The Challenges of Leadership

What is the role of the participative leader?

The role of the participative leader is one who is there to serve others, to be an enabler, a role model for best practice for their managers who must exercise their transparency, accessibility and individualism.

Participative leadership has a consistent theme of team-working, collaboration, and connectedness. It must also demonstrate that it can remove obstacles to engagement, opportunities and ideas from individuals at all levels of the organization and from external stakeholders. Empathy, i.e. the ability to see the world through the eyes of the other, is an essential capability of the effective leader and, coupled with this, is the willingness to take on board the ideas, concerns, and perspectives of others. Other basic skills the leader must learn and practice at a conscious level are constructive questioning and active listening in order to fully understand others and to be able to challenge the status quo. To do this, the leader must create meaningful relationships that encourage feedback and a willingness to engage where the others feel valued and respected.

It is vitally important that there is a culture that supports both organizational and personal development. Here, the leader must become a role model for learning and positive risk-taking and that mistakes will be made but that they become learning points rather a stick with which to foster a spirit of blame-culture. The leader must embrace the fact that they alone are the purveyors of good ideas, innovation and leadership. Everyone in the organization should be encouraged to become leaders as well, that they all committed to same goals and are allowed to utilize their unique blend of skills and experience and to help the organization and themselves realize their own potential.