Contingency Theories Unveiled

After reading the wiki article on the Fiedler Contingency Model, I found myself disagreeing with his theory.  I immediately thought of one of my past employers when it asked to think of someone that you had worked least well with.  I could recall a specific situation where my manager was very upset with me for taking time off in the summer to attend a family wedding out of state.  I had previously mentioned it to him, but he, of course, didn't remember that incident.  After throwing a temper tantrum in front of my other co-workers and guests, he threw a binder on the floor in front of me and played the silent treatment game with me for the rest of the day.  Now, if you ask me... this doesn't seem like a place ANYONE would want to work at.  He is definitely my Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC).  After rating him on the scale,  I gave him a score of 17 out of 32.  Fiedler believed that people who are "indeed relationship motivated, tend to describe their least preferred coworkers in a more positive manner."  This was not true in my situation.  I know that I am a relationship motivated person, and I do not describe my LPC in a positive manner.  Because of this disagreement, I relate best with the critics' points of view.  After reading further, Fiedler explained the differences between a task-oriented leader, a blue-collar worker, and a relationship-oriented leader.  I saw myself relating best with "The Considerate" (Relationship-oriented) style of leadership, and I saw my previous manager as being task-oriented.  This might have been why we never really got along. 

In comparison to the first article on Fiedler's Contingency Theory where he believed that people were either task-oriented or relationship-oriented, the article "High Task-Low Relationship Management: Is It Right for Payroll?" suggests that a person can have a combination of both task-oriented leadership and relationship-oriented leadership.  This is, what I found to be, the main difference between the two articles.  The second article allows a person to be low in one area and high in the other.  They divided up the different areas into 4 categories or titles (Telling, Selling, Participating, & Delegating).  I relate to this article more because I think that depending on the situation I am in, I can be more task-oriented rather than relationship-oriented.  This is also true in the above story about my past manager.  He may have just acted out of anger in that particular situation, but he doesn't necessarily always act that way in his everyday life.  One main similarity between the two articles is that they both discuss the possibility of your leadership style differing depending on the situation you are in or the environment that you are surrounded by.