Literature review

The Three Factors of Leadership Motivation

By: Brent Filson

1. MOTIVATION IS PHYSICAL ACTION.

"Motivation" has common roots with "motor," "momentum," "motion," "mobile," etc. — all words
that denote movement, physical action. An essential feature of motivation is physical action.
Motivation isn't about what people think or feel but what they physically do. When motivating
people to get results, challenge them to take those actions that will realize those results.
I counsel leaders who must motivate individuals and teams to get results not to deliver
presentations but "leadership talks." Presentations communicate information.. But when you
want
to motivate people, you must do more than simply communicate information. You must have
them believe in you and take action to follow you. A key outcome of every leadership talk must
be physical action, physical action that leads to results.
For instance, I worked with the newly-appointed director of a large marketing department who
wanted the department to achieve sizable increases in the results. However, the employees
were a demoralized bunch who had been clocking tons of overtime under her predecessor and
were feeling angry that their efforts were not being recognized by senior management.
She could have tried to order them to get the increased results. Many leaders do that. But order
leadership founders in today's highly competitive, rapidly changing markets. Organizations are
far more competitive when their employees instead of being ordered to go from point A to point
B want to go from point A to point B. So I suggested that she take a first step in getting the
employees to increase results by motivating those employees to want to increase results. They
would "want to" when they began to believe in her leadership. And the first step in enlisting that
belief was for her to give a number of leadership talks to the employees.

One of her first talks that she planned was to the department employees in the company's
auditorium. She told me, "I want them to know that I appreciate the work they are doing and that
I believe that they can get the results I'm asking of them. I want them to feel good about
themselves."
"Believing is not enough," I said. "Feeling good is not enough. Motivation must take place.
Physical action must take place. Don't give the talk until you know what precise action you are
going to have happen."
She got the idea of having the CEO come into the room after the talk, shake each employee's
hand, and tell each how much he appreciated their hard work — physical action. She didn't stop
there. After the CEO left, she challenged each employee to write down on a piece of paper
three specific things that they needed from her to help them get the increases in results and
then hand those pieces of paper to her personally — physical action.
 2. MOTIVATION IS DRIVEN BY EMOTION.

Emotion and motion come from the same Latin root meaning "to move". When you want to
move
people to take action, engage their emotions. An act of motivation is an act of emotion. In any
strategic management endeavor, you must make sure that the people have a strong emotional
commitment to realizing it.
When I explained this to the chief marketing officer of a worldwide services company, he said,
"Now I know why we're not growing! We senior leaders developed our marketing strategy in a
bunker! He showed me his "strategy" document. It was some 40 pages long, single-spaced. The
points it made were logical, consistent, and comprehensive. It made perfect sense. That was
the
trouble. It made perfect, intellectual sense to the senior leaders. But it did not make experiential
sense to middle management who had to carry it out. They had about as much in-put into the
strategy as the window washers at corporate headquarters. So they sabotaged it in many
innovative ways. Only when the middle managers were motivated — were emotionally
committed
to carrying out the strategy — did that strategy have a real chance to succeed.

3. MOTIVATION IS NOT WHAT WE DO TO OTHERS. IT'S WHAT OTHERS DO TO

THEMSELVES.

