Predicting the effects of leadership training and experience from the contingency model

Attempts to reconcile previous findings that leadership experience and training very often do not improve group and organizational performance. Experience and training can be viewed as improving the favorableness of the leadership situation. According to F. Fiedler's contingency model, this should increase the performance of low-least preferred coworker (LPC) leaders in very favorable and unfavorable situations, but decrease the performance of high-LPC leaders. It should increase performance of high-LPC leaders in intermediate situations but decrease that of low-LPC leaders. These hypotheses are supported by analyses of data from previous studies. (15 ref.)