Organization - V

Motivation and Leadership

In this lesson, we will examine the nature of motives and motivation, and look at well-known models for understanding how people are motivated to take action. Understanding the distinction between unchanging "anchor" values and those that are more or less negotiable in order to achieve objectives of greater value lies at the heart of theories of motivation. By looking at how those objectives can be offered and delivered effectively as a means of motivating people to action, we will review strategies and techniques for motivating today's employees by responding to what can often be a complex hierarchy of needs and wants. Devising a system that is based on respect for and belief in the value of employees is proposed as the best foundation for a motivated workforce.

Learning Objectives

· Compare and contrast three need-based approaches to motivating employees.

· Explain the roles of equity, goal setting, and expectations in motivation.

· Illustrate the use of behavior modification approach.

· Give examples of how to use 10 methods for influencing behavior and motivating employees.

What Motivates People

Motivation is an internal concept based on a person's needs and fulfillment of those needs. Too often, we think of motivating another person. But, as we shall see, it is not something that we do to or for another person, nor is it externally imposing a set of needs on that other person. In its simplest sense, motivation is need fulfillment. Motivation is what inspires us to act (Benton, 1998).

People are motivated to perform similar actions by very different internal drives. Capitalizing on fulfilling these different needs is a job for the leader/manager. Management often refers to employees as "resources" or "assets," which means they are perceived as valuable to the organization. Managers care about their employees' personal motivations, as they have a significant impact on the bottom line. Management can facilitate achievement of workers goals, such as personal salary maximization, autonomy, empowerment, while at the same time accomplishing organizational objectives. The objective of goal congruency is to maximize the overlap between organizational and individual goals.

Motivation can be understood in its simplest form as a three-step process:

(1) an internal need exists;
(2) a behavioral action or direction is taken to satisfy that need, and;
(3) the satisfaction of that need is accomplished.

Motivation concerns getting the desired outcomes from employees that help attain goals. Employees may be motivated to put in extra effort to meet all the standards and specifications of a job in a short time. They may be motivated to perform better if they receive rewards, such as special bonuses, awards, or extra time off from work, for their performance. Managers may have the following specific concerns when motivating their employees:

· how to keep a high performer challenged and productive;

· how to challenge workers to use their capabilities more fully;

· how to make unproductive workers perform;

· how to encourage employees to act creatively; and

· how to ensure that employees focus on customers' needs.

What motivates people to behave, think, or feel in certain ways? Consider what factors make you willing to work, be creative, achieve, and produce? Have your motivators changed over the years? Some people work to satisfy their needs, deficiencies in their basic requirements for living and working productively. Others use work to satisfy their need for self-esteem. Managers and leaders may motivate workers by helping them meet their needs. There are times when employees like to receive rewards, outcomes that they find desirable and that accompany specific behaviors. Managers and leaders can motivate employees by offering rewards in exchange for specific behaviors. It is important to remember that employees differ in whether they are motivated by intrinsic or extrinsic rewards (Gordon, 2002). The Nature of Incentives

What is the incentive to be motivated? An incentive is anything other than the job itself that motivates employees to produce. Incentive systems, which are based on external manipulation, are products of an external control management philosophy. According to this approach, people are viewed as passive and must be persuaded, rewarded, pushed, punished, or otherwise externally controlled into action. Today, about the only plan that can be called a true incentive plan is the monetary reward offered to workers if they increase their standard output. Most other rewards offered as incentives are today considered workers' rights and are taken for granted. Douglas McGregor explains,

"The carrot and the stick theory does not work at all once man has reached an adequate subsistence level and is motivated primarily by higher needs. Management cannot provide a man with self-respect, or with the respect of his fellows, or with the satisfaction of needs for self-fulfillment."

Even as organizations desperately seek achievement and the evidence for at least one important source of economic success, how they motivate and treat their employees is crucial. Success comes not merely from having a vision and a strategic plan, but in the execution of an organization's competitive strategy, with the support of its constituents. The success of an organization derives in large part from its people, how they are treated, their skills and competencies, and their efforts on behalf of the organization. Pfeffer (1998) explains,

"A people centered strategy can be a source of success in the market, as long as leaders can resist the temptation to see their people solely as costs, technology as salvation, and customer service as a burden. A people centered strategy facilitates higher levels of customer service and enables firms to compete on the basis of knowledge, relationships, and service, not just price."

