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What is participatory leadership for managers?
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The figures speak for themselves: more than half of employees are actively considering changing companies.
And in seven out of ten cases, their level of commitment depends directly on their manager.
These data from Gallup speak for themselves: management styles are decisive.
To retain your talents, you must adapt your leadership to their true expectations.
That's where it comes in participatory leadership: an approach that profoundly transforms managerial dynamics.
This method is based on a concrete principle.
Instead of centralizing decisions, you mobilize the collective intelligence of your team members.
The result: your employees feel valued, listened to and involved. Their performance is improving because they give meaning to their missions.
When teams participate in decisions that affect them, their commitment naturally increases. Managerial confidence is taking hold.
Interactions are becoming more constructive. Your organization gains in operational efficiency.
Participatory leadership creates a work environment where collaboration and accountability are drivers of success.
It promotes an inclusive climate in which each employee can express their potential.
In the following lines, we will see concretely How to concretely deploy participatory leadership and what benefits it can bring to your organization.
Participatory leadership represents an alternative to traditional executive management.
Rather than applying a top-down model where guidance comes only from management, this management style is based on the real involvement of employees in collective thinking and strategic decisions.
The leader who adopts this posture infuses a vision, but favors listening and invites his teams to express their proposals.
This dynamic promotes a working climate based on cooperation, where each employee can contribute to the choices that engage the company.
Concretely, it is a question of consulting the members of your teams before deciding on major subjects.
This approach reinforces autonomy and collective work.
Of course, you maintain your role as a decision-maker, but you create a framework in which everyone feels considered and recognized for their professional contribution.
This method improves the relevance of your decisions by mobilizing different perspectives and know-how.
In addition to consolidating relationships of trust within teams, It also reinforces their motivation : your employees see themselves as real contributors to the evolution of the organization.
Involving employees in the orientation and management of the organization is now a real driver of performance.
Here are the most tangible benefits of this managerial approach:
Soliciting the expertise of your teams when making decisions makes it possible to combining diverse perspectives and expertise.
People who experience operational realities on a daily basis often have relevant perspectives of analysis that the executive committee does not always perceive.
This collective intelligence promotes more relevant choices and opens the way to creative solutions.
When your employees see that their contribution really matters, when you trust them and give them room for manoeuvre, their involvement naturally intensifies.
Feeling recognized and listened to nourishes them desire to give the best of themselves.
By participating in the decisions that shape their work environment, they generally form a strong bond of attachment with the company and its teams.
The fallout? One increased efficiency And a real professional development.
When you involve your employees in decisions that concern them, you naturally create a climate of trust.
Professional relationships are being strengthened, teams work better together and exchanges become more direct.
The result: less internal tensions and collective energy focused on your strategic goals.
When you really involve your teams in decisions, you create an environment where people dare to speak up and take initiative.
This climate of trust allows everyone to develop your skills while contributing your ideas.
You thus benefit from new perspectives and concrete proposals that you might not have considered on your side.
For a company that seeks to remain efficient in the face of competition, this is a major asset.
Your employees become real drivers of improvement and innovation on a daily basis.
Markets change quickly, and the ability to adjust quickly often determines success.
By giving more voice to field teams, you gain flexibility.
These collaborators, confronted directly with operational realities, detect weak signals and find appropriate answers even before problems occur.
This agility allows you to stay ahead of the curve in a demanding competitive environment.
Making your organization evolve towards more participation requires time and real will. Here are some ways to move forward in concrete terms:
In a participatory approach, the manager becomes above all a facilitator who creates the conditions for dialogue.
The manager is no longer the one who decides alone in his corner.
He becomes the one who creates the space for things to be said, for ideas to flow, and for important decisions to be made together.
Make sure that your management teams master the tools to animate these collective dynamics.
Adapted training or tailor-made support often makes the difference.
VISCONTI Partners is working precisely on this type of transformation, with coaches who have themselves experienced the reality on the ground.
This approach helps leaders to: improve their leadership skills essential for changing their managerial posture and practices: knowing how to listen actively, communicate constructively, ask open questions, manage conflicts and involve employees.
A leader who practices participatory management looks at all the suggestions before making his choices.
He is looking to decide with his team rather than on his own.
