What is Participative Leadership?
What is Participative Leadership?
Participative leadership inspires employee engagement through collaboration and open exchange of ideas.
There will come a time when you must choose which leadership style best suits you. One of the most effective leadership styles is participative leadership. Participative leadership is sometimes called democratic leadership wherein the leader retains the final say-so of any decision-making process, but staff members are encouraged to play a part.
What is the participative leadership style?
All companies need to have effective leadership. Without it, the business could fail. Participative leadership has a history that goes back to the 1930s. Over the years, executives discovered that leveraging collaboration and a team-based democratic approach improved productivity and increased motivation from staff who worked together to solve problems. This has become known as the participative leadership style. Leaders who include their employees in the decision-making process end up with employees who feel vested in the success of the organization.
4 Participative leadership styles
Many businesses opt for a top-down management approach where the executives hold all of the power. A participative leader relinquishes some of his power to staff. Oftentimes this management style works best in low-pressure environments that don't require quick turnaround.
However, there are ways to adapt participative leadership to more demanding environments by using one of the following four styles:
Consensus participative leadership. If you opt to utilize this leadership style, you will basically be a facilitator. Everyone in your group must agree on decisions.
Collective participative leadership. Here, all responsibility for the decision-making process and the outcomes of the decisions made fall on the group as a whole.
Democratic participative leadership. As a democratic participative leader, you will have some control over what the group does. Think of it as veto power.
Autocratic participative leadership. This leadership style is similar to democratic in that you have power over the group; it’s just at a higher level. No matter how unique an idea is, you can override it.
If traits like emotional intelligence and collaboration appear on your list of soft skills, you might be a good fit as a participatory leader.
How to use participative leadership
Just because participative leadership means that everyone gets to take part in operational processes, doesn't mean that you throw your staff members into a project without giving them guidance. As a participative leader, you have to take into account team member acumen, and you have to encourage the free flow of information.
How to engage your staff in the participative leadership style
Effectively preparing your team for the tasks ahead of them increases engagement, boosts morale, encourages independence, and in some cases, steward the career progression of your team members.
Participative leadership works well with in-person roles and remote roles. If you use these tips, you'll be able to effectively execute a participative leadership style regardless of your location:
Create a virtual space for information sharing
Hold meetings to encourage accountability and transparency
Have an achievement plan containing SMART goals put into place
What are the pros and cons of participative leadership?
As with anything in life, there are good things and bad things about the participative leadership style. It is a slow process that can sometimes increase costs. You have to balance that with the type of culture you want to build for your team.
The pros
The participatory leadership style encourages staff to come together and build a sense of unity. Obviously, unity breeds inclusivity and equality. The cohesion your team could build will allow them to solve the most complex problems.
Some other pros to participative leadership:
Effective change management. When your staff feels it’s been instrumental in implementing major change, they are more likely to adapt to that change quickly.
Employee retention. Employees who participate in the daily goings on at a company are happier.
Creative thinking. Staff who are not members of participative leadership can lose some of their ability to challenge the status quo. They get stuck in a routine and become stagnant. By continually engaging staff, you foster creativity.
The cons
On the flip side of all that good, there are a few negatives. Again the participative leadership style is a slow process that can cost money especially if decisions aren't made in a timely manner. it can also be challenging to facilitate the participative leadership style if you have a large group of people on your team.
Some other cons to participative leadership:
Trade secrets. Inevitably, involving a group of people in a process can cause information to leak out to places it shouldn't.
Popularity contests. Whether you are aware of it or not, there is likely a clique or group of friends that will influence each other's decisions.
Indecision. Putting a decision in front of a group of people doesn't necessarily mean that you will walk away with an epiphany. Some people care about some things more than they care about other things. This can cause their levels of participation to fluctuate depending on the situation.
How to get past the challenges and apply a participative leadership style
Depending on your environment, the participative leadership style’s advantages usually outweigh the disadvantages. Effectively leading your team and encouraging cross-functional collaboration in a safe environment will help you get past the cons associated with the participative leadership style.
As a participative leader, the systems and processes that you create will help solicit input from your team. Here are some ideas for ensuring you are being effective.
Implement long-term goals and clearly defined objectives. This can be accomplished by putting regular meetings into place to update project status and brainstorm initiatives that resolve problems to keep things moving forward. Alternatively, you can send out reminder emails about impending deadlines.
Have a system by which you respond to input and opinions. It isn’t efficient to put everyone into a room and ask for ideas. That’ll be a free-for-all that you just can’t control. On top of that, having a set method for receiving and processing ideas reduces emotions and allows people to vote on ideas and topics the way they want.
Place value on participation. Participative leadership is only effective if everyone participates, hence the name. It allows information to flow vertically and horizontally because great ideas can come from anywhere.
Conclusion
If you are able to delegate tasks and provide leadership opportunities for your employees, you'll probably make a great participative leader. Lean on high levels of confidence and allow your staff members to exhibit curiosity. In the end, you will have a strong team that works together to get things done.
If you are looking for a role that will allow you to exercise a commitment to the participative leadership process, you’ll need a stellar resume. ZipJob has a team of professional resume writers standing by to help you put your best foot forward in moving into a leadership role.
Related reading:
Written by
Marsha Hebert, Professional Resume Writer
Marsha is a resume writer with a strong background in marketing and writing. After completing a Business Marketing degree, she discovered that she could combine her passion for writing with a natural talent for marketing. For more than 10 years, Marsha has helped companies and individuals market themselves. Read more advice from Marsha on ZipJob's blog.
