Definition: The Participative Leadership Style often called as Democratic or Ideographic style wherein, the leader decentralizes the decision-making process and encourages his teammates to contribute towards the goals and share responsibility in them.
In participative leadership style, the leader motivates the team members to get physically and mentally involved in the group situations and give their opinions and ideas, but the power to make the final decision rests with the leader. Thus, a leader involves his subordinates in setting goals and objectives, team building and problem-solving, but keep the authority of final decision making with himself.
There are four types of participative decision-making style that a leader can adopt and which are explained in the link below:
Types of participative decision-making style
The participative leadership style is best suited in the situations where the leader wants to amend any change in the organization and finds easy to gain the support of his subordinates as they being the part of that decision process. Also, the group members feel that they are an important part of the group as their opinions are being valued, and their ideas are being taken into the consideration. They feel motivated and even perform in the absence of the leader. Their morale gets increased, and the sense of competitiveness decreases.
Although the participative leadership style has several advantages, it can result in a delayed decision making, and unnecessary huge cost could be incurred in the overall decision-making process.
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