Participative Style

1. Participative Leadership Styles (Lewin’s and Likert’s Model) Karlo D. Villanueva Discussant

2. Kurt Lewin’s Leadership Climates • In 1939 a German-American psychologist named Kurt Lewin categorized the environments in which people experience leadership into three different approaches. These approaches depend on the style of the leader and the result determines what Lewin described as the “leadership climate” of an organization. The three different styles or climates are: • Authoritative / Autocratic • Democratic / Participative • Laissez-faire / Delegative

4. 1. Authoritarian Leadership • An authoritarian leadership style is also referred to as an autocratic style. In this leadership style the leader makes the decisions with little or no input from the people who will be doing the actual work. In Lewin’s study he found that this leadership style led to the most discontent and produced the least creative solutions. He also found that it was difficult to make the switch from an authoritarian leadership style to a participative leadership style while the reverse was not so difficult. • Often an authoritarian style is associated with a abusive leadership. While the autocratic style can be done in an abusive manner, it is important to realize that a leader can use the autocratic leadership style without being abusive. In fact, there are some situations that call for an authoritarian style as the most effective.

5. 2. Participative Leadership • Participative leadership is also known as democratic leadership. In this leadership style, the leader consults with the group in order to make decisions. Subordinates have input and are given choices. The leader is still heavily involved in guiding the decision and usually retains the right to override team made choices as necessary. • Most leaders who make use of a democratic leadership style will still switch to the autocratic style occasionally when it is necessary or when a certain circumstances requires an autocratic decision to be made.

6. 3. Delegative Leadership • Delegative leadership is also referred to as the laissez-faire leadership style. This style is characterized by leaders who leave most of the decision making process up to their teams with very little input. Leaders who use this style of leadership typically take a hands-off approach. • This style is generally less effective than the autocratic or democratic styles. In situations where the team is highly skilled, delegative leadership can work, but if too much of the decision making is handled in a laissez-faire way, it can be detrimental to motivation. Since the leader is not closely involved, positive feedback for a well done job is often lacking. Motivation can suffer when positive actions don’t result in some type of positive feedback. On the flip side, a lack of criticism, suggestions and directions can damage motivation as well.

7. RenisLikert’s Management Systems • In the 1960s RenisLikert outlined four systems of management to show how managers and subordinates interact. The four systems are: • Exploitative Authoritative • Benevolent Authoritative • Consultative • Participative • Likertused his studies to create a model that successfully predicted the performance of organizations in the future based on the current management systems that were in place.

9. 1. Exploitative • In an exploitative system, subordinates follow the decisions of their leaders with little or no input. Aversion to negative consequences and punitive measures are the main motivating factor. An exploitative system falls under the authoritarian leadership style by Lewin, but it typically a negative working environment. • Exploitative systems typically have very poor communication and very little teamwork. Instructions come down from the person in charge and are given to the people doing the work, but there is very little feedback going up the chain of command. This means that leadership is operating without the benefit of knowing what is really happening in the work process.

10. 2. Benevolent • The benevolent system also falls under the authoritarian style, but the negative factors are replaced with positive rewards as the primary motivating factor. This system will typically have more communication and more teamwork than the exploitative system, but still ranks relatively low on both factors. • The differences in motivation leads to a better more positive view among the workers. In some cases it may result in a higher degree of loyalty to the organization. However, the problem with information not traveling back up the chain still exists and leadership still lacks the data necessary to make the best decisions.

11. 3. Consultative • This system involves a blend of Lewin’s authoritarian and participative style of leadership. There is more collaboration between leaders and their subordinates than either of the purely autocratic systems, but collaboration is usually limited to only certain areas. In many cases, communication appears to be flowing back up the chain of command, but subordinates are very careful what information they divulge. The culture of this system rarely makes workers feel free to express the truth when there are problems because there is not a strong sense of teamwork between different levels of the chain of command. • However, compared to the two authoritarian styles, this stye enjoys significantly more trust with subordinates and creates a great deal more communication—even if some of it is filtered. This facilitates a much higher degree of teamwork than the other styles in Likert’s model. This team work occurs both up and down the hierarchy and laterally among peers.

12. 4. Participative • The participative system matches nicely with the participative climate from Lewin’s research. In this system there is much more interaction between leaders and subordinates and communication flows freely. Motivation is based on rewards as well as the desire to perform well at mutually agreed upon tasks toward mutually agreed upon goals. • One of the biggest differences between this system and the consultative system is the degree of trust subordinates have for upper leadership. In the consultative system, workers are much more comfortable sharing bad news because there is less fear of reprisal on the bearer of the message. Problems are viewed as things that need to be fixed by the entire chain of command instead of something that needs to be blamed on someone.

13. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING! In matters of style, swim with the current;In matters of principle, stand like a rock.~T. Jefferson