For this to work, people need to feel free to talk, to suggest things, to ask questions, without being afraid of being seen badly.
Organize regular moments of exchange, open at all levels, where everyone can give their opinion and report back what they observe.
By giving your employees more autonomy, you show them that you believe in their ability to do their work in their own way, without needing to supervise them.
But this freedom does not come overnight: it is built in an environment where everyone's ideas really matter and influence every decision together.
Put in place what it takes for exchanges to flow well: regular team meetings, a channel for collecting suggestions, opportunities to discuss frankly what is and is not working, preferably in a confidential setting.
Set an example as a leader: clearly explain why you are making this or that decision, share your thoughts.
Your transparency encourages theirs.
This management method is based on the involvement of all those who are concerned by a decision. The interest?
Take advantage of the wealth represented by varied profiles, backgrounds and skills.
Create workgroups that mix people from different departments.
This mix breaks down barriers between services, brings complementary perspectives and stimulates creativity.
For important cases, set up dedicated teams by ensuring that they bring together employees from all levels of hierarchy.
For participation to really work, everyone needs to know how it works in practice.
Clarify the steps in the collective decision-making process: who will be consulted? At what stages? How will the exchanges take place? And if opinions differ, who decides?
These clear rules of the game avoid confusion, reassure those who are involved and allow us to move forward without obstacles.
Make sure that what motivates your employees individually finds its place in the direction the organization is taking.
When everyone sees the link between their own expectations and the common goal, commitment becomes stronger and collective energy increases tenfold.
Take the time to notice and recognize the efforts and suggestions of your employees, with gestures of recognition that really speak to them.
This authentic attention maintains their desire to get involved and reinforces their sense of belonging.
Organize evaluation moments at regular intervals to check that your way of leading by involving your teams is working well.
This way of managing requires constant attention.
Look at your concrete results based on carefully defined performance indicators and take the pulse of the atmosphere in your services to see if it is bearing fruit.
Depending on what you see on the ground and the feedback you receive, do not hesitate to change your way of doing things.
Participatory leadership is built over time and is refined over time.
At the operational level, to promote the sharing of ideas and facilitate collaboration between teams, use online tools that fit your needs (Trello, Slack, Notion for example).
These supports help each person to be more involved and create stronger connections in your teams.
While this approach brings a lot, it also presents challenges that you need to know to better master them.
Here are the main complications you are likely to face:
Involving several people in strategic choices necessarily extends the deadlines.
The more collaborators you consult, the more exchanges you should plan before arriving at a common position.
This slowness can become a problem if your business requires you to react quickly.
So be careful: this method is not suitable for all circumstances.
Sometimes you need to make a quick decision.
Your role is to know when to conclude discussions to prevent meetings from dragging on for no reason.
By inviting your employees to give their opinion without restraint, you automatically accept the diversity of opinions, including contradictory ones.
If you do not establish the right conditions to accommodate these differences, you risk seeing conflicts emerge that damage cohesion.
The challenge is to turn these disagreements into productive discussions rather than reasons for breakups.
Participatory leadership requires your team leaders to develop specific skills.
Concretely, they must know how to lead discussions, manage divergent points of view without creating tensions, and maintain a good climate even when exchanges are complicated.
That's all The art of assertive and caring leadership.
This change in posture requires real learning, especially for leaders who have recently been appointed or have so far been used to making decisions alone.
When employees are involved in decisions, it requires time and attention in addition to their daily work.
This additional involvement can be mentally heavy and, in the long run, fatigue the teams.
The result: it can affect their results as well as their well-being at work.
The main pitfall of participatory leadership lies in excessive disengagement by the CEO.
By dint of delegating without setting clear limits, he can lose the guiding principle essential to the proper functioning of the organization.
When decisions are made by several people, it is sometimes difficult to know who is doing what exactly.
This vagueness can dilute the feeling of responsibility: everyone waits for the group to take the initiative, and in the end, some urgent actions remain pending.
While a participatory leader must know how to delegate, he must nevertheless instill vision and momentum to avoid immobility.
Your company operates according to a management method that reflects its history, culture and constraints.
You have noticed: no method is suitable everywhere.
