Unit 4 Essay BBA 365. Motivational Leadership & Organizational Performance.

Running head: LEADERSHIP & PERFORMANCE1
Motivational Leadership & Organizational Performance
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LEADERSHIP & PERFORMANCE

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Motivational Leadership & Organizational Performance
Typically, motivation is placed front and center of performance management at organizations. To motivate, so a mainstream argument goes, is to enhance, automatically, performance. This view of motivation-performance is, however, incomplete. In current complex, diverse, and rapidly changing organizations, motivation per se is not a magic door for more effective performance. Instead, motivation, carefully designed and managed by organizational leaders, is apt to generate far more enduring outcomes beyond short-range, if not short-sighted, deliverables. To understand motivational leadership requires a discussion of motivation as a more problematized concept and practice used by organizational leaders to achieve specific outcomes and enhance overall performance. This short essay aims, accordingly, to explore means to motivate employees, the efficacy of motivation methods, and using goal-setting and motivation to achieve positive organizational behaviors and promote ethical decision-making.
Generally, motivation is a function of internal and external motivators. Internally, employees are motivated by promoting a sense of self and job-worthiness, self-actualization, independence, and horizontal collaboration (i.e., among superiors and peers as opposed to hierarchical decision-making). Externally, employees are motivated by offering incentives (monetary and/or symbolic), promotions, and recognition. In current complex organizations, internal motivators are showing more efficiency compared to external, particularly monetary motivators. Indeed, younger generations of employees, so-called Millennials, prefer independence and job satisfaction over perks and unsubstantiated monetary motivators. The job mobility of younger generations of employees is, indeed, informed more by intrinsic, as opposed to extrinsic, modes, and means of motivation. In order to retain employees, accordingly, intrinsic
LEADERSHIP & PERFORMANCE

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motivators are most effective and are shown to enhance creativity, an invaluable asset in the current j...