How to Motivate Employees

Sullivan University MGT545X-A1-07-Leadership and Team Development Fall 2013

Abstract
This paper walks through a study to explore, various factors which plays a significant role in employee motivation, more specifically intrinsic factors (motivators) must be consider by managers or leaders. Research analysis made by different authors has been compared to identify the most common and different employee motivation factors with an aim to identify the most effective employee motivation factor. The results might be helpful in improving employee motivational skills for leaders having limited nature to exploratory study and some managerial perceptions.

Introduction
In this paper, the main concern will be to examine the various research analysis made by different authors on employee motivation and will also cover the essential skills required by an effective leader to develop this motivation skills. In general, it has been identified as difficult to follow this principles, but leaders are always recommended to overcome this fear, by implementing, applying analytical frameworks and developing various skills which will help to become an efficient leader. We will also review some fundamental facts about what makes an effective leader, who can become a leader and leadership work required. In the conclusion, we will reassure the latest approaches for motivation and distinguish the similarities and differences.

What Makes an Effective Leader ?

According to Drucker, both leadership and gaining effectiveness can be learned by pursuing some fundamental steps. i. Ask what is the requirement to be accomplish: Identify the work you are excellent of and try to focus on attaining one task at one time. ii. Ask what is appropriate for company: always try to make decision which are in favor of company which consecutively will cover concerns of stakeholders iii. Establish action plans: develop precise plans which will determine forecasted results along with possible constraints. iv. Take accountability for decisions: any decision identifies who is responsible for its execution and if weakness is observed corrective actions must be taken before actual damage occurs. v. Adopt responsibility for communication: consult your supervisor, subordinates and companions on action items and keep focus on top priorities. vi. Concentrate on opportunities and not issues: target on effective actions and not on less productive action items. vii. viii. Try to run meetings effective: meetings must turn out to with most productive outcomes. Think and deliver as We and not I: Keep encouraging and collaborate team culture. (Drucker, 2004)
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In my belief, all efficient executives may or may not be a leader but for sure a leader should always tend to become an effective executive.

Who can become a leader ?

Anyone has the potential to work to become a leader; the action it requires is, to ask questions in all the conditions, prove the capability to become a leader and get rid of all fears and develop external and internal motivational factors. What you do is more important than how you do it, so effectiveness or doing the right things is more productive than efficiency or doing the thing without any significance. Try to create an inventory of characteristics of explicitly and implicitly factors and work on them for betterment (Ferris, 2008).

What makes anyone to become leaders strong admirer ?

Within leaders, we can find different many anticipated qualities and surprising skills that makes their followers to have strong belief in them. Also there is a great correlation between the leadership behaviors and its consequence in motivating towards extra effort. Transformational leadership: Leaders usually transform and provide motivation to followers by generating an inspiring advance vision, giving encouragement to followers to exceed beyond their own concern for the benefit of the organization, and exhilarating their followers greater order demands. Transactional leadership: Leaders try their best to establish relationships whereby the leaders and their subordinates exchange of something of equivalent value. These exchanges might be political, intellectual, or financial. Laissez-faire leadership: Leaders tends to administer neither positive or negative feedback, thus lessening to propose either personal cooperation or guidance. (Webb, 2007)

Work of leadership
Considering todays world of modern business processes, in order to pursue each action steps cognitive skills are associated, followers need high level of comfort, balance and resolutions from leaders, but in that scenario leaders must ask tough questions and strike followers out of their relief areas. Few leadership responsibilities includes guidance, supervision, adaptation, managing rivalry and constructing norms. (Heifetz & Laurie, 2001) i. Get on the balcony: Leader should have overall prospective in mind will leading and identify patterns ii. Identify your adaptive challenge: Leaders should understand themselves, their people and potential source of conflict. iii. Regulate distress: Leaders should strike a delicate balance between need to change and overwhelming change. iv. Maintain disciplined attention: do not avoid paying attention to issues that disturb and leaders should get employees to confront tough trade-offs in values, procedures, operating styles and power. v. Give the work back to employees: work avoidance through accepting work from employees should be reduced and employees should be directed to take up the responsibility. vi. Protect leadership voices from below: do not suppress whistle blowers and creative deviant. (Heifetz & Laurie, 2001)

