Institute of Leadership & Management

Good to know

Helping you to understand and motivate your team

Motivation means a need to want

to do. It is about why we deliberately
choose to take certain actions or
make existing situations better.

Many people have tried to find out and

explain what motivates people. Leaders
find this useful in helping them discover
how to get the best out of their teams.

For example, why would

someone wake up early and set
off for work early? Is it the
possibility of getting work done
quickly and out of the way that
drives them to do it? Or, is it the
prospect of overtime pay? Or
perhaps they are hoping to get a
promotion?

Some theories or explanations are very

popular and help leaders understand
why different people are motivated in
different ways. Motivated staff are likely
to work harder and more
enthusiastically than demotivated staff.
They will achieve better results and
have a positive effect on organisational
performance.

The need that drives someone

forward to do something is their
motivation.

Motivators and hygiene factors

By asking people what caused them to be dissatisfied and satisfied with their jobs, Herzberg (1959) identified
that the aspects of a job that offered individuals satisfaction were not the same as those that caused
dissatisfaction.

Motivators
Those factors which cause someone to express satisfaction with their job, Herzberg
called motivators. These include recognition, a sense of achievement and opportunities
for learning and developing.

Hygiene factors
Hygiene factors cause dissatisfaction if they are not in place, but even if present will not
cause someone to obtain satisfaction from the work that they do. Ample holidays and a
good canteen might ensure that someone does not express dissatisfaction with their
work but they will not necessarily give them a sense of achievement and personal
satisfaction.
Principles of team leading

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Institute of Leadership & Management

Action centered leadership

John Adair (1973) was interested in how teams perform and how leaders get the best
from their teams. He identified three vital and inter-related aspects of team work.

Task

The team has a task to complete

The sort of task the team needs to
undertake determines the resources that
are required and the how the task should be
monitored and controlled. It is the job of the
leader to secure and allocate resources, to
ensure that the work is shared appropriately
and that all team members understand what
the team is trying to achieve.

Team

Individual

The team has collective needs

that have to be met

Individuals within the team

have needs
Individual needs at any time may
impact team performance. The leader
should know the team members sufficiently
well to ensure that individual needs are being
met within the team context. Leaders have a
responsibility to delegate appropriately to team
members, to motivate them according to their
individual needs and to ensure they have
opportunities for development.

A team will not work effectively if only

the task is considered and focused on.
Team morale has to be managed by the
leader. What the team considers to be
acceptable standards of behaviour need
to be agreed and made explicit. The leader
should intervene in the case of conflict and
seek to help resolve them. If an individual
upsets others in the team, the team leader
should deal with it.

Not tending to any one of the three aspects is likely to have a negative impact on performance. It is the job of
the leader to manage these three aspects.

Copyright The Institute of Leadership and Management 2014.

ILM is a registered trade mark of The City and Guilds of London Institute.
These materials may not, in whole or part, be copied, reproduced, communicated, or otherwise distributed without the prior written permission of ILM.

Principles
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of team leading

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