Three Brain Synergy Blog

Leadership and team development question of the week for August 31, 2009

Here is the question of the week that was sent by a participant in last week’s question.

How does one implement a participative leadership style when she/he is just new in the position, the relationships and knowledge of the team members have not been developed and business needs to keep moving forward?

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Here is the answer from Fritz Glaus on last week’s question, what makes real teamwork in organization’s so difficult to achieve and maintain and so rare to find in today’s workplace?

The question is about to-day's workplace, but one should keep in mind
that things haven't really changed from the past, in that the
promoting of action types into leadership positions has always been a
wide-spread practice and still is. Leaders have always been expected
to take action and, in addition, to get quick action from the persons
reporting to them. It's like a revolving door, with most persons in
leadership positions continuing to be action types who continue to
promote other action types to leadership positions. Such action types
tend to misinterpret the theory of participative leadership, and they
end up paying lip service to that concept. What this means is that
such promotions are not based on the candidate's ability to practice a
participative leadership style of leadership but to get results
through action. Moreover, in today's workplace, with the economy being
in a rather precarious state, leaders are increasingly under pressure
to act, and act quickly. They themselves feel that they are expected
to demand action. And since, as already stated, most persons in
leadership positions are body types or action types, nothing is more
natural for to-day's leaders than to demand action. Their instinctive,
unconscious definition of teamwork is the following: ''My team is
excellent because they do what I ask them to do''.

In summary, action type leaders represent a large majority of to-day's
leaders and they are by nature directive rather than participative in
their style of leadership. As a result, the direct reports (and others
which the action type leader may consider to be members of her/his
team) are careful in their response and are self-protective. In that
situation, genuine trust and genuine openness are not possible, either
for the team members or for their leaders, and real teamwork is
difficult to achieve and rare to find in today's workplace.

Fritz Glaus