What is democratic leadership?

What is the definition of democratic leadership?

Democratic leadership – also called “participative leadership” or “shared leadership” – encourages employees to help leaders make key decisions.

Before making their final decision, democratic leaders tap into the knowledge of the people in their team to gain different ideas on what action should be taken solve business issues.

When is democratic leadership most effective?

Democratic leadership suits managers who lead teams consisting of experienced and highly skilled professionals, who know their company’s operations and culture very well.

By leaning on the team’s expert knowledge, leaders can gain further context from people who are exposed to different areas of the business and can alert leaders of lesser-known factors that could impact the success of their decisions.

Time management is also crucial to successful democratic leadership. Employees will need both time to contribute and deadlines to ensure everyone's input is received in enough time to act on it.

What are the main characteristics of democratic leadership?

• All ideas are welcome.
• High employee engagement.
• Critical feedback is shared openly within the team.
• Problems are solved collaboratively.
• Decision making can be slow.
• Responsibility is shared among the group.

Potential benefits of democratic leadership

Employees experience greater job satisfaction

High job satisfaction is linked to improved organisational productivity, decreased employee turnover, and reduced job stress in the workplace.

Leaders are better supported to solve complicated problems

Research shows that teams of three, four, or five people outperform the best individuals when solving complex problems because they find the solution quicker and process information efficiently.

Companies benefit from creating a high-trust culture

High-trust cultures also lead to stock market returns two-to-three-times greater than the market average for employers and staff turnover rates approximately 50% lower than average.

What skills do democratic leaders need?

Examples of famous democratic leaders

General Dwight Eisenhower

As America’s Supreme Allied Commander during the Second World War, Eisenhower regularly collaborated with his staff to form plans and act - a sharp contrast to the authoritarian leadership approach often associated with the early 20th century military leaders.

Nelson Mandela

When he became president, Mandela led the rebuild of South Africa by attempting to create a broad coalition of experts from across the country - including members of the previous apartheid regime.

Indra Nooyi

The former chairperson and chief executive of PepsiCo, who has twice been ranked the second most powerful woman in the world, is known for building highly successful teams with the autonomy to generate great results for the company.

Four advantages of democratic leadership

It connects people to their work

When employees feel engaged in their work, team, and employer, they are more inclined to be happy and productive. Companies with a highly engaged workforce also have 21% higher profitability and 17% higher productivity than companies with a disengaged workforce.

Encourages trust and respect throughout the team

When leaders seek the counsel of their employees, they show their respect for their opinions, and research shows that 72% of employees rated showing respect of all employees as “very important.”

Promotes inclusion

By facilitating interactions with the whole team, democratic leaders help individuals achieve a stronger sense of belonging with their colleagues. Employees in highly inclusive companies are four times more likely to report high wellbeing, compared to those in less inclusive workplaces.

Democratic leaders receive a more diverse set of ideas

Research shows teams solve problems faster when they’re more cognitively diverse.

Four disadvantages of democratic leadership

It’s time-consuming

Because democratic leaders are aiming to gather consensus among their team, it takes extra time and effort to reach the correct decision – unless the team is very small.

And managers are already time poor. Most managers spend up to 10 hours a week in meetings, and 90% say more than half that time is wasted.

Impractical during crisis situations

During an emergency, delaying decision making until all team members can submit their feedback and reach a consensus can cause significant delays that make things worse.

Accountability is harder to measure, especially for bad ideas

Because everyone is involved in the decision-making process, it makes it easier for individuals to pass blame on others when ideas fail.

Also, accountability helps individuals who feel responsible for their actions to perform better with their tasks, research shows.

What about if the team doesn’t reach a consensus decision?

On complicated problems, it can be a struggle to gain a consensus from the whole team to take one direction or the other.

The transition to hybrid working has made it even more difficult, as studies show that task and interpersonal conflict increases when people are not working in the same location.

Why democratic leadership is unsuitable for modern leaders

Democratic leadership, like other traditional leadership models, provides a helpful guideline on how to lead, but fails to make a lasting impact on leadership development.

It shows a collaborative approach to leadership can be fruitful, but the model is often impractical because it doesn’t consider how effective leaders think.

A cookie-cutter approach to leadership may be useful for simple tasks, but when complex issues arise, leadership models aren’t flexible enough to meet the demands needed.

This includes balancing the pressure of hitting short term targets vs long term planning, or pushing the team to perform better, while giving them extra flexibility to ensure they don’t burn out.

The failure of leadership models to help leaders to solve these issues effectively leaves many people feeling overwhelmed and overworked. To help leaders to succeed, employers need to rethink how to make leadership learnable.

Attunement is the key to successful leadership development

Already used by the highest-performing business leaders, attunement is the leadership skill that equips leaders to successfully tackle their problems head-on.

Drawing on how great leaders think, feel and act, the art of attunement equips leaders with the ability to consistently pre-empt workplace problems, identify the key issues and pick the right tool to solve them.

To master the art of attunement, leaders must use four science-backed practices:

• Notice - Stand there and assess what is going on.
• Sense-make – What do your observations mean?
• Choose - Decide what to do
• Act - Do it with panache

Follow these steps to unlock the next level of leadership by developing skills to nimbly navigate organisational tensions.

Find out how to make leadership learnable for leaders at your organisation.