What is a Participating Leadership Style?

A participative leadership approach aligns with followers who have demonstrated the ability to perform, but (for whatever reason) struggle with either the confidence or the motivation to continue. In terms of the Situational Leadership^® Model, participation is a low task behavior, high relationship behavior approach, and its purpose is to help followers solve problems.

The participative style is anchored by the leader’s ability to actively listen, demonstrate empathy and collaboratively engage. A leader who employs this style of leadership helps an individual work through the challenges that present themselves but is careful not to take control of the decision-making process. As such, the leader facilitates discussion on decisions that need to be made, but the follower is the one who makes those decisions and takes responsibility to follow through and act.

What Does a Participating Leadership Style Looks Like

First and foremost, an effective participative leader sets a tone for transparent dialogue. There are any number of ways to do that—here are two:

• With a follower who is beginning to consistently perform above standard, but appears to lack confidence:
  • “Let’s talk about why you don’t feel comfortable taking the lead on this project … even though it is clear to everyone on the team that you are the best choice! What are you feeling? What’s holding you back on this?”
• With a follower who is a proven performer, but appears to have lost motivation:
  • “Your performance on this task is trending in a bad direction. Now, if I know that … I know you know that … because few people have more experience with this than you do! So, I’m hoping you’ll tell me what’s going on. How about it?”

From that point forward (with either discussion) the role of the participating leader is to:

• Actively Listen – Maintain eye contact; Ensure the follower does ~80% of the talking; Avoid the temptation to make (or perhaps even suggest) a decision
• Encourage Input – Ask reflective questions intended to clearly identify the problem; Have the follower identify (and commit to) a solution
• Recognize and Praise – Thank the follower for transparent discussion and problem-solving efforts; Ensure they know how important they are and that their contributions matter
• Next Steps – Review what the follower will do; Review what you will do to support those efforts; Identify how progress will be measured

The Situational Leadership^® Model and a Participating Leadership Style

At The Center for Leadership Studies, we believe that a leader needs to adapt their approach based on the current performance of the person they are trying to influence. Situational Leaders routinely shift between one of four styles (S1 – Telling; S2 – Selling; S3 – Participating; and S4 – Delegating) with each person they influence on a task-by-task basis.

In that context and as previously mentioned, the S3 participating style of leadership typically has a high probability with followers that have demonstrated ability (task specific knowledge, experience, and skill) but are struggling with willingness (task specific confidence, commitment and motivation). Those struggles can present themselves with followers that are either developing, or regressing. Here are a few examples:

• Follower can consistently complete the task at or above established standards, but remains apprehensive about doing so (developing)
• Follower has a high need for feedback and encouragement from their supervisor or manager despite track record of high performance (developing or regressing)
• Follower has a strong record of consistent performance at or above standard, but is noticeably slipping and appears distracted (regressing)
• Follower is visibly losing commitment or motivation to perform on the job, and happens to be experiencing “outside the workplace’ challenges (regressing)
• Follower demonstrates a high level of skill under supervision, but avoids the opportunity to complete the task on their own (developing)

Participation Leadership Training

Understanding the benefits of participation is relatively straightforward. Knowing both how and when to participate is significantly more difficult! In that context, the real job of any leader is to identify what style of leadership a follower needs for a given situation. Consider the Situational Leadership^® framework as a timing mechanism that helps leaders determine when to do what in that regard. Proper leadership is more important now than ever before!