Situational variables are environmental factors that unintentionally affect results.  According to the contingency theory, situations are characterized by three factors, which are; leader-member relationship, task structure and position power (Northouse, 2013).  Leader- member relations consist of the atmosphere of the group, the degree of confidence, attraction and loyalty followers feel for their leader. Task structure is the degree to which tasks are clear and spelled out. For tasks to give more control, they must be completely structured, or else they will be fake.  The last characteristic is the position power, which is the level of authority a leader has to reward or to punish followers. leader–follower relations, defined tasks, and strong leader–position power characterize the most successful situations and vice versa (Goldenberg, 1990).

Situation variables affect task motivated leaders in that; these leaders are effective in smooth and out of control situations. On the other hand, relationship motivated leaders are favorable in moderately favorable situations where things are partly under control and partly out of control (Northouse, 2013).  In my place of work, I am under the department of sales and marketing.  There was a time when sales had gone down, and this situation made the relationship between the leaders and the followers got worse, and we lost our powers to influence. Later, we realized that our job structures were not so clear and so there was a lot of duplication of tasks¸ having some difficult jobs done by no one.  When we defined our tasks clearly, things slowly got back to the track.  The greatest factor that affected us the most was the task structure because as we clearly defined the tasks, the other two variables were corrected.  Under the LPC scale, this situation falls on the low LPC score.  Task-motivated leaders do well in low LPC score, and we are task motivate.

References

Goldenberg, D. (1990). Nursing education leadership: Effectof situational and constraint variables on leadership style. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 15(11), 1326-1334.

Northouse, P. (2013). Leadership theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN: 9781452203409.

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