Participative Leadership - Term Paper Example

This paper discusses various aspects and forms of participative leadership. Participative leadership plays an important role in empowering the organization’s members as well as instilling perception that the employees can establish their work roles and achieve consequential work. Participative leadership is arguably one of the modern styles of leadership that emphasizes on follower’s perspective and creates a distinctive leadership style and approach. There are varieties of forms of participative leadership that can be applied by the leadership or management.

A number of theorists agreed on distinctive and meaningful decision making procedures namely autocratic, consultation, joint decision and delegation. It is important to note that the decision making procedures vary from non participative autocratic decision making which is almost outdated to very participative decision making procedures. In participative decision making procedures, the members have great influence on the outcome of the decision made. However, there are both positive and negative influences of participation (Ricketts, 2011).

Participative leadership offers an array of potential benefits such as higher decision quality and overwhelming approval by the participants. The participants are normally satisfied with the decision making process as well as having a good opportunity for developing decision making skills. Participative decision making process may lead to contribution and sharing of knowledge. Members of the organizations may have vital knowledge, talent or skills in solving the issue at hand which the leader may not have thus improving the quality of decision made.

Participation in decision making can further make the participants perceive the decision as their s by owning it thus boosting the implementation of the decision. This kind of leadership usually emphasize on avoidance of issues that bring conflict amongst members by either improving on the issues