Mainly, democratic or participative leadership is a style in which members of a collective group or organization participate in the decision-making process regarding the organizational objectives. Indisputably, this leadership style is witnessed in many public and private organizations, businesses, or schools (Iqbal et al., 2021). There is the exchanging of ideas, multiple opinions, and increased job satisfaction. All members have a collective responsibility in decision-making, which is a significant contributing factor to the organization’s progress. Therefore, this paper seeks to discourse the democratic style of leadership.
Kurt Lewin’s study on participative leadership argued that this was the most efficient leadership style. He stated that democratic leaders guide the group members and respectfully offer room for their opinions. Democracy was even applied in ancient times to ensure no biasness making decisions. Dr.L. Jibon Kumar, an author of the International Journal of Management & Information Technology (IJMIF), stated that democratic leadership was the best way to improve an organization’s performance through team member participation (Chiniara & Bentein, 2018). Typically, all employees in an organization took part in almost all activities; each took the blame into their own hands if anything went wrong thus because everyone’s opinion was involved in making the decision.
Brundrett also argued that t democratic leadership was mutual and open, which acts as a facilitator by encouraging members’ active participation, thus reducing apathy. Notably, he also states that most of the negative impacts of participative impacts are more frequent in private organizations than in public since private business owners tend to feel more entitled than their subordinates (Brundrett, 2017). They explain the concept that most private sectors managers apply autocratic leadership in terms of revenues and daily duties distribution, to mention but a few. Neves, one of the researchers of the Journal of business, says that democratic leadership empowers or instead motivates employees to do their work efficiently since they are familiar with the decisions made; thus, it is a great style to improve organizational performance.
Typically, a participative leadership style is often employed in health care units like hospitals and clinics. Effective democratic leadership indirectly reduces mortality rates by inspiring, retaining, and supporting experienced staff and retiring less active aged. Therefore, that ensures effective and efficient staff who work interactively in the clinic, thus better patient outcomes. Influential nurse leaders provide an appropriate workforce and resources in various fields for optimal patient outcomes through public participation in taking care of the patient through sharing ideas since the staff might have shared different professional trainers. If a patient also wants to terminate life willingly, the team can decide together with the patient.
Patient satisfaction is evident in democratic leadership since there is sharing of creativity to add to the professional knowledge through different ideas in the shared decision-making process. This could also reduce complications in the ER since all the employees co-operate with each other wholly since there is no superior- minor gap. Despite bringing out teamwork, a democratic leadership style may create uncertainty within a group because of making fast decisions. At times leaders the superiors make these emergency decisions without consulting their subordinates, leaving them with the questions of if they will be consulted for future needs. By definition, participative style invites involvement from people within an organization who may lack the feeling of representation.
Typically, this brings more viewpoints regarding a particular issue to the table, thus more input to the decision-making process that encourages teamwork. This ensures mutual efforts in taking care of patients in health care facilities. Efficient decision-making also facilitates efficient problem-solving. With more minds working on a problem, the more the number of potential solutions. Though it might take time to arrive at the final solution through collective opinions from the team, a more rigid solution is settled on.
Democratic style can negatively affect teamwork in that team members may start feeling they are doing more work, especially for workers offering the best ideas that the team implements. Participative leadership is significant for patient outcomes, the health care workforce, and the organizational culture (Uğur, 2017). Setting effective leadership in healthcare units enhances measurable indicators of patients’ good outcomes even in fragmented health systems. This leadership style brings in teamwork that improves patient outcomes in healthcare facilities. It also enhances healthcare performance by sharing different opinions, thus reducing the mortality rate.
Conclusively, the democratic style of leadership is the most efficient ruling strategy. Disputably, it promotes effective interactions in an organization or government, thus sharing ideas for an expected positive outcome. Every team member gets their voice heard, and they are all put into consideration before deciding on the final decision. Notably, it involves taking others’ thoughts, experiences, and opinions into account, thus promoting good outcomes thus should be encouraged. Therefore, the democratic style should be well evaluated because it encourages team building, which is a great contributor to yield a good outcome consequently.
References
Brundrett, M. (2017). Handbook of research on leadership and creativity. School Leadership & Management, 38(1), 142–142. Web.
Chiniara, M., & Bentein, K. (2018). The servant leadership advantage: When perceiving low differentiation in a leader-member relationship, quality influences team cohesion, task performance, and service OCB. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(2), 333–345. Web.
Iqbal, M., Munir, F., & Nawaz, F. (2021). Comparison of Principals’ Instructional Leadership Style for Quality Learning between Public and Private Schools. Global Educational Studies Review, VI(I), 1–10. Web.
Uğur, Ç. (2017). Analyzing the relationship between organizational culture level and types of employees’ leadership. Health Care Academician Journal, 4(4), 347. Web.