determining leadership style, you determine situational favorableness. Situational favorableness refers to the degree to which a situation enables you to exert influence over followers. The more control you have over followers, the more favorable the situation. The three variables that determine situational favorableness are as follows.

Is the relationship between you and followers good or poor? Is the task structured (repetitive/routine) or unstructured (not repetitive)? Do you have position power? After determining your leadership style, you can answer the three questions pertaining to situational favorableness by following a decision tree to discover the best leadership style to a given situation.