Development and Socialization of Leadership Style in Children and Adolescents

This paper reviews a number of studies that have tested Fiedler's (1964) Contingency Model and Least Preferred Co-Worker Scale of leadership style and effectiveness, focusing on studies that have examined the characteristics and stability of this scale across age, ethnicity, and gender. The Contingency Model is based on three determinants of situation favorability. They are, in order of importance: leader-member relations, task structure, and position power. These studies demonstrate that ratings of leadership style can be obtained at ages as young as 4 years (for females), and that for older adolescents these ratings have some stability over a long period of their lifetime. They also have shown that the Contingency Model itself has validity in educational settings across a range of age groups from the middle elementary years into late adolescence and adulthood. (Contains 13 references.) (MDM)