The Caveats of Directive Leadership and Participative Leadership

Abstract

There are many types of leadership styles available for use by organizational managers. The business environment is never constant, and it keeps changing. The changing business environment only means that leaders must adopt leadership styles to assure the organization of a market share and growth. The backbone of all organizational operations is found in its employees. By extension, the relationship between leaders and their followers determines productivity and general success. Directive leadership and participative leadership are often defined as opposites based on the impact that each style has on an organization. Directive leadership allows leaders to adopt a superior positional role. On the other hand, Participative leadership allows both the leader and his followers to make organizational decisions. This paper seeks to identify the various aspects that can make an organization want to adopt directive leadership or participative leadership. The findings of this research reveal that there are caveats that make directive leadership a preferred leadership option. The caveats of participative leadership also reveal that it makes the best leadership style.

The Caveats of Directive Leadership and Participative Leadership

Every organization understands the power of good leadership in the search for organizational success. Considerably, the emphasis placed on leadership has led to the development of more than one leadership style. According to Nanjundeswaraswamy and Swamy (2014), effective leadership is where a leader influences their followers in a manner desired to achieve organizational goals. Every leadership style has a different effect on organizational performance or effectiveness, which explains why organizations feature different leadership styles (Mehrotra, 2005). In the end, there are caveats for every kind of leadership. This paper seeks to identify the different caveats of directive leadership and participative leadership.

Directive leadership is one of the most common leadership styles in use today. According to Somech (2005), directive leadership style is when a leader takes on a superior positional role. In that position, the leader offers organizational employees guidance regarding goals and how the goals should be achieved. Directive leaders also provide their employees with the means to achieve organizational goals (Somech, 2005).

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