The Link Between Leadership And Motivation And How It Affects You

What is leadership and motivation and how are they related to each other?

Leadership refers to the ways of dealing with different people in different situations. There are three main types of leadership. Autocratic leadership; where the leader knows best and makes decisions on his own, democratic leadership; where leaders make decisions after consultation with staff, and laissez faire; where the broad objectives of the organization are told to the employees, and decision making authority is delegated to them. Each of these different styles of leadership are required in different situations and it must always be remembered that there are no right or wrong style of leadership. Only appropriate styles of leadership exist.

Motivation is the feeling of want within a person to perform a task and to do it to the best of his or her abilities. Motivation is the feeling of encouragement and enthusiasm to perform a certain task. Motivation is very important for any organization because any organization which has highly motivated employees is more likely to have high productivity, less absenteeism, low labour turnover, less industrial action and a good employee employer relationship.

Leadership and motivation go hand in hand. The way staff are deal with, using the different styles of leadership determines their motivation. Staff who are poorly dealt with obviously have high levels of motivation and vice versa. Let us explain this through an example. Imagine the working environment in a factory. Obviously the jobs are monotonous and require extensive work, especially on the production line. Along with these difficult circumstances of work, the supervisor yells out orders to employees and makes decisions regarding their pay without any consultation with the employees. Under these circumstances, the employees will obviously have low levels of motivation. Neither are they consulted on decisions that relate to them, in this case their pay, nor the supervisor’s way of dealing with the employees is poor and makes them feel alienated and demeaned.

On the other hand, imagine an office where employees and employers work together through trade unions and employers associations. Alongside this, employees are involved in the decision making process by allowing them to attend meetings. This is very different from the autocratic style of leadership that was used as an example previously. This is a democratic style of leadership. Workers in this case will be pleased to perform their job, meaning that they will be motivated to do their jobs. They will feel like a part of the organization and their feelings of self worth will increase.

Thus we have seen that leadership and motivation go hand in hand. However, we must also remember that leadership is not the only factor that determines the level of motivation of employees within the organization. Issues such as pay, the working environment, the type of job that workers are doing also contribute to the levels of motivation within the organization. But we can also conclude that leadership does play an important role on motivation of employees if not the only role in their motivation.