The leadership style you adopt should correspond to the reality of your organization and the needs of those who work there.
Several ways of leading exist in companies today, each with its own reasons for being.
In this authoritarian mode of operation, decisions are made at the top of the hierarchy.
Teams are not consulted when decisions need to be made, whether on major policies or on everyday issues.
This way of doing things is still useful in certain specific situations: when the emergency leaves no room for discussion, or in organizations where the hierarchy remains very marked.
But in the long run, this authoritarian approach shows its limits.
By keeping your employees away from choices that concern the company, you risk seeing their motivation crumble.
People who never take part in decisions rarely feel really invested in what they are doing.
This form of management is characterized by highly structured top-down communication.
You set specific goals, you clearly communicate them to your teams, and you expect everyone to organize their work according to these priorities.
Operational procedures and frameworks support this organization.
This leadership style is particularly appropriate for teams that are new to their field of activity.
When your employees have not yet developed in-depth expertise, they need guidelines to understand how to carry out their missions successfully.
Likewise, in situations that require immediate reactivity, this framework allows action to be taken without wasting time in discussions.
Some leaders place the quality of relationships at the center of their management.
This approach focuses on creation of a climate of trust and cohesion within the teams.
The manager invests his energy in building solid relationships between employees, convinced that a serene environment encourages collective performance.
This managerial posture is particularly obvious. valuable when starting a new team or during periods of tension.
When your employees are going through a difficult situation, restoring trust becomes an absolute priority.
However, be careful to maintain balance.
If you primarily seek the approval of your teams or try to create relationships that are too friendly, you may lose sight of the expected results.
Strategic goals and operational performance should never be relegated to the background.
Take the example of an SME whose manager wants to transform the organization of a service.
First option: he alone defines the new operation and deploys it to his team.
Employees discover changes once decisions have been made.
Even if the new terms and conditions are relevant on paper, their reception remains lukewarm.
The teams apply the instructions and carry out the tasks without real conviction, out of obligation more than by adherence.
Second option: it brings its employees together to understand the difficulties they encounter on a daily basis.
Everyone shares their experience and makes suggestions for improvement.
These exchanges make it possible to build together an action plan that meets the real needs of the field.
The members of the team naturally take ownership of this project since they are the co-authors. Their commitment to implementation is much stronger.
This second approach illustrates participatory management: a method that involves employees in the reflections and decisions that concern their activity.
Far from being a simple consultative approach, it transforms your teams into change agents rather than simple implementers.
Several organizations have transformed their management methods by involving their teams more in strategic decisions through participatory leadership.
Here are three concrete illustrations:
Google has established a simple principle: allow its employees to devote a fifth of their professional time to exploring their own initiatives.
This freedom of action has given rise to services that are now essential, such as gmail and AdSense.
The work environment deliberately encourages exchanges between departments, the sharing of expertise and the taking of individual initiative.
Zappos, an Amazon subsidiary specializing in online sales, has adopted holacracy as an organizational model.
This system redistributes responsibilities by involving all employees in the choices that shape the company and its daily functioning.
Everyone has a real power to influence collective orientation.
Semco, a Brazilian company managed by Ricardo Semler, illustrates a radical transformation of traditional management.
Management has gradually transferred decision-making prerogatives to operational teams.
Thus, employees now determine their own temporal organization, sselect the missions they want to carry out and even participate in the development of their remuneration.
This redistribution of responsibilities has resulted in significant gains in terms of commitment and collective performance.
Participatory management is based on dialogue, collective construction and the recognition of everyone's contributions.
This approach boosts team engagement and improves overall results.
It directly meets the HR objectives of innovation and the sustainable involvement of employees.
Do you want to be made aware of participatory leadership or to deepen a managerial transformation process that is already underway in your organization?
The professional coaching dedicated to CEOs is an effective lever for changing your management practices, provided you rely on experienced coaches.
This type of training is organized around several axes:
With its team of experienced executive coaches from various sectors of activity, VISCONTI Partners Since 2010, has been offering each business CEO tailor-made support based on shared experiences to enable you to activate your full potential.
Contact our team to discuss your project.
Visconti Partners presents its advice, inspiration, and case studies to help you unlock your potential and that of your business.
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