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Motivation, Satisfaction, and Performance

“Polls estimate that if companies could get 3.7 percent more work out of each employee, the equivalent of 18 more minutes of work for each eight-hour shift, the gross domestic product in the U.S. would swell by $355 billion, twice the total GDP of Greece.”

~The Gallup Organization

Cha

pter 9

Introduction Motivation is all about getting people to do things, and

motivating others is a fundamental leadership skill. People believe they could give as much as 15 percent or

20 percent more effort at work than they now do with no one, including their own bosses, recognizing any difference.

The top 15 percent of workers in any particular job produced from 20 to 50 percent more output than the average worker.

Creating highly motivated and satisfied followers depends, most of all on understanding others.

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Defining Motivation, Satisfaction, and Performance

The leader’s ability to motivate followers is vitally important to both the morale and the performance of the work group.

Motivation is anything that provides direction, intensity, and persistence to behavior.

Performance concerns the behaviors directed toward the organization’s mission or goals, or the products and services resulting from those behaviors.

Job Satisfaction is how much one likes a specific kind of job or work activity. Organizational citizenship behaviors

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Relationships Between Leadership, Job Satisfaction, and Performance

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Figure 9-1

Understanding and Influencing Follower Motivation

Some motivational theories are particularly useful in certain situations but are not as applicable in others.

Leaders who are knowledgeable about different motivational theories are more likely to choose the right theory for a particular follower and situation, and often have higher-performance and more satisfied employees as a result.

Most performance problems can be attributed to unclear expectations, skill deficits, resource/ equipment shortages, or a lack of motivation.

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Need Theories One way to get followers to engage and persist with the

behaviors needed to accomplish group goals is to appeal to their needs.

The two major need theories include: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Alderfer’s Existence-Relatedness-Growth Theory

Needs refer to internal states of tension or arousal, or uncomfortable states of deficiency people are motivated to change.

Leadership practitioners can get followers to engage in and persist with certain behaviors by correctly identifying and appeasing their needs.

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

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Figure 9-2

Existence-Relatedness-Growth Theory

People sometimes try to satisfy more than one need at a time.

Frustration of a higher-level need can lead to efforts to satisfy a lower-level need.Frustration regression hypothesis

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Existence-Relatedness-Growth Theory (continued)

The practical implications for motivating followers are:Leadership practitioners should identify the

degree of need for existence, relatedness, and growth for their followers.

Followers having relatively satisfied existence and relatedness needs are more apt to focus on growth needs.

Leadership practitioners should be on the lookout for the frustration regression hypothesis among followers.

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Concluding Thoughts on Need Theories

Leaders should do all they can to help followers meet lower-level needs.

None of the theories makes specific predictions about what an individual will do to satisfy a particular need.

The theories’ lack of specificity and predictive power severely limits their practical applicability in real-life settings.

Leadership practitioners may need to address some basic, fundamental areas before their attempts to get followers to expand more effort on work-related behaviors will be successful.

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Individual Differences in MotivationLeaders can motivate followers by hiring those with

the right traits, values, and work interests.To improve group performance, leaders should

select only those followers who possess both the right skills and have a higher level of achievement orientation, right values, or find the work to be intrinsically motivating.

People vary substantially in their: Achievement orientation Values Intrinsic motivation

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Concluding Thoughts on Individual Differences in Motivation

The most effective way to determine what followers find to be important or intrinsically motivating is to simply ask them what they like to do.

Leaders may be able to reassign or periodically rotate tasks to increase the level of follower motivation.

Leaders may be able to get higher-quality work and have more satisfied employees by reassigning work according to values and intrinsic interests.

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Cognitive Theories – Goal SettingGoals are the most powerful determinants of task

behavior.Consistent aspects of goal setting:

Goals that were both specific and difficult resulted in consistently higher effort and performance when contrasted to “do your best” goals.

Goal commitment is critical. Followers exerted the greatest effort when goals were

accompanied by feedback.A leader’s implicit and explicit expectations about

goal accomplishment can affect the performance of followers and teams.

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Cognitive Theory – Expectancy Theory

Expectancy theory maintains that leadership practitioners will be able to motivate followers if they understand the process followers use to determine whether certain behaviors will lead to valued rewards.

People will be motivated to do a task if three conditions are met: They perform the task adequately if they put forth enough

effort (effort-to-performance expectancy). They will be rewarded if they do it (performance-to-

outcome expectancy). They value the reward (valence).

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Cognitive Theories – Equity TheoryFollowers are said to be most motivated when they

believe that what they put into an activity or a job and what they get out of it are roughly equivalent to what others put into and get out of it.