Making It Meaningful

The leaders people admire are ones who have the courage of their convictions. What gets you going in the morning, eager to embrace whatever the day may hold? What motivates you to do your best, day in and day out? Why do people push their own limits to get extraordinary things done? Kouzes and Posner (2002) explain that if people are going to do their best, they must be internally motivated. The task or project in which they're engaged must be intrinsically engaging. When it comes to excellence, it's definitely not "what gets rewarded gets done"; it's "what is rewarding gets done." Employers can never pay people enough to care – to care about their products, services, communities, families, or even the bottom line. True leadership taps into people's hearts and minds, not merely their wallets.

As Zemke, Raines, and Filipczak (2000) explain, "today's American workforce is unique and singular. Never before has there been a workforce and workplace so diverse in so many ways. The generation rift is not going to disappear and needs to be addressed and solved". The four generations now currently working side by side in most American work places– Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters – have unique work ethics, different perspectives on work, distinct and preferred ways of managing and being managed, and unique ways of viewing quality, service, and a day at the office. Even though generations share a place in history, in time, and have events, images, and experiences in common, they develop their own unique personalities. Not that every individual fits the generation's personality profile; some embody it, while some spend a lifetime trying to live it down. Their differences can be a source of creative strength and a source of opportunity, or a source of stress and unrelenting conflict. Understanding generational differences is critical to making them work for the organization, and not against it. It is critical to creating harmony, mutual respect, and joint effort, where today there is often suspicion, mistrust, and isolation within organizations.

Each person is a distinct individual, and it is important to know why people do what they do before you can predict what they will do. Just about everything including an individual's personality cannot be neatly pigeonholed. An individual's personality is the sum total of what a person is today: the clothing worn, the food preferred, the conversation enjoyed or avoided, the manners and gestures used, the methods of thought practiced, the way situations are handled. Each person's personality is uniquely different from everyone else's. It results from heredity and upbringing, schooling or lack of it, neighborhoods, work and play experiences, parent's influence, religion, and all the social forces around us.

Motivational Techniques

O'Toole (1995) suggests that leadership is about ideas and values. Successful change occurs when leaders effectively begin to change themselves. In a post-modern society, in which the diverse composition of the marketplace includes greater numbers of female, minority, and older workers, leaders can no longer rely on the traditional position of station and power. There are a handful of scholars that have transformed leadership into a serious field of study, and they generally conclude that the greatest source of power available to a leader is the trust that derives from faithfully serving followers.

If leadership is about ideas and values, creating conditions to develop trust is imperative for a successful leader-follower relationship. Leaders need to recognize that followers will model their behaviors, and that there should, in fact, be delineation between personal and professional values and subsequent behaviors.

Learning Objectives

· Identify the key principles of motivation.

· Explain the importance of knowing your employees and how it affects the organization as a whole.

· Identify considerations and approaches to managing the skills and abilities of employees.

Generations at Work

One example of the kind of sensitivity to who workers are, which leaders must have in order to motivate them successfully, is the awareness of multiple generations in the workforce.

As you review popular literature, you will find numerous articles addressing the presence of four distinct generations within the workplace. The ways in which their respective views and values differ is a factor that is changing the way organizations are doing business. The dynamics of this multigenerational workforce have major implications for organizations, and for the leaders that must harness and integrate the myriad of talents of these groups. It is crucial for leaders to understand the characteristics, values, and motivations of each generation, and harness the best of each.

As organizations become "flatter," both structurally and operationally, it is even more important to consider these generational dynamics, as the distance between the boardroom and the frontline is shrinking. As organizations are expanding global operations and utilizing socio-technical systems to connect greater numbers of employees across wide geographic divides, the opportunity for these distinct generations to work together increases.