Employee Motivation
Employee motivation is an essential management assignment and this task can absolutely make an extensive difference. Nowadays, due to evolution of extremely pressurized and most active work environments, time to motivate can appear to be a comfort in case whereby they are ambitious but surely such kind of predictions might prove very dangerous. Staff might not be adequately self-starting and, anyhow, the method they work, their skills, intelligence and expertise can all be dominated and even excellent achievements improved. Motivation is

consider as center of management process and is basis of productivity. (Williams, Lankford & DeGraaf, 1999) Patrick Forsyth (Motivating your staff - A Positive staff motivation) Since we know, only good-motivated person has potential to demonstrate a real edge and constantly breakthrough performance. Now the question here arises is, What motivates? Not any magical distinct formula will be a single solution. Building correct motivational climate surely appeals constant considerations and improved action plans. Possibly the most primary and crucial thing is acknowledgement or appreciation, that spreads positive motivation. Developing this will definitely require a huge time investment, which in turn will repay via constructing a team which can act prevailing, ambitious and effective. According to authors recommendation, motivational theory at work place needs to be acknowledged. A great way to boost motivational performance is to maintain a good balance between two factors of motivational theories: dissatisfiers which basically create a dilute work motivation and other factors identified as motivators which provide great stimulation to motivation. Usually in any work environment we can identify multiple factors involved which needs proper concentration. We will discuss some of them starting with negative factors dissatisfiers mainly includes difficulty in interacting with peers and subordinates at work place, lack of status, inadequate work situations, salary (who would not like earn more?), biased or absurd internal work policies or administration, improper supervision, insecure feelings at work place (perhaps arise due to elements like vague job descriptions or expected goal (targets)) and lot more various factors caused from listed one of these. On contrary to negative factors there are also some positive motivation factors through which people can be motivated classically like job position growth and increment and acknowledgement or appreciation of work. In some companies few motivational factors are inherent such as employee selection and hiring are chosen greatly (good employee selection is essential) and liking their efforts in work. At some companies job environment is demanding with ample responsibilities vital motivators factors which can be enhanced are selection of employee who has the ability to perform task alone and make subtle decisions which would be
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more demanding. Possibly at all companies nothing is of more importance rather than a feeling of accomplishment. Recognizing the targets achieved has an endless different ways and some simple ways are: just mentioning Good Job or Well Done in simple form. This can be praised, strengthened and made apparent in either meeting section or a key note from higher management, taking team for a dinner or a drink, or simple mentioning as acknowledgement topic in companys newsletter. (Forsyth, 2006) Keeling, D., Jones, E., & Botterill, D. (Work-Based Learning, Motivation and EmployerEmployee Interaction: Implications for Lifelong Learning) In the role of motivation, work based learning plays a great role in stimulating employeremployee interactions. Communication, an important management skills, is consider to be one of the key importance in encouraging this activity of interaction. Congruence and dissonance between the employers and employees perspectives of work based learning are identified as a major influence that affects motivation and subsequent participation in this approach to knowledge and skill acquisition. (Keeling, Jones & Botterill, 1998, p.282) One of traditional definition of Work-based learning is, Learning which is linked with the different requirements of peoples, jobs, learning for work, learning at work and learning through work. Employee motivation is considered as a fragile process with sequence of multiple steps which needs to be performed in order and employer-employee communication is one of this steps. If any one of the steps fails than it might fail entire employee motivation process. Most prominent is to maintain congruence in between employers and employees way of pursuing different work tasks to make sure that companys goal is attained successfully along with motivation. Also a smooth and supportive work environment is mandatory in order maintain a good communication patterns and employee-employer interactions.
Jeffries, F. L., & Hunte, T. L. (Generations and Motivation: A Connection Worth Making)

