Participative Leadership Essay

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Participative Leadership Theories Introduction It has long since the study of leadership has been a focus in management, psychology and organizational behavior with “over 35,000 research papers, articles and books written” on the topic in order to define leadership and understand which style is more conducive to effective leadership (Killian, 2007). Many academic and empirical researches cover wide range of information about leadership theory and characteristics that make a leader effective. It's difficult to predict who may turn out to be a successful leader and who might not, which is where participative leadership theories come from. The focus of this work is to identify information on participative perspectives of leadership. Participative leadership, also known as democratic leadership, is a style of leadership that consists of inviting subordinates to share thoughts and ideas in the decision making in order to gain organizational goals and objectives. A participative leader consults with subordinates, obtains their ideas and opinions, and integrates their suggestions into the decisions about how the group or organization will proceed (Northouse, 2013). According to this definition, participative leadership can be seen as a leadership style that relies heavily on the leader functioning as a facilitator rather than basically issuing tasks or making assignments. Since it is identified as a democratic leadership, researchers have found that it is usually one of the most effective and leads to higher productivity, better contributions from subordinates or followers, and increased group morale. In our democratic society whose essence is that everyone has a say in what happens to and around them, this style of leadership suits best to our society. This type of leadership theory can be utilized in business organizations, volunteer organizations, in the
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