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Pros And Cons Of Leadership Theory

Decent Essays

Week 3 Leading with Institutions
Jennifer Keck Leadership Approach and its Pros and Cons
There are several ways that decision making can take place in an organization, one way is through directive leadership and another is through participative leadership. With directive leadership, the leader makes the decision and ensures the decision is carried out (Bass, 2008, p.875). Participative leadership has many more steps and requires more input from more sources or individuals which would lead one to believe participative leadership gives organizations a better opportunity to take the best ideas from more people and put into action a plan that has the support of the stakeholders from its development.
Pros of Participative Leadership
“Participative leaders express their doubts, concerns, and uncertainties; verbalize their problem-solving processes, ask questions of followers and listen to the answers; reflect feelings; and paraphrase and summarize, acknowledge, and use follower’s ideas” (Bass, 2008, p. 876). This allows the members of the groups to see the vulnerability of their leader, to be part of the collective in working together to solve a problem and to add multiple solutions, bounce ideas off one another and then decide based on all the collected and available information to make the most informed decision possible using trust. This creates a safe work environment where individuals know they are respected as partners, their ideas have value and that there are no hidden agendas. This allows multiple perspectives to be heard so that the solution is not just created from the vantage point of one person but from the views of many people (Bass, 2008, p. 882). Individuals can be heard and know where their ideas may have fallen short or may have contributed to the path of the solution. Differences in ideas and thought processes can be worked out and settled during participative leadership work (Bass, 2008, p. 882). Managers appear to prefer a participative approach as do followers (Bass, 2008, p. 883 and p. 884) and followers appreciate the flexibility of the leaders in being open to varying ideas. Projects that require the expertise of many individuals benefit from the consultative nature of the

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