In past, various motivational theories has been proposed which basically focus on specific aspect of motivation process. Again it is also important to identify the feedback of this theories while applying and verify its impact level of differences on different generation of employees. Whether
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the target is increasing organizational efficiency, improved work performance, increase in overall teams work attitudes, or providing assurance to customer services, motivational theories are always adapted towards reconstructing performance results that will effect organizational achievements. According to research study on four different generations author has proposed following motivation factors applicable: Traditional Generation (adaptive, 1925 1945) (Jeffries & Hunte, 2004, p.54-55) Respect their background and experience Ask before you coach, be tactful and respectful Be personal in communications, avoid impersonal e-mail/fax correspondence Boomer Generation (idealist, 1946 1964) Use the personal touch e.g. I need you to do this for me Provide opportunities for them to prove themselves and their worth Name recognition is important Provide public recognition for successes Xer Generation (reactive, 1964 1980) Provide constructive feedback often and in a timely manner Give them the freedom to plan and prioritize their work and use a flex-time approach Millennial Generation (civic, 1981 2000) Avoid changing plans abruptly Provide time to pursue their interests and make the work environment fun Give them good technology to use and design jobs so that it can be used Provide mentors and coaching and avoid office politics (Jeffries & Hunte, 2004, p.54-55)

Comparison
As mention above we have reviewed several research studies on important aspects needs to be taken into consideration for employee motivation. Also we have included a research article which clearly explains correlation with generation differences and motivation. Ability of employee along with healthy motivation is recognized as one of crucial key at workplace for achievement. With increase in complexity in todays world, it has been clearly identified that there are multiple motivating factors to encourage people. The most common factors are communication and employee-employer relation and the negative factors. Complication of work performance motivation is apparent in the communication of the efforts inside specific individuals, their jobs, and their job surroundings that count towards the position, direction, and steadfastness of exertion used at work place.

Conclusion
To conclude, with overcoming anxiety and developing required analytical skills, anyone can chase their vision to evolve as a leader. Also a leader must be familiar with right way to transform its leadership skills to become an effective executive, should know about importance of motivational factors and must try to maintain smooth relation with followers or at work environment. However, various authors doing exploratory study on identical topic, have contrasting approach and explanation to address intrinsic factors (motivating factors). After having comparison results from research study articles, it seems that communication and workplace environment are most vital factors having tremendous impact on Employee motivation. In this learning, it is apparent that we are handling advance form of motivation.

Reference:
Drucker, P. F. (2004). What makes an effective executive. Harvard Business Review, 82(6), 1524. Ferris, T. (2008). Smash fear, learn anything. www.ted.com. Monterey, California, United States of America. Forsyth, P. (2006). Motivating your staff [positive staff motivation]. Engineering Management, 16(1), 22-23. doi:10.1049/em:20060104 Heifetz, R. A., & Laurie, D. L. (2001). The work of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 37-47. Jeffries, F. L., & Hunte, T. L. (2004). Generations and Motivation: A Connection Worth Making. Journal Of Behavioral & Applied Management, 6(1), 37-70. Keeling, D., Jones, E., & Botterill, D. (1998). Work-Based Learning, Motivation and EmployerEmployee Interaction: Implications for Lifelong Learning. Innovations In Education & Training International, 35(4), 282. Webb, K. (2007). Motivating Peak Performance: Leadership Behaviors That Stimulate Employee Motivation And Performance. Christian Higher Education, 6(1), 53-71. doi:10.1080/15363750600932890 Williams, A., Lankford, S., & DeGraaf, D. (1999). How Managers Perceive Factors That Impact Employee Motivation: An Application of Pathfinder Analysis. Journal Of Park & Recreation Administration, 17(2), 84-106.

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