Motivation and Leadership

Motivation

The very concept that motivation is a result of the interaction between situation and individual and that it is a process that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort towards attaining a goal was very insightful and helpful. Before going through the reading material, we had always thought of motivation as a desire in a person to perform well or the task of a manager to get the job done.

We agree with the concept outlined in Goal setting theory as we believe that setting goals or allowing employees to participate in goal setting and then giving them constructive and appropriate feedback fosters an environment of commitment. The feeling of commitment towards the organization among its employees not only encourages the just and fair behaviour but also develops a culture of team work, self control and a more focused work force. Committed employees share and identify themselves with the organization’s mission and goal and contribute towards achieving it and do not refrain from taking up difficult tasks. Goal setting was very helpful in our past experience when dealing with underperforming employees. Setting realistic goals and reviewing the status on a regular basis helped us improve the employees’ performance drastically.

The Cognitive Evaluation theory was a new concept to us and came as a surprise. We would like to delve deeper into this concept as we are not yet completely convinced with the idea that extrinsic rewards decreases intrinsic motivation. The difference certainly could be due to the research being conducted on students and not paid workers. Expectancy theory also caught our attention and we also found it contradictory to the Cognitive Evaluation theory. As from our years of experience of handling and working with numerous teams, we feel that the effort towards doing a task is many a time directly proportional to the expectation of the outcome and the value of the reward associated with that outcome for the individual. This thought process seems to be going in the opposite direction of the cognitive theory explained.

Managers are the key link between organization and its employees. Thus as a manager it is crucial to channelize the intensity, direction and persistence of effort of an employee towards the achievement of the organizational goal for the mutual benefit of all. As a manager we must keep in mind that motivation level varies both between individuals and within individuals at different times. One must never judge performance in terms of age or sex but must remain objective in evaluating performance. A manager must provide its employees with growth opportunity, just and fair work environment, challenging work etc as this helps build a feeling of security which in turn helps employees focus better on their job and commit themselves to their work and organization. In the case �How to motivate Fred Maiorino’ Fred’s manager Reed instilled an atmosphere of insecurity for Fred by giving him unfair goals and putting him through probation twice after years of outstanding performance. We must strive to understand our employee’s goal and establish a link between his/her effort and performance, as should have been done by Reed in the case.

Leadership

Through