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The field of leadership has evolved significantly over the years. While different theoretical perspectives have come and gone (see Northouse, 2006), common themes and principles have emerged that remain important for effective leadership. Some of these include: the need for honesty and integrity in leadership; the importance of effective communication; the necessity for a solid understanding of the team's business or mission; and, the requirement to adapt to changing situational factors.
An additional topic that has received considerable attention in a wide array of leadership and management discussions is motivation, primarily because leadership and motivation are necessarily connected. House's (2004) definition of leadership illustrates this:
Leadership is the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the (groups) of which they are members.
This definition highlights the fact that motivation is a key component of leadership. Without being able to motivate followers, it is unlikely that managers or supervisors (leaders of the organization) can be successful. The purpose of this paper is to define motivation, and to offer some important practical guidelines that leaders can use to create motivating environments for their followers.
In a very simple sense, motivation is effort. People who are motivated are willing to exert high levels of effort toward goals, conditioned by this effort's ability to satisfy specific individual needs. Management can learn to influence this kind of effort level by recognizing two important principles related to motivation. The first principle has to do with whether or not motivation is a personal trait. Traits include visible characteristics such as race, age, gender, hair color, and weight, along with other attributes such as personality. In general, personal traits are considered to be fairly stable and enduring, descriptive of individuals across various situations. For example, a female born in 1965 possesses traits (age and gender) that are fairly characteristic of her wherever she goes.
At issue is whether or not motivation can be talked about in the same way. Some managers and supervisors might label certain individuals who seem to lack motivation as 'lazy'. Such a label assumes that these individuals are always lazy. When I was a distribution supervisor in my first job, I remember touring the warehouse with my manager....