Leaders play a major role in how motivated their followers are to perform at high levels. Leaders should assure that followers understand their goals and are committed to them. In addition, leaders can design more motivating work or allow followers some discretion to craft their own work. Lastly, leaders strengthen the expectations of followers that they can perform at a high level (expectancy) and that they will receive rewards that they value for performing (instrumentality). Holding high expectations might enhance the positive effects of a Pygmalion effect (self-fulfilling prophecy) on follower motivation.

What is motivation?

Motivation refers to what a person does (direction), how hard a person works (intensity) and how long a person works (persistence). The motivation process describes three stages of motivation.

1. Energizing behavior: a leader must energize their followers' behavior by activating underlying needs and drives.
2. Directing behavior: once energized, the leader then directs the energized behavior toward goals that are important to the follower and the organization.
3. Sustaining behavior: this is often done through the provision of rewards that followers value, for instance pay raise.

For motivation to be effective, feedback is needed in order for the process to stay on track. Feedback is a core element in various theories of motivation, including goal setting.

What are the characteristics of common need theories?

Early theories of motivation focus on the first part of the motivation process: energizing behavior. They focus on what needs or drives motivate people. A well-known theory on need motivation is the Maslow hierarchy of needs, consisting of the levels psychological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs and self-actualization (the drive to meet our fullest capacity). This theory was the first to point out that there are individual differences in motivation. Even though this theory is appealing due to its simplicity and intuitive appeal, it is not supported by research evidence.

Another need theory considers three fundamental needs:

1. Need for achievement (nAch): the drive to succeed at high levels).
2. Need for power (nPow): the need to influence others to do what you want.
3. Need for affiliation (nAff): the need for close personal relationships.

Another theory, the two-factory theory connects lower- and higher-order needs to job satisfaction. This theory is also called the motivator-hygiene theory. What do people really want from their work? When people think about this question, they think of things like supervision, pay, company policies and so one. These are called hygienes. In contrast, what people think of what satisfies them, they are more likely to consider things like advancement, recognition, and achievement. These are called motivators. Hygienes can only lead people to the level of no dissatisfaction. In order to motivate people, leaders need to focus on the motivators, for instance by providing followers a sense of achievement.

How to set goals?

In order for goals to motivate people, they must have certain characteristics. These goal-setting principles can be remembered by the acronym SMART, which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based.

An alternative approach to understand how individuals strive to meet their goals is regulatory focus theory (RFT). According to RFT, individuals who are promotion-focused, are oriented toward growth and development. Promotion-focused individuals tend to have a learning goal orientation (LGO); they want to learn new things at work and see themselves adaptable. On the other hand, people who are prevention-focused are oriented toward the things they feel that have to be done and focus on their job responsibilities. Prevention-focused individuals are vigilant and careful. The motivating force is the avoidance of pain. 

What is the role of the leader in goal setting? Each leader is expected to do the following:

• Discuss and document the commitments of all employees.
• Revisit and refresh commitment over time.
• Agree to success metrics for each commitment, thereby including the "how" behind execution, not just the "what". 
• Align commitments across the company by cascading commitments and connecting them to organizational, team, and finally individual commitments.
• Drive management team calibration discussions so interdependencies and metrics are vetted across individuals. 

What is the job characteristics theory?

The job characteristics theory (JCT) is based on the idea that the work itself may have characteristics that have the potential to motivate people to higher levels of performance. People are more satisfied when their work is interesting and they may be less likely to quit. The job characteristics model describes three steps, each formed by various components:

• Core job characteristics: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback.
• Critical psychological states: experienced meaningfulness of the work, experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work, knowledge of the actual results of the work activities.
• Personal and work outcomes: high internal work motivation, high quality work performance, high satisfaction with the work, low absenteeism and turnover. 

Based on this theory, organizations have implemented work redesign to raise the motivating potential of work. The idea here is to load jobs with more of the core job characteristics that have shown to be motivating. This job loading can be horizontal, which means adding different tasks at the same level, or vertical, which means adding decision-making responsibility to the job. This is an example of job enrichment.

Job crafting refers to the extent to which individuals can demonstrate initiative in designing their own work. Examples are changing the number, scope and type of job tasks, changing the quality and amount of interaction with others encountered in the job, and challenging cognitive task boundaries. 

Why is fairness important for leadership?

Fairness is a necessary condition for leadership using equity theory and the four types of organizational justice. Workers expect the workplace to be fair. Concerns to fairness impede the workplace. Effective leaders need to be aware of how workers might react to their decisions.

The equity theory focuses on distributive justice: what people receive as a result of their knowledge, skills, and effort on the job. When this is disbalanced, people may become demotivated. When comparing the inputs (skills, abilities, effort) to the outputs (pay raise) of a person (the focal person or FP) to a coworker (CO), three situations may occur. First, the inputs and outcomes for the FP equal the inputs and outcomes for the CO. If the CO puts in more effort, the CO receives a higher pay raise. There is balance, because the FP recognizes that the CO works harder and gets a higher raise. Second, the inputs and outcomes for the FP are lower than the inputs and outcomes for the CO (underpayment inequity). This causes dissonance or stress and the FP may become demotivated to bring the ratios back to balance. Third, the inputs and outcomes for the FP are higher than the inputs and outcomes for the CO (overpayment inequity). This situation is interesting, because we expect the FP to work harder, but this typically does not happen. People are more likely to distort the perceptions of inputs and outcomes to justify or rationalize their relative overpayment inequity. 

When people feel an event is unfair, they may even experience moral outrage: a severe reaction to the perceived injustice, including strong emotions such as anger and resentment. 

Organizational justice is an umbrella term, consisting of the following four components: 

• Interpersonal justice: Has your leader treated you with respect?
• Informational justice: Has your leader explained the procedures thoroughly?
• Procedural justice: Have you bee able to express your views and feelings during the process?
• Distributive justice: Is your outcome justified given your performance?

What are the three basic principles of the expectancy theory?

The expectancy theory has become a standard in motivation. It is a general framework consisting of three components, which together lead to high effort and motivation.

• Expectancy ("I can do this"): Employees decide to put forth effort when they believe that their effort will lead to good performance. 
• Instrumentality ("I will receive a reward"): The employee's performance will be evaluated accurately and will lead to rewards. 
• Valence ("I value the reward"): The employee values the rewards offered by the organization. 

The Pygmalion effect (self-fulfilling prophecy) shows that performance expectations by a leader play a significant role in improving the motivation and performance of followers. Leaders can communicate high expectations to followers by: creating a warm emotional climate, providing more and increasingly challenging opportunities to learn, inviting followers to ask questions or clarification, and providing feedback on performance. 

The Galatea effect occurs when an individual sets high expectations for himelf or herself and then performs to those expectations. The person already has high self-esteem and believes in his or her ability to succeed. On the other hand, expectations may also work in the opposite direction, where lower expectations lead to lower performance. This is called the Golem effect. 

Is every leader equally motivated to be a leader?

This question has been addressed by research on motivation to lead (MLT). This research found that leaders have different reasons for wanting to be a leader. Based on the measurement of MLT, there are three basic reasons for wanting to be a leader:

• Affective-identity MTL: the natural tendency to lead others.
• Social-normative MTL: the tendency to lead because of a sense of duty or responsibility.
• Noncalculative MTL: where people agree to lead without calculating the costs and benefits of assuming leadership. This reason is associated with a feelings of altruism.