The Fiedler Model of Leadership Fred Edward Fiedler (born July 13, 1922) is one of the leading researchers in industrial and organizational psychology of the 20th century. He was business and management psychologist at the University of Washington.He helped this field move from the research on traits and personal characteristics of leaders, to leadership styles and behaviours. In 1967 he introduced the contingency modeling of leadership, with the now-famous Fiedler Contingency Model. Identifying leadership style: Fiedler believes that a key factor in leadership success is the individual basic leadership style.He created the least preferred co-worker (LPC) questionnaire to identify that style by measuring whether a person is task or relationship oriented. The LPC scale asks a leader to think of all the people with whom they have ever worked and then describe the person with whom they have worked least well, using a series of bipolar scales of 1 to 8, such as the following:

Inefficient | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Efficient | Uncooperative | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Cooperative | Hostile | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Supportive | Unpleasant | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Pleasant | Guarded | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Open | | | | ….. | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | ….. | Unfriendly | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Friendly | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A high LPC score suggests that the leader has a "human relations orientation", while a low LPC score indicates a "task orientation". Fiedler assumes that everybody's least preferred coworker in fact is on average about equally unpleasant. But people who are indeed relationship motivated, tend to describe their least preferred coworkers in a more positive manner, e.g., more pleasant and more efficient. Therefore, they receive