Three styles of Leadership Part III

A Ward Council is an example of participative leadership

Today we are looking at the third of three styles of leadership that were given by Brother Neal A. Maxwell as part of an essay entitled "Looking at Leadership" published in . . .A More Excellent Way":  Essays on Leadership for Latter-day Saints (1967), 15-29.

"A third kind of leadership is participative leadership in which members of the group share widely in decision making, in which the group is democratically run, in which procedures are adopted and traditions built to insure that this will be the case.  This kind of leadership has these advantages: it often uses the talents, feelings and facts of group members very effectively.  It gives group members a chance to invest in goals and in problem solving so that there is greater group compliance and team work in obtaining these objectives.  It often creates excellent conditions for individual growth.

Participative leadership seeks to call upon the maximum resources of the group members.  When it succeeds, this kind of leadership results in a higher achievement than the individual alone could produce.  Participative leadership assumes that everyone has something to give, which is not  inconsistent with the teaching that 'For all have not every gift given unto them; there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.' (D&C 46:11.). . . .

The disadvantages of participative leadership are that, at times, groups focus too much on feelings and become too immobilized to take needed action.  A group may listen and hear only the signal of  'an uncertain trumpet.' Group problem solving can, when it miscarries, result in the stifling of individual creativity and can result in a great deal of mediocrity. . . .

A critic of participative leadership has asked 'Could the Mona Lisa have been painted by a committee?'  This same critic of the group process says that it often leads to the 'cancellation of each other's inner certitudes.'  Participative leadership also has the disadvantage, at times, of ending up with unconscious and unintended manipulation of group members by a dominant figure while everyone blithely assumes that they share in decision making, which is not the case."  ( Church Education System. Principles of Leadership Teacher Manual. Salt Lake City. 2001. pgs 11-12).