Leadership and motivation

Leadership and motivation

INTRODUCTION

The role of the first-line manager is 'to get things done through other people' but the only way to lead people to carry out a task is to give them the desire to do it, by influencing, by persuading them to reach common goals, by motivating them! A manager or supervisor who possesses those abilities is a leader.

Leadership and motivation are two skills essential in any organisation but are not the easiest! Many reaches have been undertaken about those topics and several theories have been developed.

MOTIVATION

a.Definition

The concept of motivation is usually used in organisational contexts.

-Motivation is the set of processes that stimulate, guide and sustain human behaviour towards accomplishing some goals. (M. Morley et al: 1998:56)

-Motivation is what spurs on and encourages them to act and reach their goals.

-The way the behaviour is triggered off, maintained or broken off within the organisation.

motivation-001

English: Theory of Human Motivation Français : Py...

English: Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs Itali...

b.Theories of motivation

There is not one best way to motivate staff members. Everyone is different and has his or her own needs, that is the reason why it is so difficult to create a work atmosphere where everybody (employees and employers) is satisfied, I mean where the employees work willingly, blossom... while being effective.

In every work team there are very good elements and bad one and once more it depends of the level of ability, skill, ambition, motivation, ... of everyone.

Theorists like Maslow, Mc Clelland and many other ones examined the problem of motivation end attempted to determine what motivate people, and especially at work.

Motivation theories are classified in three different groups:

- Content Theory: Those approaches concern the factors, which motivate people.

- Process Theory (Equity theory and Expectancy theory): emphasizes, not only on what people expect from their...