Leadership Style

Nguyen Nguyen

Researching Participative Leadership

I am a freshman at Johnson and Wales University. As I study more about leadership and many leadership styles, then I want to choose a leadership style that fits best to me and start building it. After researching and taking tests from books and Internet, I choose Participative Leadership as my leadership style.

            Participate Leadership style becomes familiar in recent decades. It is also known as Democratic Leadership. Participate Leadership style is, “Distributing responsibility among the membership, empowering group members, and aiding the group’s decision-making process.” (Gastil). We can understand that Participative Leadership is the action of sharing the authority of giving decisions and stay side by side with team members of a leader (DuBrin 125). We have three subtypes of a Participative Leaders: Consultative Leaders, Consensus Leaders, and Democratic Leaders. Consultative Leader let team members giving him their advices for solving a problem. However, he is the person who gives out the final decisions. Consensus Leader will open a discussion about an issue. All people will have a chance to contribute their ideas for input. The final decision will be made after everyone gives his/her idea to support for the final decision. Consensus Leader will listen to all ideas of team members and try to make a decision that satisfy people. Democratic Leader is collector of people’s ideas. He will function ideas become a group and let people take a vote before making final decision.

            Participative Leadership is highly involved in Relationship-oriented Leadership because it is management openness. A leader who has management openness will motivate workers to say their opinions. He will listen to them, shows out his interesting to their opinions, and use their suggestions in some cases. Listening to worker opinions is one of important step in building Participative Leadership. Ideas from below people are really trusting about actual performance of a company. Those ideas are from people who are having face to face problems. They are the nearest people who dealing with customers and other human resources every day. Listening to them, a leader can fully describe a picture of his company. Especially, when he listens to workers, he will motivate them by showing that their opinions are important to him so they feel happy and contribute more to company.

The Participative Leadership has a lot of advantages for managing workers. In the modern time, as now, we need to collaborate ideas from people to make better decision. Participative Leadership based on putting people to work together and sharing information, so people will take high responsibility in their works and put more efforts on them. We can see that Participative Leadership is best fit in managing people who are actively in contributing their information and eager to take responsibility for their decisions. There are also some disadvantages of using Participative Leadership. Because Participative Leadership requires meeting face to face between people to make decisions, so it will take more time for making a final decision. There are some modern technologies used to solving this problem. However, we still need time for discussing, so it still takes a lot of time for making final decision. There is another problem that warned by Locke and his colleague David Schweiger. Leaders use Participative Leadership in managing people that may create bad effects if they ignore opinions of their team members. When people feel that their opinions are ignored, it can lower their satisfaction and productivity (Locke 267). So, leaders must be careful when using this leadership style.

After researching about Participative Leadership, I think it is related to Path Goal Theory of Robert House was published in 1971. Path Goal Theory stated about a leader can make his team feel satisfaction, being motivated, and make better performance by showing the path goals and remove obstacles on this path (House 321). It can be understanding that a leader will show you goals and support you by removing obstacles prevent you from that goals. Follow the theory, we have four types of leaderships are using depend on the environment. There are: Directive Leadership, Supportive Leadership, Participative Leadership, and Achievement-oriented Leadership. In Directive Leadership, leaders will give the guides for employee to complete a task. In this situation, the employee may be a new one in this work, so leader need to teach him how to complete this work. In Supportive Leadership, leaders will show out their concern with team member about the task. They can say something such as, “Don’t worry. I will stay beside you.” The leader will use it when he wants his worker begin to solve small problems by himself and learn from them. However, the leader always be there if his worker need any support from him. It is very useful to help workers can improve themselves. In Participative Leadership, leader will become the consultant for team members and listen to their suggestion. Leader will collaborate the worker opinions and consider them before making decisions. In this case, workers have more experience, so the leader can open a discussion, and ask them to contribute their ideas as input for solving a problem. In Achievement-oriented Leadership, leader will put high goals and expect his team member can complete it. In this case, team member has a lot of experience through long time working in those situations. The leader can choose an employee who has the best skills for solving that issue and give him full authority to deal with it. We can see that Participative Leadership and Path Goal Theory are related together because it is involving in a leader supports his team members to be improving and become better.