The concept of an ideal employee who devotes an entire career to a single organization is a thing of the past. As leaders, it is important to reframe our ideas of loyalty and retention to address the individual dynamics found within generations, in an effort to focus on engagement, learning, and involvement. Zemke, Raines, and Filipczak (2000) explain "that today's American workforce is unique and singular. Never before has there been a workforce and workplace so diverse in so many ways. The generation rift is not going to disappear and needs to be addressed and solved." While many writers and theorists define the differences found within the generational workforce, following are the guidelines found in Generations at Work.

The Veterans 1922 - 1943		Those born prior to World War II and those whose earliest memories and influences are associated with that world-engulfing event.
The Baby Boomers 1943 - 1960		Those born during or after World War II and raised in the era of extreme optimism, opportunity, and progress.
Generation Xers 1960 - 1980		Those born after the blush of the Baby Boom and came of age deep in the shadow of the Boomers.
Generation Nexters 1980 - 2000		Those born of the baby Boomers and early Xers and into our current high-tech, neo-optimistic time.

There is a problem in the workplace — a problem with its foundations, not in downsizing, change, technology, and foreign competition. It results from a problem of values, ambitions, mindsets, demographics, and generations in conflict. Today's organizations are awash with conflicting voices and views in the most dynamically diverse workplace environment to date. At no previous time in history have so many generations worked side-by-side. How many times have you heard the following statements:

· "They have no work ethic. They're just a bunch of slackers."

· "A hiring bonus! Wet behind the ears and he wants a hiring bonus! At his age I was grateful to have a job."

· "She wants a career map. Hell! I don't even know if our department will be around in a year."

· "If I hear 'We tried that in '87' one more time, I'll hurl in his wrinkly old face."

Generational gaps are not new. What's new is that today's organizations are faced with the challenge of balancing four distinct generations. The once natural flow of resources, power, and responsibilities from older to younger has been disrupted by changes in life expectancy, increases in longevity and health, technology, and lifestyles. In times of change, as we are witnessing as we move into the 21st century and beyond, differences between groups and people have the tendency to create tension and potential flash points. We increasingly live in a world in which geographical boundaries are removed by advances in technology. This leads us to be interdependent and virtual in nature, requiring us to depend on collaboration and compromise for success. Consider some of the defining events, trends, and visible members for each group.

	Defining Events & Trends	Visible Members
The Veterans (1922 - 1943)	Patriotism Families The Great Depression Silver Screen New Deal	George Bush Phil Donahue Lee Iacocca Gloria Steinem John Glenn
Baby Boomers (1943 - 1960)	Prosperity Television Suburbia Assassinations Vietnam	Bill Clinton David Letterman Oprah Winfrey Bill Gates P.J. O'Rourke
Generation Xers (1960-1980)	Watergate Latchkey kids Single-parent homes MTV AIDS Computers	Kurt Cobain Jewel Brad Pitt Michael Jordan Matt Groening Michael Dell
Generation Nexters (1980 - 2000)	Computers Schoolyard Violence Oklahoma City Bombing It Takes a Village	Macauley Culkin Chelsea Clinton Tara Lipinski LeAnn Rimes

These four generations — Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters — have unique work ethics, different perspectives on work, distinct and preferred ways of managing and being managed, and unique ways of viewing quality, service and a day at the office.

Building Motivational Techniques Into Leadership Style

How well employees cooperate with their coworkers is a good metric for assessing the level of cooperation, morale, and overall satisfaction within a group. According to Jack R. Gibb in Trust (as cited in Locander, 2005), individuals seem to do best when they:

· are trusted;

· have confidence in their own capabilities to make choices, solve problems, and perform tasks;

· have freedom to succeed or fail; and

· see each other as resources, friends, allies - rather than enemies, competitors, or threats (Locander, 2005).

We all have a basic human need to be appreciated for who we are and what we do. Encouragement is absolutely essential to sustaining people's trust and commitment to organizations and outcomes. The way an organization is designed can have a significant effect on the trust that is engendered within its walls. Organizational elements that affect trust include the "softer side" of the usually hard-nosed world of business, including values and behaviors as well as organizational structures such as hierarchies and processes (Changing Minds).

