The Main Event: Contingency Theory vs. Situational Theory

Contender One: Contingency Theory

Contingency Theory divides you up into either a task oriented leader or a relationship oriented leader.  This is determined by looking at the least preferred co worker scale.  A high score means you scored your least preferred co worker in a more positive light thus have a human relations origin, while a low score means you scored your least preferred co worker in a more negative light thus you are more task oriented.

Contender Two: Situational Theory

Situational Theory describes four different behaviors required of leaders: telling, selling, participating, and delegating.  Certain situations will require different behaviors so the above behaviors need to be applied during the appropriate time to be effective.

Round One

When looking at these two theories more closely one of the main weaknesses to me of Contingency Theory is that while you may feel great saying that you are more relationship oriented or more task oriented, because let’s face it we are human and we are all about finding and defining ourselves, the theory doesn’t leave room for you to adapt to situations.  Task oriented people are only good leaders in certain situations and relationship oriented people are only good leaders in certain situations.  So the theory states that if you are not properly suited for the leadership position you are in then the only solution is to remove you from that position.

Round Two

On the other side Situational Theory is a bit more flexible.  There are certain situations where the four different behaviors (Telling, selling, participating, and delegating) are appropriate.  The key to situational theory is not to get stuck in one behavior.  The telling behavior is completely appropriate for a manager and a new employee relationship, but as that new employee starts to learn their job and become more self sufficient it is important that the manager changes as well.  If a manager continues along the telling path and the employee no longer feel that it is necessary conflict could result.

Round Three

So for me personally Contingency Theory doesn’t hold much weight (that wasn’t even an intentional fighting pun and it made me cringe), one of the things I really think a great leader needs is to be able to adapt, that and I think determining the type of leader you are based off of what you think of the least favorite person you ever worked with is really weird.  Situational Theory if done right can be much more effective in my opinion but it takes a leader who is not going to get stuck in one type of behavior to really illustrate this theory effectively. 

The Winner

Situational Theory in a unanimous decision, yes I was the only one voting but this is my blog so I make the rules.   

Pop Pop

I don’t know how many of you watch Community but it is one of my favorite shows ever, and if you are a person who likes laughing than you should probably be watching, NBC Thursdays 8pm.  Aside from that Community’s latest episode was about running for Student President of Greendale Community College so I thought it was the perfect choice to apply some of our leadership theories to.  If you would like to check out the episode I am talking about it is currently up on hulu, Season 2 Episode 17, titled Intro to Political Science.  Below I am going to take a look at some of the characters and what leadership theories I think they best illustrate.

Annie – Annie is a character that I think illustrates Path-goal theory.  She does this by clarifying her goals throughout the race. Annie wants to remove mold, and balance the school budget “by removing administrative redundancies.”  She also tries to remove obstacles out of her way, her obstacle mainly being Jeff, so she shows the school his audition tape from the 90s for the Real World where he sings his version of George Michael’s Faith in order to embarrass him.

Jeff – During the race Jeff is definitely task oriented. The only reason Jeff decides to run for Student President is to prove to Annie that government is stupid.  Jeff uses lying and misleading tactics to get the voters on his side.  Jeff tries to play himself as the everyman, even stating at one point that his favorite color is a, “three way tie between red, white, and blue.”  Anytime that Jeff believes Annie is gaining ground with any of the voters he comes up with ways to make them like him more.

School Voters – I think to find the LMX theory present in the episode it is best to look at the Voter/Candidate relationship.  During the debate is where this theory is best illustrated.  I think that the Voter/Candidate relationship is in Phase 1, people aren’t really sure of any of the candidates but they are willing to follow for the benefits they are going to receive by having a Student President.

The Post Formerly Known as Prince

I feel like before you read on I need to insert a disclaimer, writing about other peoples’ blogs not my thing.  If I were to put it in terms the common man would understand I would rather watch the movie Nights in Rodanthe, 24 hours, every day, for the next year, but I’m not that lucky so here are my thoughts…

I’m going to begin with the least awkward part, who was lucky enough to have a point of view similar enough to mine?  I choose you… Tom, sorry I quote Pokemon when I’m nervous.  Time to refocus, so what exactly did I learn?  Well aside from Tom having it out for the people at PMAI we shared some pretty similar views on this whole leadership thing.  Tom doesn’t seem to be into the idea of trait based leadership either, though he may have found more middle ground with it than me, I believe I called it, “depressing,” while he more poetically stated, “if a person focuses too much on these traits they can miss some aspects of a great leader.”  Tom also picked honesty as one of the traits he admired so I guess that was pretty cool too.

And now it’s time to awkward this post up even more and take a look at what I learned from the person who had a differing point of view, EmilyAnn.  Well for starters I learned that you can in fact learn something from someone you don’t totally agree with.  EmilyAnn believes in the idea of trait based leadership, but she puts a different spin on it and talks about, “Natural Born Leaders,” and “In Times of Need Leaders.”  I thought this point of view was interesting mostly because I had never really thought about “In Times of Need Leaders” before.  It made me think about situations where there have been “In Times of Need Leaders” and while they may have been fairly suited for the current task, were they really suited for other leadership tasks?

Ok time to exhale because for the time being I am done having to write about other peoples’ blogs, it looks like Netflix and my mind have dodged a bullet. To Tom and EmilyAnn thank you for writing awesome blogs but just so you are aware I may not be able to look you in the eyes for the next week, it’s nothing personal.