The English language does not accurately depict the psychological truth of motivation. The truth
is that we cannot motivate anybody to do anything. The people we want to motivate can only
motivate themselves. The motivator and the motivatee are always the same person. We as
leaders communicate, they motivate. So our "motivating" others to get results really entails our
creating an environment in which they motivate themselves to get those results.
A Study on Employees
Motivation in Textile Mills in
Coimbatore District
Success of an organization largely depends upon the level of performance of its employees.
The level of the
performance of an employee is a function of his abilities and motivation. Motivation is an art of
stimulating
people to get the desired things done.
It is one of the important factors affecting human behaviour. Motivational factors are the
perceived needs of
the employees, satisfaction of the employees will contribute to employees' performance and
productivity.
The process of motivation may be internal or external to the individual that arouses enthusiasm,
and
persistence to pursue a certain course of action.Dr. Mungo Miller (1968).'
Summaries/major ideas which have been discovered about motivational processes as they
appear in
industry, lie six general principles are:
1. Motivation is psychological and not logical. It is primarily an emotional process and most
basic
motivations are defined in terms of feelings. Man uses objects, people, actions, and ideas as
tools in
his never-ending pursuit of the way he wants to feel.
2. Motivation is fundamentally an unconscious process. Most of us find this difficult or
impossible to
believes, but in most instances a man Gles not himself know the real reasons why he acts as he
does or what it is that he seeks.
3. Motivation is an individual matter. The key to a person's behavior lies within himself. The
supervisor
must use judgement to figure out why each person reacts the way he does in a given situation.
4. Not only do motivating needs differ from person to person, but in any individual they vary from
time
to time. There is a constantly shifting hierarchy of needs within the person. Some one of all the
things he wants is at the top of his list at any given moment.

5. Motivation is inevitably a social process. The individual does not live in a vacuum. His actions and
his needs are shaped from the moment of birth by the people around him. Some of this influence
comes through the broad general society in which he lives, some through the smaller groupings
6. In the vast majority of our daily actions we are guided by habits established by motivational
processes that were active many years earlier.
Objectives of the study
1. To analyze the relationship between the important of demographic on organization support and
employees motivation, and
3. To analyze the association between the factors influencing motivation among the employee's.

Results and Discussions

Encourage and support employees' needs for flexibility. Actions during these times speak louder than words.
By offering flextime, companies show they understand "where employees are coming from". These shortterm
investments can benefit the immediate bottom line and profitability over the long run. Help employees
feel wanted and needed.
A little praise goes a long way. It is important to show they are valued as people, not just as employees.
"Bob, when you stayed late to help that major account with the rush order, the impact on our organization
was "
Don't forget to send thank-you notes and buy pizza once and a while. Lead by walking around. Showing up
often to ask, "How's it going?" or to notice something the employee is doing right, rather than wrong, helps
enhance morale and productivity.
Show that you are concerned about workplace safety and security. Manager's may consider saying the
following: "Although it may be unlikely that bio-terrorism will directly affect our organization, I want to assure
everyone that in the unlikely event something would happen, medication will be provided at no cost." These
actions show you care, and you know what thoughts might be in their hearts.
Offer help to manage the extraordinary stress that exists today. If your organization does not offer
counseling through an employee assistance program (EAP), tell your employees that if anyone needs
psychological counseling, it will be provided at no cost to them for a specified length of time.
"People are concerned about their own jobs and about what's going to h pen to their companies, And on top
the unusual level of anxiety, there's low level of depression. Promise j stability, or at least fair treatment in I
offs. If possible, tell employees their jobs are secure. If not, vow to the employees fairly in the eve
downsizing is the only option - to give them as much notice as possible

 Be Open to employees questioning their roles

 Weigh psychic income in hiring decisions:
 Good wages
 Appreciation of work:

Since motivation influences productivity, supervisors need to understand what motivates employees to reach
peak performance. It is not an easy task to increase employee motivation because employees"Respond in
different ways to their jobs and their organization's practices. Motivation is the set of processes that moves a
person toward a goal. Thus, motivated behaviors are voluntary choices controlled by the individual
employee. The supervisor (motivator) wants to influence the factors that motivate employees to higher levels
of productivity.
Factors that affect work motivation include individual differences, job characteristics, and organizational
practices. Individual differences are the personal needs/wants, values, and attitudes, interests and abilities
that people bring to their jobs. Job characteristics are the aspects of the position that determine its
limitations and challenges. Organizational practices are the rules, human resources policies, managerial
practices, and rewards systems of an organization. Supervisors must consider how these factors interact to
affect employee job performance.