Followers presumably reach decisions about equitable relationships by assigning values to the four elements shown below:

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Personal outcomes Reference group outcomes =

Personal inputs Reference group inputs

Cognitive Theories – Self-EfficacySelf-efficacy concerns one’s core beliefs about

being able to successfully perform a given task. Positive self-efficacy Negative self-efficacy

Research has shown that people who simply believe they can perform a particular task will often exert considerable effort to get the task accomplished.

Because followers’ self-efficacy varies from one task to the next, leaders can better motivate followers by finding ways to boost their self-efficacy.

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Concluding Thoughts on Cognitive Theories of Motivation

Followers will be more inclined to pursue activities that result in the accomplishment of specific goals, that balance perceived inequities, or when they believe they can perform those behaviors needed to accomplish goals.

Leaders can influence followers’ motivational levels by: Clearly articulating expected outcomes. Clarifying the links between efforts and rewards. Providing training, coaching, and feedback to followers

as they go about accomplishing tasks.

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Situational Approaches – The Operant Approach

Leaders who properly design and implement contingent reward systems increase follower productivity and performance.

Operant principles for leadership practitioners that help to improve followers’ motivation and performance: Clearly specify what behaviors are important. Determine if those behaviors are currently being punished,

rewarded, or ignored. Find out what followers actually find rewarding and punishing. Be wary of creating perceptions of inequity when administering

individually tailored rewards. Do not limit themselves to administering organizationally

sanctioned rewards and punishments. Administer rewards and punishments in a contingent manner

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Situational Approaches - Empowerment Two key components of empowerment:

Delegate leadership and decision making down to the lowest level possible.

Equip followers with the resources, knowledge, and the skills necessary to make good decisions.

Three macro psychological components underlying empowerment: Motivation Learning Stress

Four micro components of empowerment: Self-determination Meaning Competence Influence

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Concluding Thoughts on Situational Approaches to Motivation

Leaders naively assume it is easier to change an individual than it is to change the situation.

Leaders can often see positive changes in followers’ motivation levels by restructuring work processes and procedures, which in turn can increase their latitude to make decisions and add more meaning to work.

If the process, procedures, and rewards are properly designed and administered, then in many cases followers will successfully work through their resistance.

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Understanding and Influencing Follower Satisfaction

Satisfied workers are more likely to engage in organizational citizenship behaviors, behaviors that go beyond job descriptions and role requirements and help reduce the workload or stress of others in the organization.

Dissatisfied workers are more likely to be adversarial in their relations with leadership and engage in diverse sorts of counterproductive behaviors.

Employee turnover has the most immediate impact on leadership practitioners. Functional turnover Dysfunctional turnover

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Global, Facet, and Life SatisfactionData regarding attitudes about work is

usually collected by using some type of job satisfaction survey.Global satisfaction items assess the overall

degree to which employees are satisfied with their organization and their job.

Facet satisfaction items assess the degree to which employees are satisfied with different aspects of work such as pay, benefits, promotion policies, working hours, etc.

Life satisfaction items concern one’s attitudes about life in general.

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Theories of Job Satisfaction - Affectivity

Affectivity refers to one’s tendency to react to stimuli in a consistent emotional manner. Negative affectivity Positive affectivity

Findings suggest that leadership initiatives may have little impact on a person’s job satisfaction if their affective disposition is either extremely positive or negative.

Implications of affectivity in the workplace: One’s own affectivity can have a strong influence on followers

morale or satisfaction levels. Leading a high percentage of followers having either positive

or negative affectivity would likely result in very different leadership experiences.

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Theories of Job Satisfaction – Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory

Components of the two-factor theory: Motivators – satisfaction at work Hygiene factors – dissatisfaction at work

The key to increasing followers’ effort levels according to the two-factor theory is to adequately satisfy the hygiene factors while maximizing the motivators for a particular job.

Problems with Herzberg’s two-factor theory: Subjects interviewed were hardly representative of workers in

other lines of work. Subjects attributed job satisfaction to their skill and

dissatisfaction to circumstances beyond their control.

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Theories of Job Satisfaction – Organizational Justice

Organizational justice is a cognitive approach based on the premise that people who are treated unfairly are less productive, satisfied, and committed to their organizations.

Three components of organizational justice: Interactional justice Distributive justice Procedural justice

Research has shown that these different components of organizational justice are related to satisfaction with the leader, pay, promotion, and the job itself.

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Summary Performance and motivation are not the same thing. People often have varying levels of satisfaction for

different aspects of their jobs, such as pay, working conditions, supervisors, or co-workers.

Leadership practitioners likely will be more effective if they learn to recognize situations where various approaches, or the insights particular to them, may be differentially useful.

Followers, as well as leaders, are more likely to have positive attitudes about work if they believe that what they do is important and that the reward and disciplinary systems are fair and just.

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