Use transactional theory to obtain compliance from a member of staff who needs to be persuaded to comply with your request. It was James MacGregor Burns who popularized the transactional theory. In doing so he described a process that has been going on between leaders and followers, managers and staff and parents and children since…
Category: Leadership
Contingency Theory – Leadership Theories Series
Use contingency theory to assess how favorable or unfavorable your situation is and identify which factors you need to address to improve the situation. Fred Fiedler’s contingency theory tries to match leaders to posts in which they will be successful. It’s called contingency theory because it suggests that a leader’s effectiveness will be contingent upon…
Situational Theory – Leadership Theories Series
Use situational theory with staff every time you give them a new task to perform. If you’ve ever been on a middle managers’ leadership course there is a good chance that you are familiar with Ken Blanchard’s and Paul Hersey’s situational leadership theory. It’s widely used by trainers and popular with managers because it provides…
Action Centered Leadership – Leadership Theories Series
Use action centered leadership to remind you that you have to continually balance the needs of the task, the team and the individual and that on occasions you will have to emphasize the needs of one over the other two. John Adair’s action centered leadership model contains elements of both style and contingency theory. He…
Leadership Grid – Leadership Theories Series
Use the leadership grid to confirm your preferred leadership style while recognizing that you can change your style as circumstances require. Blake and Mouton built upon basic style theory and produced their leadership grid. The grid identifies how much concern the leader has for getting the job done (task-centered) and for their staff (person-centered). They…