Participative Management Style Advantages & Disadvantages
Bradford R. GlaserEvery manager has a different method of leading their team, and it's important to understand your leadership method. When you understand your leadership method, you can lead your team with greater confidence and effectiveness because you know how you come across to others, and how to leverage your strengths.
In this post, we'll take a look at the participative management style and the advantages and disadvantages of this approach so you can enhance your leadership skills.
Let's get into it!
- Discover your leadership style
- Learn to flex your style for others
- Improve leadership skills
Table of Contents
What Is the Participative Management Style?
Those who use a participative management style base their decisions on group feedback. While team input is highly encouraged, the ultimate decision is made by the leader rather than the group as a whole.
Participative managers are very involved with their employees and always ensure that they are thoroughly informed about any given situation. They place a high priority on employee development and offer subordinates plenty of growth opportunities. Participative leaders are also very attuned to team morale. If they sense that morale is low, they take action quickly to improve it.
Since participative leaders provide their team with all the information and skills needed to succeed, they feel confident asking for input when decisions arise.
Advantages of the Participative Management Style
Here are the advantages of a participative management style:
- Increase team morale. Participative leaders give every team member a voice. Because employees play an active role in the company's success, they are more motivated and engaged in their work.
- Promote collaboration. Employees are given the flexibility to work together to reach goals, plan, and help one another. Collaboration contributes to higher morale and better teamwork.
- Uncover creative solutions. Since employees are encouraged to collaborate, there is a free-flowing exchange of ideas that often leads to innovative solutions.
- Teams more readily accept decisions. Knowing that each team member contributed to the decision-making process makes employees feel more confident about the final outcome.
- Improve employee retention. Participative managers foster an environment that makes people feel genuinely valued. They give employees plenty of development opportunities – showing that there is room for them to grow within the company – and offer them chances to implement their ideas. This significantly improves employee retention.
Disadvantages of the Participative Management Style
Here are the disadvantages of a participative management style:
- Inhibit swift decision-making. Since participative managers want each team member to weigh in on the situation, this can lengthen the decision-making process. When an urgent matter arises, this type of leader may take too long to reach a conclusion.
- Increase the likelihood of conflict. When multiple people are voicing differing opinions, it is likely to happen. While conflict doesn’t necessarily have to be negative, participative leaders must be prepared to handle disagreements when they arise.
- Diminish the quality of expertise. If you have a specialist on your team with valuable insight into the decision, their knowledge may be drowned out by others' opinions.
- Require employee participation. Participative management only works if employees are willing to engage. Employees may not want to voice their opinion for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they are shy by nature, don’t enjoy group discussions, don’t have enough knowledge on the subject to weigh in, or are simply. In any case, managers won’t get the results they’re looking for without an active team.
When Does Participative Management Work Best?
The participative management style works particularly well in the following situations:
- Organizations with a strong company culture. When employees are invested in the company, they will take it upon themselves to stay informed to help make decisions and lead the business to success.
- As mentioned previously, when urgent decisions don’t need to be made often, participative managers have a difficult time making swift decisions.
- Creative job fields. Drawing on a variety of perspectives often leads to out-of-the-box ideas, which are essential in creative fields.
- When multiple solutions are beneficial, there are often multiple solutions to a single problem. In some cases, employing a few different ideas can yield great results.
Improve Your Management Style with HRDQ
As you can see, there are both advantages and disadvantages to the participative management style. To grow as a manager, it’s important to thoroughly understand your leadership style and learn to flex it to meet the needs of your employees and your organization.
To start leading your team even better than before:
- Explore the HRDQ Style Suite for online assessments that can allow you to benchmark your current skills, strengths, and weaknesses.
- Explore the Supervisory Skills Training by HRDQ that will assist you in developing your managerial skills.
Soon, you and your team will be working together flawlessly to increase productivity, efficiency, and communication.