I think the Participative Leadership is quite fit with myself. Follow the Leadership Self-Assessment 4-1 in the book "Leadership Behaviors, Attitudes, and Styles” by DuBrin, I scored 5/10 in that quiz. It means that I have an average relationship-oriented attitudes and behaviors (DuBrin 116). Following the table 4-2 in the same book by DuBrin, I found myself have some relationship-oriented attitudes and behaviors: Aligning people, openness to worker opinions, creating inspiration and visibility, giving emotional support and encouragement (DuBrin 117). I think I can talk with many people and align them to work smoothly together. I also very welcome the ideas from my employers about the problems and collect them to build the solutions. I can easily tell my people the visionary about future and inspire them to get that. I am also an empathy person who always share the emotions with my people to help them get through hard situations. Especially, follow the Leadership Self-Assessment 4-2 in the same book by Dubrin, I scored very high in that quiz which is 14/20 (DuBrin 128). It means that I am likely to be a Participative Leader that is the reason I choose Participative Leadership as my leadership style.

As I mentioned above, Participative Leadership style is the best using in firms where there are a lot of skillful people surrounding. A Participative Leader tends to collaborate Participative Leadership and Path Goal Theory together to head up to Achievement-oriented Leadership. Achievement-oriented Leadership is the final stage that a Participative Leader wants to get. At that stage, the leader just need to find the person who is the best person to handle that work and give it to him. A very good example is Steve Jobs. He came back to Apple in 1997, and began apply his Participative Leadership (Eric, “What is Democratic/Participative Leadership? How Collaboration Can Boost Morale”). He chose Jony Ive as the Head of Design, Jon Rubistein as Head of Hardware, Tim Cook as Chief Operating Officer. Steve Jobs as an Achievement-Oriented Leader, he gave them full authority in making key decisions. Steve Jobs could do that because people who were chosen by him were experts in their aspects. So, Steve Jobs saved Apple from bankruptcy and made it become one of the most valuable firms in this world with $350 billion market capitalization. Another very good example is Donald Trump, our 45^th U.S President. He builds a hotel empire all over the U.S. Donald Trump shows out his Participative Leadership by asking his employees about problems they are facing for their inputs in solving problems. He also used very well the Path Goal Theory in his management. Sometimes he gives out directions to guide for his employees as a Directive Leader. He always keeps himself approachable to his employees when they need his support as a Support Leader. “Everyone who knows me knows that I keep the door to my office open. It’s symbolic of the way I choose to think, and it’s the way I operate.” (Mclver, Trump 35).

For my future career as an accounting manager, I think Participative Leadership and Path Goal Theory work very well with me. At the beginning, new people come to the firm with very little experience in accounting, then I can become Directive Leader to give them directions on how to complete a tax paper. After that, when they begin familiar with their works, then I will become Supportive Leader to give people small accounts and let people complete these accounts by themselves. I also become Consultative Leader to help anyone who have questions about his work. After working in long time, people in my team will have professional skills in their accounting jobs. So, I can become Participate Leader and Consensus Leader. I will invite them into discussions and ask for their opinions about complex problems. I will consider all ideas before making the decision that satisfy people. After working for nine to ten years, my people will become senior accountants, and some of them may have CPA license too. So, I can become Democratic Leader and Achievement-oriented Leader. At that time, my people are ready for dealing big accounts by themselves, so I only need to choose who has the best skill in dealing with these big accounts. 

Among many leadership styles, I think Participative Leadership is the best leadership style that fits to me. I will begin to building it on today for supporting my future. I will read more books about successful leaders in this world to learn about their way in using Participative Leadership. I will build my own leadership style which conclude not only Participative Leadership but also other leadership styles such as: Charismatic Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Entrepreneurial Leadership. All of them will form for myself a role model of an Accounting Manager in future. It is a long road to go, so I decide begin to walk on it right today.

Works Cited

DuBrin, Andrew. "Leadership Behaviors, Attitudes, and Styles." Leadership: Research Findings, Practices, and Skills. South-Western College, 2015, p. 125.

DuBrin, Andrew. "Leadership Behaviors, Attitudes, and Styles." Leadership: Research Findings, Practices, and Skills. South-Western College, 2015, p. 117.

Eric, Gill. "What is Democratic/Participative Leadership? How Collaboration Can Boost Morale." Leadership is Learned, St. Thomas University Online, 24 November 2014, http://online.stu.edu/democratic-participative-leadership.

Gastil, John. "A Definition and Illustration of Democratic Leadership." Human Relations, Vol. 47, 8 November 1994, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2748342.

House, Robert J. "A Path Goal Theory Of Leader Effectiveness." Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 16, No.3, 1971, p. 321.

Locke, Schweiger. "New Directions in Organizational Behavior." Research in organizational behavior: an annual series of analytical essays and critical reviews, Vol. 1, 1979, p. 265-339. 

Trump, D., J, Mclver, M. "How to get rich quick." Random House, 2004, p. 35.