Situational and Contingency Approaches to Leaders
Critical Thinking Assignment
Situational and Contingency Approaches to Leadership
In this module, you will examine the main components of the situational and contingency approaches to leadership. Both approaches will be explored with regard to promoting innovation and organizational change. The situational approach to leadership focuses on the competence and commitment of subordinates for a specific task. It requires the leader to act with specific behaviors to encourage successful task completion. Contingency theory revolves around leaders who are either task-oriented or relationship-oriented and do not have the flexibility to move between each of these leadership types.
Question Requirements:
Leadership Practice
The Vice President of operations recently promoted you to branch manager and moved you to a new branch office where the morale among employees is low and performance is poor. Of the five employees, Amani has the most tenure with six years. Amani seems to have the lowest morale and is not motivated to do the work, although he is quite capable of doing it successfully. Bassmah has been with the company for four years but has not mastered the new software and is performing at a low level even three months after being trained on the software. Hadeel also has four years with the company and Rawan has two years. Hadeel and Rawan are responsible for client contact, and while in the past they worked well together on reaching out to clients, now there are conflicts and low morale. Samah has been with the company just three months and does not understand what is expected on the job and is contemplating leaving the company.
Approach the case as the branch manager well versed in situational leadership.
Explain situational leadership to your Vice President.
Determine the readiness level of each employee and explain your reasoning.
Determine the appropriate leader behavior to match the employee level and explain your reasoning.
Develop a plan of action as to how you will lead each person to higher performance and morale and explain it to your Vice President.
Directions:
Write an essay that includes an introduction paragraph, the essay’s body, and a conclusion paragraph to address the assignment’s guide questions. Do not address the questions using a question-and-answer format.
Your well-written paper should meet the following requirements:
Be 5 pages in length, which does not include the title and reference pages, which are never a part of the content minimum requirements.
Use Saudi Electronic University academic writing standards and APA style guidelines.
Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and theories from the textbook and at least two current, scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles. Current articles are those published in the last five years.
In advance of submission, review the grading rubric to see how you will be graded for this assignment.
Learning Outcomes
Critique the main components of the Situational Approach to leadership.
Critique the main components of Fiedler’s Contingency Model.
Analyze how these approaches facilitate innovation and organizational change to accomplish innovation and organizational change.
Readings
Required:
Leadership: Theory and Practice: Chapter 5 Situational Approach
Negro, A. R., & Mesia, R. (2020). Situational leadership and leader versatility. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 17(3), 109-121.
Weber, J. M. (2020). Individuals matter, but the situation’s the thing: The case for a habitual situational lens in leadership and organizational decision-making. Organizational Dynamics, 49(1), 1-8.
Recommended:
Chapter 5 PowerPoint slides – Leadership: Theory and Practice