Friday, February 12, 2010

Extra Topic: Participative Leader

One concept I found interesting in the assigned reading was the characteristics of a participative leader (O’Hair 34):
- Ask “gatekeeping” questions to involve nonparticipating members
- Summarizes discussions for group clarity
- Gives his or her own input and ask members for more
- “harmonizes: discussions that may involve personal conflict
- Announces a problem and opens it for discussion rather than announces a solutions
- Encourages all-channel participation, wherein communication flows laterally, upward, and downward.

I found this concept interesting because when we think of being a leader a check list does not come to mind but all these characteristics are certainly a big part of being a participative leader. I never knew what a participative leader was or that there was even any different type of leadership before reading the assigned reading this week. All these characteristics are very important to being an active leader working with other group members with a goal in mind. Although this method produces slow decisions at times they are typically best quality decisions that would of not been made otherwise.

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