Learning Objectives

· Explain the significance of identifying and responding to individual employee's patterns.

· Define the pitfalls of perception.

· Identify leadership qualities as a result of observing behaviors.

Understanding Leadership

When Prentice's article, "Understanding Leadership," was first published in the Harvard Business Review in 1961, it posed a radical alternative to notions of leadership based on superior power, prescient vision in long-range planning, and charismatic or inspiring personalities. Defining leadership as "the accomplishment of a goal through the direction of human assistants," Prentice argued that leadership resides in the ability of a leader to understand his or her fellow workers sufficiently to be able to not only motivate them individually, but to be able to map the relationships between individual goals and group objectives. Prentice's message was that the unilateral adoption of a position "at the top," from which everyone in an organization is seen as undifferentiated and treated accordingly — the traditional exercise of power — might well succeed at an operational level but could rarely if ever be described as effective leadership. Rather, he argued, the diversity and complexity of people is a reality that a successful leader not only recognizes but also uses to design appropriate means for motivating people to get "on board" with the group's work. Human beings may respond to the traditional "carrot and stick" mechanisms for delivering rewards and punishments that are consistently the same, person after person, but they cannot be relied upon to be similarly valued by all people. Prentice's argument is that it behooves a leader to know those he wishes to follow well enough to design an environment in which people work where they can literally see rewards they will value and which will motivate them in the direction a leader needs followers to go.

In other words, once the paycheck is secured, the way in which an individual seeks to have other needs satisfied comes into play. Exchanging one's needs and desires for money does not work well or for long. For this reason, such power-based leadership approaches as coercion rarely result in willing followers. More often, finding occasions in one's work for the exercise of problem-solving, meaningful relationships, and recognition — the values one brings to work, and not those that are "put on" like a uniform at work and taken off at the end of the day — are more authentic and reliable ways to motivate employees. The same is true for other stakeholders in the organization.

In order to accomplish this, Prentice advocates an organizational structure that enables supervisors to know their "direct reports" well enough to understand where the source of motivating them can be found. A "learning organization" structured so that opportunities to grow are inherent in the work of individuals means a much more open and empowering environment than would be possible if power and coercion were the bases for getting people to go along with leadership's program. Enabling people to be genuinely interested in their work and the progress of the group, says Prentice, is the key to effective leadership, and requires a leader to initiate such environments, ensure their well-being, and constantly find new ways of enabling people to find their inspiration in what they do, rather than whom they follow.

Prentice's work gave rise to a new direction in leadership development that was carried on in the work of other significant contributors to theories of modern management and leadership development, such as Daniel Goleman. As a result, new conceptualizations of organizational structure — more flat and "organic" structures, which make relationships more likely and richer than the traditional hierarchical corporate structures ever allowed — are being explored and implemented. Moreover, leadership development is more focused on "mentoring" than "promotion." The shift to an awareness of individuals and relationships is becoming the cornerstone of organizational management and effective leadership — so much so, that employees or others within an organization are becoming empowered to seek out situations where their values can be reflected as they work, and when they look at the organization's leaders.

The feasibility of leaders of large and complex organizations getting to know each person in the organization well enough to carry out Prentice's theory in practice is where the distinction between leaders and managers re-emerges, and is discussed in Buckingham's article. Leaders have an accurate understanding of diversity of interests and what motivates people given their values — that is, leaders understand the relationship between values and action and use the connections to motivate and direct the organization as a whole. Managers, on the other hand, are about the business of motivating individuals. Thus, managers are not only those to whom others are accountable, in the traditional sense of accountability within a hierarchy of power. Managers are also people in positions that carry responsibility for people in their charge. This sense of stewardship can be seen in Birmingham's discussion, written over 40 years after Prentice's landmark article. The ability of managers to genuinely value the individuals whom they supervise is the crux of this view of the manager's role, and it reflects the same need for precision and accuracy in understanding what moves people to act in the way we wish them to that the leader of an organization must fulfill.