Participatory Leadership Style

Participatory leadership is also known as open, free or nondirective leadership. People who adopt this approach have little control over the decision-making process. It simply provides information about a problem and provides an opportunity for team members to develop strategies and solutions. Here the task of the leader is to direct the team to reach consensus. The assumption underlying this leadership style is that employees will be better prepared to accept responsibility for the solutions, goals, and strategies in which they are empowered to develop them.

Mitch McCrimmon (2007) writes that being a participative leader means involving team members in decision making. This is important when creative thinking is needed to solve complex problems or make decisions that will impact team members.

 

According to Burhanuddin in his book Management Administration and Educational Leadership , defining participatory leadership style is the same as democratic leadership, namely a leader holding consultations with his subordinates regarding actions, decisions proposed or desired by the leadership, and trying to provide encouragement to participate actively in carrying out all activities. decisions and activities that have been determined.

The participatory leadership style places more emphasis on high support in decision-making and policy but little direction . The meaning of a little briefing here, the leader not only sits quietly and gives a lot of orders, but the leader himself also participates.

Participatory leadership can be viewed as a different type of behavior , although it can be used together to carry out specific tasks and demonstrate the behavior of the relationship between leaders and subordinates. For example, discussing with employees to design a flexible time system , can result in better planning of work schedules and can be a sign of the leader's concern for the needs of his employees.

In addition, participatory leadership style can increase subordinates' awareness of problems and influence subordinates to see new perspectives. Through this leadership style, the leader continues to stimulate the creativity of subordinates and encourage subordinates to find new approaches to old problems.