Maura ruiz has been working in the e-learning industry for over eight years. she is aware of the fact that in this industry, once an employee has learned his or her job, the work becomes fairly automatic and competence can be achieved rapidly. she has been noticing how in her team, this competence has come along with a lot of complacency; the employees, though able, are unwilling to work hard. according to the situational leadership theory, to rectify this situation, maura would benefit the most if she uses the style of leadership.

Participative.

Explanation:

Participative leadership is the process of influencing people to direct their efforts toward the achievement of some particular goal or goals. Participative leadership can be different depending on organization, purpose and situation but there are common patterns in all types:

- Leader always facilitates the conversation.

- Leaders share any information and necessary knowledge for decision-making.

- Leaders encourage others to share their ideas.

- Leader must take all information and solutions by the team and synthesize.

- The leader comes up with best solution based on group information and communicates the solution to the group.

Participative leadership consist of one of the four types of participative decision making.

* Democratic (Participative) – Encourages participation of all members but final decision is made by leader.

* Collective – All decisions are taken by the group and responsibility for the decisions also rest on entire group.

* Autocratic – Possible solutions are brainstormed collectively but leaders are responsible for final decision. Different from democratic as autocratic is goal oriented while democratic is people oriented.

* Consensus – Leader gives up responsibility and control of decision making to the group.