After reading week 4’s article, Examining the Symptoms of Groupthink and Retrospective Sensemaking, I gained much insight on the various outcomes that occur with directive and participative group leaders. Directive leadership is a leadership style where the leader holds all of the power. It is highly centralized and undivided. This style also adheres to giving commands, as well as directives, considering the leaders are unwilling to take any suggestions from those under them. Moving on to participative leadership, which consists of leaders who employ a democratic approach to team engagement. Participative leaders give employees a chance to express their creativity by coming up with suggestions to tackle a situation. This type of leadership is one where all members of the organization work together to make decisions, rather than one singular individual. Since groupthink also confronts bad decisions, it was stated that individuals who were involved in the decision-making processes were able to determine what went wrong. Positive or negative feedback about the quality of group decisions should influence perceptions of groupthink symptoms. Moving on to hidden profiles, which are created when decision-relevant information is dispersed amongst all group members. This is where information held by individuals favors a suboptimal decision alternative, however information held by the entire group favors an optimal decision alternative.

This photo perfectly depicts the meaning of Groupthink, as well as how each group member's decision is based off another's with minimal thinking and acknowledgement.

This video explains all of the various components of what a directive leader's characteristics consist of.