Friday, July 19, 2013

Today's Maxwell Quote

From A More Excellent Way (1967), 25:
Participative leadership frees those concerned to provide helpful feedback, whereas directive leadership often suffers from the fact that as the leader acquires more prestige and power, his followers may be less and less likely to level with him even though he wishes this were not so.

The disadvantages of participative leadership are that, at times, groups focus too much on feelings and become too immobilized to take needed action. A group may listen and hear only the signal of "an uncertain trumpet." Group problem solving can, when it miscarries, result in the stifling of individual creativity and can result in a great deal of mediocrity.