Five Styles of Leadership
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A participative leadership style takes into consideration the opinions and thoughts of the subordinates before making a decision.
This type of leader is useful especially in situations where you can tap on the talent of your team.
Ultimately, you may not be the most equipped in your team to handling situations so you might want to make a collective decision with your team.
A board of directors often behave in this fashion, where before a decision is made, the whole board is consulted and then a decision be made unanimously.
The responsibility of the decision will be bore by the whole team as a result.
To have skills as a leader in this area, you must have the skill of facilitation; to learn how to facilitate discussion and idea generation in a group.
Sometimes people don’t speak up for various reasons and your job as a leader in this case is to draw everyone to speak up so that you can tap on everyone’s thoughts and potential.
This is important because everyone must be willing to bear equal responsibility for a decision that is put forward.
This form of leadership probably works best in the setting of large organizations where there are a lot of shareholders or directors.
Bass and Colleagues
Five Styles Of Leadership
Bernard M Bass developed this model for types of leadership based on two simple objectives; which is task orientation and people orientation. The leadership styles proposed below reflect different levels of task and people orientation.
» Directive leadership style
The directive leader tells his followers what to do, and how to do it exactly. He specifics standards required of his followers and exercise firm authority over them.
» Consultative leadership style
The consultative leader seeks the counsel of the whole team before making a decision on what the team should do. He is also task oriented, but he seeks the opinion of his followers as well.
» Participative leadership style
The participative leader puts himself as a member of the team and discusses possible decisions with the team. He seeks consensus before coming to a decision and everyone is supposed to take ownership in the final decision.
» Negotiative leadership style
The negotiative leader employs a more political approach to leadership. He has a personal interest in his decisions and he uses incentives to entice his followers to do certain things.
» Delegative leadership style
He takes back seat toward decision making, and allows his team to take their own course of action. He only sits down together with the team to discuss possible decisions that could be adopted.
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