As we covered in Lesson 7, leadership is a process involving interactions between leaders, followers, and their environment/contexts. Right now you should be thinking hard about the reciprocal interaction between leaders and followers (Price & Van Vugt, 2014). By the end of this lesson you should be able to answer this question: How do leaders motivate followers to achieve goals for the organization?
Focus on the Common Themes: Motivation is somewhat different for every person. However, there are some clear commonalities for all humans, and it's around these commonalities that most motivational theory and strategy has developed. Motivational strategies take insight from theory and translate that into programs and processes designed to motivate employees, as shown clearly in the lesson for this chapter.
Motivating someone is not the same thing as changing someone's behavior. We all know that just because we are motivated to do something and we know why we should do it... well, it doesn't mean we WILL do it. (The first links under further exploration explain this idea in more depth.)
And more importantly, maybe, motivating others is not the same as crafting your own career for satisfaction. This information, in particular, might come in most handy for you when you consider doing your final action plan. I recommend reviewing this guide if you're interested in thinking through your own career motivation at this time: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/job-satisfaction/ Preview: Follow your passion is a trap that research shows is NOT how to achieve the happiest life. Chasing happiness isn't great either, but chasing well-being & purpose can work pretty well!
A model of individual motivation to consider: Cognitive Resources (1)(2) ---influence our ----> Judgments and Decisions -----to allocate our time and energy which is the definition of ---> Motivation ----and if we chase our motivation it can lead to ----> Happiness.
💁 Head over to behaviormodel.org to get a deeper understanding of what we really need to do to turn motivation into actual behaviors. If you have a behavior you would like to change (either start or stop) feel free to try his Behavior Wizard - it's pretty interesting! Or try the Habit Forge.
📑 Read this very short article focused on rewarding A while hoping for B (an incredibly common problem with performance measurement systems which often leads to much dissatisfaction with them): Kerr, S. (1995). On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. The Academy of Management Executive (1993-2005), 9(1), 7–14. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4165235
🎧 Try Harvard Business Review's IdeaCasts.* For this lesson #75 Managing B Performers and #433 How to Change Someone's Behavior with Minimal Effort are relevant for both our OB topics and your self-management.