The Truth About Managing People, Third Edition

Truth 14. Not Everyone Wants to Participate in Setting Goals

Contemporary managers have been well schooled in the importance of using participation—that is, having managers share a significant degree of decision-making power with their employees. Participative leadership and decision making have been preached by business schools since the 1960s. For instance, the late management-guru Peter Drucker considered participation in goal setting to be a necessary part of his Management By Objectives doctrine. Some academics have even proposed that participative management is an ethical imperative.

In the last 50-plus years, we have seen the decline (and near extinction) of the autocrat, to be replaced by the participative manager. So you might find it ...