In one of the multitude of books written on the life and management style of Walt Disney, Capodagli & Jackson (2001) say that “Walt was the embodiment of a great leader, which we define as a person who inspires, motivates, and brings to fruition individual and team effort in an environment of creativity, trust, and mutual respect.” These three attributes of the workplace environment, plus others, can be seen as benefits of adopting a participatory style of leadership in an organization. This style was defined by McMahon (1976) when he described a participatory leadership style as “one that rejects centralization of power, influence, and decision making and supports the involvement and exercise of influence by many rather than few organizational members.” A paraphrase of an article by Odiorne (1991), who paraphrased a portion of Warren Bennis’ 1990 book, Why leaders can’t lead, says that contemporary companies should no longer appear like families feuding at the reading of a will, but more like roundtables, where everyone speaks up to a receptive audience. Also in a 2001 article, Kezar makes the point that “One of the strengths of team-centered leadership is that different personality types, beliefs, and behaviors can be more effectively brought together in order to make better decisions and to strengthen the organization.”
When contrasting a participatory style of leadership to the pyramidal and bureaucratic style still used in many of today’s organizations, it is clear to me that the former yields a far superior end product: a workplace which promotes the free exchange of ideas, opposing thought, and creative vision, all in an atmosphere of trust. The latter dictates, whereas the former seeks input before decisions are made. While the president of USC, Steven Sample wrote in 2002, “Talking with those constituents who will be most affected by a decision prior to actually making it can be very good business.”
I believe that the benefits of creativity, trust, mutual respect which fosters better decision making and a stronger team is certainly useful to any organization as it strives to carry on its commitment to a shared mission. A participatory, or collaborative, style of organizational management will help them meet the challenges and needs of today’s world because it allows for diversity of opinion, open discussion, and the freedom of creative thought when seeking solutions to today’s organizational challenges. In the classic book Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world (1999), Margaret J. Wheatley offers a poetic description of how I believe organizations should function:
What is it that streams can teach me about organizations? I am attracted to the diversity I see, to the swirling combinations of mud, silt, grass, rocks. This stream has an impressive ability to adapt, to change the configurations, to let the power shift, to create new structures. But behind this adaptability, making it all happen, I think, is the water’s need to flow. Water answers to gravity, to downhill, to the call of the ocean. The forms change, but the mission remains clear.
I believe great benefits will come from a willingness by organizational leaders to adapt their methods in response to the changing needs of the staff and the people they serve. As I stated earlier of Disney’s leadership style, creativity, trust, and mutual respect are some of the benefits of adopting a participatory and collaborative leadership style.
In the weeks ahead, we’ll look deeper into this topic and why today’s leaders need to move from command-and-control to authentic collaboration.
Lead well.