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Unit 13: Motivation and Leadership

Introduction Notes

Have you ever wondered, what makes people work? Why do some people perform better than
others? Why does the same person act differently at different times? The answer is motivation
by a leader in the organisation. A leader must stimulate people to action to accomplish the
desired goals; he must fuse the varied individual human capacities and powers of the many
people employed into a smoothly working team with high productivity. How do we get people
to perform at a higher than “normal” percent of their physical and mental capacities and also
maintain satisfaction. This is the challenge of motivation.
Motivation is the process of rousing and sustaining goal-directed behaviour. Motivation is one
of the more complex topics in organisational behaviour. Leadership is a process of influence on
a group. Leadership is the ability of a manager to induce subordinates to work with confidence
and zeal.

13.1 What is Motivation?

Some of the widely quoted definitions are given below:
According to Gray Starke, "Motivation is the result of processes, internal or external to the
individual, that arouse enthusiasm and persistence to pursue a certain course of action."
According to Stephen P Robbins, "We define motivation as the willingness to exert high levels
of effort toward organisational goals, conditioned by the effort's ability to satisfy some individual
needs."
According to S. Zedeck and M. Blood, " Motivation is a predisposition to act in a specific goal-
directed way."
According to Atkinson J.W, "(Motivation is) the immediate influences on the direction, vigour
and persistence of action."
According to S.W Gellerman, "(Motivation is) steering one's actions toward certain goals and
committing a certain part of one's energies to reach them."
According to M.R. Jones, "(Motivation is) how behaviour gets started, is energized, is sustained,
is directed, is stopped and what kind of subjective reaction is present in the organism while all
these are going on."
All these definitions contain three common aspects of the motivation process:
1. What energizes human behaviour?
2. What directs or channels such behaviour?
3. How is this behaviour maintained or sustained?

Motivation has certain underlying properties:
1. It is an individual phenomenon – Each individual is unique, and this fact must be recognized
in motivation research.
2. Motivation is intentional – When an employee does something, it is because he or she has
chosen to do it.
3. Motivation has many facets – Researchers have analyzed various aspects of motivation,
including how it is aroused, how it is directed, what influences its persistence, and how it
is stopped.
4. The purpose of motivation theories is to predict behaviour – The distinction must be made
between motivation, behaviour and performance. Motivation is what causes behaviour; if
the behaviour is effective, high performance will result.

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