Week 3 Discussion 2 Leadership Styles

Identify four leadership styles associated with path-goal theory. Explain each style and relate it to styles described in other theories. Can leaders exhibit more than one style? 

Week three lecture

Chapter Six 

Let’s start with Chapter 6, Contingency Theory. According to our text book, “contingency theory is a leader matched theory, which means it tries to match leaders to appropriate situations. It is called contingency because it suggests that a leader’s effectiveness depends on how well the leader’s style fits the context” (Northouse, 2013, p. 123). Another description that might be easier to understand is; “Contingency theories hold that leadership effectiveness is related to the interplay of a leader's traits or behaviors and situational factors” (Seyranian, 2012, para1). Some may recall Cliff Notes, which basically provides an overview of what a book or topic was about. Similar to what Wikipedia does today, with the exception that Cliff Notes were published, whereas anyone can go online and update Wikipedia. The Cliff Note on Contingency theory is as follows; “Contingency theory proposes that for learning to take place, a stimulus must provide the subject information about the likelihood that certain events will occur” (Cliff Notes, 2013, para1). Now that we have identified what Contingency Theory stands for, let’s dive a little deeper and look at the situational variables that impact this theory. 

According to our text book, there are three main factors; Leader-member relations, task structure and position power (Northouse, 2013).

 • Leader member relations is when there is a group of followers that have emotions for their leader (Northouse, 2013). 

• Task structure is when there is a level of requirements of a task that are clearly provided (2013). 

• Position power is the level of authority a leader has to either reward or punish followers (2013). 

Chapter Seven 

Chapter 7 focused on Path-Goal Theory. This theory is really about how a leader motivates followers to accomplish goals (Northouse, 2013). For those of you that follow the term empowerment, this is a leadership style that is often found. How many of you work with leaders that truly motivate you to want to do your job or want to do it better? How many of you are excited to go to work to see what your leader will challenge you with today? This is what a Path-Goal Leader works to achieve. It is recommended that you review Table 7.1: Path Goal Theory; How it Works in the required text. This table provides a very clear outline of the behaviors of the leader, the characteristics of the subordinates and the task characteristics. Below is a video that does a nice job of illustrating examples of Path-Goal Theory.