Leadership Skills: Participation At Work

Participation at Work Leadership exists in a complicated world, not a vacuum. With that reality in mind, we would be wise to consider Socrate’s words as written in Plato’s (n.d.) Apology: “the life which is unexamined is not worth living” (Socrates ' Proposal for his Sentence section, para 4). In the pursuit of self-examination, then, The University of Kent’s (2011) “How to Find Out Your Style of Leadership” assessment, proved a valuable tool. Upon completing the required 50 questions, I found that the test results gauged my leadership style as mainly participative. This does not surprise me. Through experience, I have found that involving team members is the best way to achieve results in my vocation and my personality tends to rely on other people for collective decision-making, rather than being entirely independent in my thought process. In ORG 300’s third module (Colorado State University, CSU, 2016), the interactive lecture describes a leadership assessment called C.O.A.T, which stands for Communication, Opportunity, Advisory, and Talent. These are four skill areas where a powerful leader must excel to grow in leadership capacity and ability. By first examining what it means to be a participative leader and then applying that lens to the C.O.A.T. assessment on my own leadership, I will stand in …show more content…
Given the opportunity to lead a meeting or project, I first disseminate any existing relevant information to the group to put all members on the same playing field. My methodology varies. Sometimes, this means researching the topic to identify credible information and then emailing it to our staff. On other occasions, I utilize my public speaking skills to make a presentation centered around the information at hand. From there, I lead a discussion where each person is encouraged to participate and add to the decision-making