ALICE WASS
Exploring Media

I was interested in this workshop, which was given by Warren Portlock, as I believe I have good leadership skills but wanted to develop them further and see how motivation linked into leadership. The workshop started by exploring why we need motivation and leadership. Motivation causes increased productivity, positivity, performance, and fortitude. Leadership is needed to bring out these motivational factors in other people, and this makes a good leader.

 

Together we created a list of what leadership is, some of the ideas that came up included:

• Accountability

• Creative thinking

• Motivation

• Responsibility

• Decision making

• Supportive

• Influencing

• Ownership/Delegation

• Setting an example

 

This demonstrates how there is no such thing as a born leader, as all of the above skills can be learnt through hard work. We next discussed the differences between leadership and management. Leadership is all about risk and change whereas management is all about order and consistency. However, there is now less of a distinct difference between the two in a modern working environment, as most managerial work is becoming more of a leadership role.

 

Leadership is all about relationships with other people. Therefore, when looking at the impact of a leader on a follower, it is shown that the leader needs to be adaptable. We discussed things which get in the way of this relationship. Examples included: miscommunication, not leading by example, being over controlling, micro-managing, resistance to change, not listening, or a change in leadership direction. This is why transformation leadership is important. This is seen in Bass and Avolio’s 1994 theory which focuses on the four ‘I’s:

1. Idealised influence

2. Intellectual stimulation

3. Idealised consideration

4. Inspired motivation

 

This led onto the discussion of how to motivate people, for this we came up with a long list of possible methods, some examples included: money, appreciation, responsibility and rewards. A better way to look at this is through the Reward Motivators (6 Ps): Praise, Power, Projects, People, Prestige, and Prizes. To understand this better, we looked at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and transformed it into chronological steps for motivation.

 

From this we explored the three dimensions of motivation:

1. Extrinsic: tangible rewards

2. Intrinsic: psychosocial rewards

3. Social: interaction rewards

 

We concluded by looking at how motivation is driven, this is seen through a cycle. Certain feelings affect how people think which influences how people behave which causes a result. This means to be motivated an individual needs their brain to be in the right place. To achieve this an individual needs to have positive thoughts and feelings to bring about a positive outcome, and everyone has the power to change how they feel through the reverse process of thinking of a result which has been positive.

 

To be a good leader I need to make sure I have a strong understanding of all these motivational techniques. However, I cannot actually just motivate someone, as motivation is produced by a chemical reaction in the brain, which the person needs to control through positive thinking.  Yet, I can help this process by creating a good environment for people to feel motivated in. This is important to help with the overall success of a project. I will work on my motivational skills in future group work projects to see if this helps me be a better team leader.