Leadership and Motivation in Project Management

Leadership and Motivation in Project Management

Introduction

Every project requires leadership as it allows project managers to influence the behavior of their employees in the course of the project cycle. Therefore, motivated employees are an element of the most significant results of the right leadership within the course of the project (Walker 2015). Research has established that successful managers also double as successful leaders since they end up influencing the workers to realize the project goals. Achieving project goals, nonetheless, is not enough to keep workers motivated but helping them accomplish their individual career goals is a significant component of their motivation. Leadership and motivation go hand in hand. The effectiveness of leadership is significantly contingent and most of the times defined in relation to the ability of the leader to motivate the workers to realize collective goals or team vision for the project (Verzuh 2008). The more the workers are motivated, the more effective the project manager will be and vice-versa and hence the realization of project goals.

Leadership and motivation

Whenever there is a difficult or even complex project, the most likely question a project manager may ask concerns how they would motivate their workers. This is because the success of every project is anchored on the drive of the workers to thrive through the commitments, efforts, practice, engagement and persistence (Pinto 1998). Therefore, motivation is a significant area since leadership competencies does entail the ability of the leader to motivate his workers as one of the important duties for their job. Leadership starts with the first effort made in recruiting a new worker. It then goes on through the whole induction process and continues each day up to the end of the project. This is a process that is cultivated by a manager who has the duty of motivating new workers and hence it shows the significance of leadership in a project.

Motivation in a project environment concerns the process of energizing workers to realize higher performance levels  with the aim of overcoming barriers that in  the way of change process. Motivation, therefore, seeks to show something above doing the right things. In the environment of an organization, leadership concerns getting workers to do things which actually have to be done but not through coercing them or by being the taskmaster in the team(Verzuh 2008). Any form of discussion on influence invariably ends up to the issue of power which is simply defined as the ability of influencing behavior to have people do things they would not have done in the first place. Power may be coercive (punishment and threats), legitimate (anchored on authority of the position),   expert (anchored on knowledge), reward (such as recognition and incentives) and lastly referent (anchored on charisma). Interestingly, using any one of these strategies may end up giving results, but the results they have on the aspect of motivation of project workers may be quite different. For instance, the application of coercive, autocratic or even laisserz-faire management styles may not go well with the satisfaction of employees (Verzuh 2008). The use of some other leadership models which are anchored on influence and power show the purpose of a successful team leader as one who initiates and is a good negotiator or coach.

The quality of the relationship that a manager has with his workers is the most crucial element of employee motivation. It brings about a professional, respectful and positive attitude and workers are more likely to use the same kind of approach with their colleagues at the workplace (Walker 2015). It is apparent that the leadership and management styles that are used by every project will lead to a determining effect on the level of motivation, the morale and the satisfaction level of workers in the job. One style of management which is said to enhance motivation is the one of participative leadership. Whether members within a team see a manager as a participant or even an autocratic leaders will show how they are likely to respond to the attempts by the manager to motivate them. Motivation with the aim of cooperating with a leader who is perceived as an out-group member will depend on the level of reward the relationship will yield for the worker. Further, the ability of a manager to create identity that is shared with an attempt of energizing the team members will most likely be successful (Walker 2015). This may be termed as servant leadership. Workers really have to see the value, challenge and excitement of their actions in the project in order for them to feel motivated.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory

Abraham Maslow had the belief that human beings are good and he pointed out that they have an inner drive which has a lot of potential. This theory is mostly used in classifying human motives. It incorporates five categories of motives that have been arranged in a hierarchical order with lower-level needs at the bottom and they have to be satisfied first before the higher-order needs may be considered (Petri and Govern 2013). The five major levels of needs are physiological needs that include water, sex, food and shelter. The second one includes the need for safety which is all about protection from danger, deprivation and threat. This includes such behavior which are likely to arouse uncertainty in line with job security or even reflects discrimination of sort are some of the powerful motivators at the project level (Arruda 2016). This is followed by social needs such as belonging and acceptance in the project. The last ones are ego needs and self-actualization needs. As with the last one, the worker has to be duly motivated for them to achieve their potential for continued self-actualization. The major things that may be derived from this theory is that a need that is satisfied is not really a motivator of behavior and lastly, ones the lower needs have been satisfied, then the next higher-order levels have to be considered.

The two-factor theory

This theory is also known as Herzberg’s motivation hygiene theory. It focuses on the level of motivation that is important in the achievement of work. His conclusion was that satisfaction and dissatisfaction were the result of two kinds of factors (Ondabu 2014). Firstly is motivating factors which are called satisfiers and then hygiene factors which are dissatisfies in that order. Satisfiers include such things as recognition, achievement, work, advancement, responsibility and growth (Arruda 2016). On the other hand dissatisfies include supervision, company policy, conditions of work, salary, status, job security, interpersonal relations and personal life. He used hygiene in the sense that it works to remove hazards from the larger environment.

Extrinsic Factor Theories

This is another approach to the aspect of motivation and its focus is on external factors and the role they play on understanding worker motivation. The most popular one is reinforcement theory which proposes that people are motivated whenever their behaviors are reinforced (Arruda 2016). The reinforcement comes in four levels: positive which is all about taking action that leads to rewarding good work; avoidance learning which takes place when steps are taken to avoid negative or undesirable behaviors; punishment which entails steps to avoid undesirable behaviors by making use of negative consequences to the employee and lastly extinction which is all about the removal of positive rewards whenever undesirable conduct is committed by the employee (Walker 2015).

Conclusion

Every manager has to have the elements of leadership and motivation for them to effectively steer their project to achieve desired outcomes. The process of leading a project requires an individual to have clear vision which is practical enough in the course of scheduling so that the right team may be attracted for the project course. Motivation comes in various levels and it is upon the project manager to know which aspects they have to aim at in order to satisfactorily motivate their workers. The key thing in determining how to motivate employees is the knowledge that every worker would want to be motivated differently. This is where leadership comes in.

References

Arruda, C. (2016). What Kind of Theory is the Human Theory of Motivation? Ratio, 30(3), pp.322-342.

Ondabu, I. (2014). A Theory of human motivation: The Tirimba Grouping Theory of Motivation. SOP Transactions on Economic Research, 1(1), pp.16-21.

Petri, H. and Govern, J. (2013). Motivation. S.l: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.

Pinto, J. (1998). Project management handbook. Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Verzuh, E. (2008). The fast forward MBA in project management. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

Walker, A. (2015). Project management in construction. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons Inc.