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In order for an organization to survive and prosper, it must have strong leadership. Effective leaders within an organization must motivate, inspire and initiate change. They must be able to anticipate threats and opportunities within their organizations, develop responses and implement action plans to facilitate the continual improvement of their organizations. There have been many attempts to define leadership and different leadership styles, as well as the roles that leadership plays within an organization. It is my intent to describe various leadership theories in business settings and how leadership can be used to initiate and manage change within organizations. All of this information will be based on the research that I have done as well as my personal experience.

Over the years many models for leadership have been developed. Contingency models are based on the premise that in order to be effective, leaders must be able to adapt their leadership style to meet the demands of their environments. One of the earliest contingency models was Fiedler’s (1964, 1967) LPC Contingency Model. Fiedler developed the least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale to use as a measure of one’s leadership orientation. A high LPC score suggests that a leader is more likely to be human relations oriented, while a low LPC score indicates that a leader will be more task oriented. According to Fiedler, both types of leaders can be highly effective given that their leadership orientation matches the situation. The situation will be most favorable for the leader when the task is highly structured, the leader has a high position of power and the relationships with employees are good. While Fiedler’s LPC model was one of the first contingency models and is credited with sparking increased interest and research in situational factors, the model is not without its shortcomings. Fiedler’s model has often been criticized for not being stable over time because its...