Archetypes and Leadership

I like the idea of archetypes a lot better than I do the idea of trait based leadership because archetypes give everyone the idea of what type of leader you could be rather than saying this archetype makes you a leader and this one means you’re a big fat loser, yes a slight exaggeration.  I also like the idea of your archetypes changing throughout your life; I think this is a bit more realistic because I do believe who we are as people is constantly being shaped.  The idea that more than one archetype can be dominant is also soemthing I find interesting, a lot of times when you take similar personality type evaluations you are fit into a certain type but archetypes aren’t necessarily who you are all the time but more who you can be under certain circumstances.  I think the one thing that I am left thinking about however, is which archetypes actually influence who I am as a leader.  I can see all four of my dominant archetypes present in different aspects of who I am as a whole but I don’t know if I necessarily see all of them present in who I am as a leader, I think this is something I still would like to further consider.

What PMAI said about me?

PMAI Results

Your PMAI Scores:

Caregiver - 26

Destroyer - 25

Ruler - 25

Sage - 25

Creator - 24

Jester – 24

Orphan - 22

Seeker - 22

Lover - 22

Warrior - 21

Magician - 19

Innocent - 18

So I’m not really sure if it means anything that none of my scores were below an 18.  Does this means I have some access to all of the archetypes just some less than others, or have I managed to do the impossible and I actually just failed a personality test?  For the sake of this post let’s assume I did this correctly and take a closer look at my results.  I had 6 of the archetypes actually fall into the top range of active archetypes but the PMAI told me to just focus on the top four, so today I’m going to explore my thoughts on how I think I relate to the Caregiver, the Destroyer, the Ruler, and the Sage.

The Caregiver you assume you should help others:  I do see that there are places in my life where the Caregiver is probably quite active.  In general I tend to put the needs of others before my own, I don’t like to see others upset or discouraged and when I do my reaction is to want to fix it.  I even would go as far as saying that at times I experience feelings of guilt when I feel I should be putting another person’s needs first but for whatever reason, usually school or work, I am forced to put my needs first.  I don’t know however, if I had taken this test a couple of months ago if this would have come up as my most dominant archetype then. There have been a lot of changes in my life as of late that may have triggered this archetype to become more dominant.  I would be interested to take the PMAI again, maybe with in another year to see if the caregiver reverts back to where it probably would have been a couple of months ago, or if the changes I have experienced have the caregiver here to stay for a while.

The Destroyer you assume you should cut your losses: The Destroyer seems to live with the dilemma of being able to cut things out of their lives that no longer hold meaning to them rather easily and gracefully but when it comes to tragedy or misfortune moving on could mean having to recreate your life in order to move on.  I think I am in the latter process at the moment and have been asking myself some deep existential questions as of late.  This is another archetype that I am not sure would have been as dominant a couple months ago and another one I would like to look at again in the future.

The Ruler you assume that you should exercise control: I definitely can see the Rulers influence in my life.  I think this archetype is definitely more present in my school and work life than my social life.  I am someone who will usually take on the job that nobody else wants or the job that someone is too lazy to do.  I think that one good thing about being in the hospitality major is that most of us have probably experienced a similar situation.  A lot of us were probably the kids who thought we knew how to do things best and took control of situations because of that, and let’s be honest we probably did know best.  The surprising thing for me is that being in this major hasn’t made me feel as obligated to take control of every situation.  I feel more comfortable letting other people take control in certain situations because I am around more people with a work ethic closer to mine. This has allowed me to choose to take control of projects that I am most passionate about and not take control of situations because I feel I am the only one who can.

The Sage you assume that “the truth will set you free”:  The sage is present in the part of my life that requires decision making.  I tend to like to think things through and look at things from multiple perspectives before I commit to anything.  I think that this can be both a benefit and a hindrance.  I think the benefit is my decisions are probably a lot more objective than most, a lot of times I am able to see both sides of an argument, where someone else may get angry trying to look at another perspective.  I also can see where gathering information can become a hindrance to decision making, because I crave information when making a decision I may have a hard time deciding at what point I have gathered enough information and thus I may put off making decisions until I feel comfortable.

Traits worth Admiring

“In matters of style, swim with the current;

In matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

-Thomas Jefferson

Even though I don’t necessarily believe in the idea of trait based leadership there are leadership traits I admire.  Among them are commitment, honesty and compassion. 

Commitment: A person who can stand by their beliefs is someone I believe is strong enough to be a leader.  Sometimes people may feel it is easier to go with the beliefs of others, but a person who can truly stand by their beliefs is someone who can be resilient when they encounter the difficult.

Honesty: I think commitment walks hand in hand with honesty, being able to commit to something and then actually do it instills faith in your followers.  Being honest in good times is easy; being honest in bad times is difficult.  People may not always like what the truth is, but you will never gain respect by being dishonest.

Compassion: Keeps a leader grounded; someone who is able to feel empathy will consider others.  When people feel like they are present in your decisions they are more likely to respect and agree with them.

Trait based Leadership…The Good and the Bad

The Good…

To begin I really don’t believe in trait based leadership, but for the sake of this post I will pretend I do.  So hypothetically if I was someone who believed in trait based leadership I would say that it would allow people to identify potential leaders early on and help develop them to be better leaders.  It would also allow people to better understand the work they were better suited for. 

The Bad…

Trait based leadership is just depressing.  I think it would leave people who feel like they have something to offer to leadership and didn’t possess the standard traits a bit defeated.  A problem I find in trait based leadership is traits can be used to hide a lack of knowledge or even malice.  A confident and charismatic person could come along and be able to speak eloquently and end up in a position of power and not have any idea what they are doing. Another issue I have with trait based leadership, and it may be with this whole trying to define leadership thing, is that not everyone admires the same things in people.  Some people may apply more weight to certain traits then others when discussing what they think makes a good leader.  Character is something we build throughout life and through our experiences.  So much life happens between birth and when people are put in a leadership position, and I think more goes on than just developing the traits you were born with. Traits are a part of who we are but there is so much more that can be explored in a person and in a leader.