Concept of Motivation in Leadership

Motivation:
 Motivation is the set of forces that causes people to engage in one behavior rather than
some alternative behavior.
 But their goals are different.
 Managers strive to motivate people in the organization to perform at high levels.
 But job performance depends on ability and environment as well as motivation.

Nature of Motivation:
 Motivation is an internal feeling.
 It is basically a psychological process.
 Motivation produces goal directed behavior.
 Motivation contains systems orientation.
 Motivation can be either negative or positive.

Leadership Behavior and Motivation:

 Motivational skills are critical to leadership success.
 How leader’s motivate their workers?
 Why people leave their jobs?
 Research shows employees stay if they are satisfied with their jobs and committed to their
organizations and leave if they are not satisfied.
 Poor leaders drive employees to quit.
Importance of Motivation:
 Motivation helps to improve performance levels of employees.
 Motivation helps to change negative or indifferent attitudes of employee to positive
attitudes.
 Motivation helps to reduce employee turnover and thereby saves the cost of new
recruitment and training.
 Motivation helps to reduce absenteeism in the organization.
 Motivation helps managers to introduce changes smoothly without much resistance from
people.

Theories of Motivation:
Content Theories
The theories of the motivation which explains the dynamics of human needs, such as why
people have different needs at different times.
Process Theories
These theories do not directly explains how needs emerge. Instead they describe the process
through which the needs are translated into behavior.