The participation continuum

Last weekend I learned of the participation continuum, a theory/idea probably coined by a management guru, although it did have elements of the non-management thought. It makes sense that one would like to see their groups’ development through a grid like this one, although to put human behaviour into such a framework seems rather unreasonable.

The idea of this continuum is that groups generally go through several stages before reaching the ideal level of each member having an equal say and stake in the group’s purpose. (The word used is ‘empowered’, which in my line of work has come to be quite meaningless)

It starts with the first stage of ‘assumed’ , where the members have an assumed relationship which with each other. Each person takes for granted the capacities and abilities of the other group members. It then moves onto ‘informed’ where group members are now informed of the group’s purposes or anything else, but not given much say in matters.

The next stage is ‘consulted’. Here the group is given the opportunity to express themselves but isn’t requested or informed about giving feedback. So basically it remains a one way working relationship. Following being consulted, the group moves into ‘involved’  where members can express their views, partake in decisions but still work within a prescribed framework and boundaries.

Involvement moves into ‘engagement’ which means that group member takes responsibility for decisions made and there is equal decision making and action taking power. So one would wonder after this has been achieved what else is left??? Well that's where  being ‘empowered’ comes in.

Empowerment is the stage at which members not only have decision making power but have control over processes as well finances.

In a simplistic view, one would then infer that empowerment would be having control over finances. I say this only because that seems to be the basic difference between being involved and being empowered in this context. To me it makes no sense moving into empowerment simply because involvement in its explanation is ‘it’. I would think that being involved in a group’s purpose would entail being part of every decision, financial and non-financial and that, that in itself would be ideal.