Motivation Theory Can Enhance Good Leadership

Harnessing human impetus at work place is a core competency allied with transformational leaders. Dissimilar to despotic managers, who rely solely on authority and power to get things done, transformational leaders are more subtle, receptive and people oriented. This remarkable breed of leaders, gear their efforts towards acquisition of the innate man power through esteem invigorating schemes. Motivation is a Latin derivative movere, which means move. Therefore, motivational theory explores the integral drive inculcated into a person to fuel and direct him towards attainment of a projected objective. Every leader disposed to exploit the full potential of his fellow workers, must be in a position to rouse and move them towards realization of his intended goals.

Perceptibly, leaders who are able to muster their workers to execute a given task freely and promptly have an upper hand; the challenge however, lies in the mobilization process. Do people necessarily need to be motivated to heighten their productivity, or are there better ways of garnering better results at work place? Motivation can be ramified into intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is resultant of an individual’s own ambition to execute certain task as a result of inner aspiration; in this set-up the worker’s major drive to labor is the work activity rather than the incentives attached to the activity.Conversely, extrinsic motivation comes into play when a worker executes a task compellingly being solely driven by the reward pegged to the work output.

Whether employees perform well out of motivation or a stringent supervisory apparatus is an issue that researchers have trailed with painstaking effort. Workers’ prerogative for work stems from their inner drive to pursue the activity at hand. Drawing the internal impel for work amongst the workers often, is the work of the leaders. Leaders must be in a position to build functioning verve amongst the workers to create a mode through which the employees’ competence is bolstered. Employees can be goaded to work either positively or negatively; when a leader uses a recompense schemes such as bonuses, promotions and recognition certificates for work done employees are encouraged in an affirmative way to be more productive. On the other hand, leaders may choose to use penalty motivation in form of fear so that those who don’t perform are demoted or lose income; this strategy harnesses strong drive for work since people need to secure their jobs, it however garners indifference, resistance and poor quality work.