Participative Management: Definition, concept and implementation

Participative Management is a concept that emphasizes the involvement and participation of the team in decision making and problem solving. This approach aims to strengthen the motivation of employees, improve their commitment and encourage innovation and creativity within the company.

What is the value of Participative Management?

The value of participative management is multiple. First of all, it allows to mobilize the teams and to involve them in the achievement of the company’s objectives. Indeed, by giving a voice to all, creativity and innovation are stimulated and the skills of each person are developed. By soliciting everyone’s opinion, different points of view are taken into account and more thoughtful choices can be made to suit the situation.

Participative management encourages a climate of trust and openness in the company. This approach can help reinforce team cohesion and improve communication within the company.

However, it has its limits. It requires additional preparation and animation time, a good knowledge of the processes, communication and conflict management techniques. For example, it is difficult to implement this type of management when companies have complex processes and a large diversity of employees.

To implement participative management, it is important to work on the company’s culture and to make the teams aware of the advantages of this approach. It is also necessary to define the roles and responsibilities of each person, to set up collaborative work methods and to encourage open and transparent communication.

Tools to motivate teams and define individual responsibilities

Motivation is a key element in ensuring team performance and efficiency. A motivated and committed team is more productive and creative, which has a positive impact on the company’s results.

Among the most useful tools for improving motivation and engaging the team, we can mention more traditional solutions such as financial, material or symbolic rewards, or individual interviews, which are moments of listening, dialogue and feedback, and which allow us to understand the expectations, motivations and difficulties of team members.

In a more collaborative approach, it is useful to combine the classic approaches with more interactive and playful solutions such as challenges and role playing to work on team cohesion. Team cohesion is essential for the functioning and success of a team in a participative management.

1- Brainstorming: mobilizing and involving the team in the decision

The purpose of brainstorming is to stimulate creativity and innovation by encouraging participants to freely express ideas, even the craziest ones.

The main advantage of brainstorming is that it allows you to generate a large number of ideas in a short time.

Several brainstorming workshops are available to you:

2 – Challenges: developing performance, innovation or solidarity

You just need to define the KPI associated with the team, define a rule of the game, a win and animate it regularly to ensure its success.

Some ideas for challenges:

• A performance challenge: Sales Poker to motivate salespeople. Each time your salesman reaches his goal for the week, he draws a card. At the end of the month, the best hand wins the challenge and wins the prize. You can use directly solutions like Jexlprod or radoo

• An innovation challenge: for example, launch an idea contest to encourage team members to propose innovative solutions and call upon the collective intelligence to solve a common problem in the company. Employees can propose ideas, alone or in teams, by filling out your online form.  For a participative approach, solicit all employees to identify high potential ideas and reward the winning teams for their participation. Everyone can like and vote for their favorite ideas. Animate the results to encourage ideas and votes. And reward your winner without forgetting to value the participating teams. There are ready-to-use tools to federate and engage your team around a challenge, such as Ouilive, the solution to launch your connected challenges

3- Role-playing: working differently

Role-playing games are exercises for sharing and simulation, which allow to work on individual and collective skills, while having fun.

To manage your collaborative management meetings, you can use the online templates of Klaxoon

• The game “Motivator”, allows to collect the personal motivations of each person and to put them in relation with the results to be achieved by the company;
• The game “Delegation Poker” game allows the team to agree on the most suitable delegation modalities by delegating what the team is willing to take on;
• The icebreaker “les aventuriers” to improve team decision making;
• The game “Team charter”, defines the roles and responsibilities of each person, as well as the rules and values of the team.

4- Feedback: strengthening the sense of commitment and belonging of teams

Gathering feedback from teams allows to take into account their opinions and needs, and to reinforce their sense of belonging and commitment. Satisfaction surveys or polls allow to measure and analyze the opinions and feelings of team members, and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company;

There are several ways to solicit feedback from teams, such as holding regular meetings, setting up suggestion or voting systems, or providing online surveys.

Several platforms or solutions are available to manage team feedback. Here are some examples:

• Google Forms : This Google tool allows to create online forms to collect information in a structured way. Google Forms can be used to manage team feedback by creating surveys or polls.
• Trello : This project management platform can be used to manage team feedback by creating lists or cards for team members’ ideas, concerns and suggestions.
• To go further in the engagement and return of your teams, there are specific platforms like Javelo, Supermood  or Jubiwee that allow for the establishment of a feedback or survey culture.

5 – The team meeting: discuss missions, problems and solutions in order to achieve the team’s objectives.

Team meetings promote communication and collaboration within the team, and monitor progress and obstacles encountered, which helps manage the team and achieve the set KPIs. It can also facilitate the rapid resolution of problems and conflicts by providing an open and constructive discussion space.

To organize effective team meetings, the essential steps not to be missed:

Collaborative solutions to organize, lead and manage your team

The essential features of a collaborative solution for participative management:

• The tools of collaborative meetings, with a shared agenda, a concrete action plan and possibly surveys or feedback from employees on the meeting;
• Real-time collaborative action plan tools to plan the different stages of the project and assign tasks to team members;
• A performance monitoring system to measure the progress of tasks and activities, as well as performance indicators to evaluate the quality of work accomplished.
• Visual management tools, such as the dashboard, the calendar, Gantt charts to facilitate decision making

These solutions can be used alone or in groups, in person or remotely, depending on the needs and preferences of each individual. They are adapted to different contexts and to different levels of team maturity.

Beesy a collaborative solution that fits your needs

Communication solutions

1 – An instant messaging tool: facilitate quick and informal exchanges between team members

These tools improve collaboration and efficiency by allowing team members to work in real time on common projects and quickly resolve issues that arise.

An instant messaging tool can also contribute to flexibility and mobility by giving team members the ability to communicate and work from anywhere, at any time.

The most popular instant messaging tools are WhatsApp, Slack and Microsoft Teams

2- A document sharing tool: allow team members to easily share files and documents

These tools make it possible to work together on the same documents in real time, and to manage versions and access permissions to documents.

When it comes to document sharing solutions, there are many tools available in the market, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, etc. These tools can help team members easily share documents and work together on the same documents in real time, which can improve collaboration and productivity within the team.

3- A digital workplace platform: provide a centralized space for communication and collaboration within the team.

To conclude 

Participative management is a management approach that aims to involve team members in the company’s decisions and actions by giving them the opportunity to contribute significantly to the results.

To implement this approach, a participative manager may need a toolbox of communication, project management, document sharing, and digital workplace tools to help organize, lead, and manage his team and business more effectively. By using these tools strategically and encouraging the commitment and active participation of all team members, the participative manager can improve the productivity and performance of the company.