The Role of Leaders in Harnessing the Individual Qualities of Members on a Team - Research Paper Example

In a typical organisational set up, project management plays a core part in determining the success of instituted projects and by extension the achievement of all major short term and long term organisational strategies and goals (Caltech, 2007). For a very successful project management to take place however, it is important that there become a consented effort and an all-inclusive approach by staff and personnel involved. As a matter of fact, project management is a highly human resource centred program in any given organisation (Fisher, 2000). According to the association for project management (2012), “Project management focuses on controlling the introduction of the desired change.” This means that projects are seen as desired changes that need to be achieved in an organisational set up and the control of these projects are known to constitute their management. But to achieve the purported consented effort and all-inclusiveness, it is important that the human resource team who would be heading the management of any project become highly motivated. Motivation is thus the theory and principle behind successful project management. Recent research work on organisational motivation and project management has pointed to the fact that a very core theoretical model that triggers the motivation of staff is an inner-will to perform (Flannes and Levin, 2005). According to the model, personnel must possess a personal will to succeed. This personnel will becomes translated into the execution of all intended project management tasks and the eventual result is success. However, to achieve inner-will in workers, leaders have a lot of role to play. This paper shall therefore discuss ways that motivation develops and the role of leaders through effective communication in developing inner-will and by extension motivation in workers. 2.0 Overview and use of Terms 2.1 What is Motivation? Motivation has been explained to be a reactive mechanism to a reinforcement that people receive in a workplace context (Kerzner, 2003). This means that motivation is a way that people respond to a reinforcement to give off their best at work. Motivation therefore needs to be triggered by something. In most organizational settings, the word motivation is used to refer to the desire that people should have to put up their best to ensure improved productivity. A worker who is result oriented and normally seen to be on top of his or her job and delivering up to expectation or beyond is therefore seen to be a highly motivated person. It is in this direction that Cherry (2011) explains that “motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviours.” From her definition, it can be seen that motivation actually sets the pace for success as it initiatives goal-oriented behaviours. Motivation also serves as roadmap or yardstick to success as it guides goal-oriented behaviours. Motivation also acts as an agent of preservation of success as it maintains goal-oriented behaviours. The absence of motivation is therefore tantamount to haphazardness at the workplace as it eliminates clear cut focus and goal-oriented behaviour from the organisation. 2.1 Overview of Project Management All organisation and institutions are set up with a basic principle of achieving something positive. It is in line with this that there are often mission statements and vision statements for all well-meaning organisations. But in order to achieve the overall mission or vision set by any given organisation, it is very important that series of projects and tasks are delivered (Nelson, 1994). Projects come in different forms for different organisations. But whatever the case is, a project may be classified as a process rather than an event. This is because the major focus of projects has been to achieve a goal over a given period of time (Rad and Levin, 2003). It is the need to complete projects that brings about project management. This is because management in itself also involves the nurturing of resources and factors to achieve a given goal (Scholtes, 1998). Collectively, project management may be seen as “a discipline which requires budgeting, planning and resource management skills to enable a specified end deliverable to be completed within the allocated timeframe" (Sousa, 2012). The general idea that is seen here is that project management involves a series of multi-related tasks that are committed into the hands of a team. Project management is therefore often headed by a project manager. This project manager works as a facilitator who leads others to accomplish goals. The project manager is therefore a leader who must coordinate efforts to achieve a goal rather than wanting to achieve everything by him self (SEI_CMU, 2007). 3.0 John Adair Theory of Action Centred Leadership Model 3.1 Individual First, it is important to establish that within a team that works on any given project, though there may be collective tasks assigned to people in groups, each person plays his or her role as an individual. A typical scenario can be given with a group of people who try to push a car. Though it takes the collective strength of the whole group to move the car, each individual puts in different strength. Clearly, if each person decides to put in much strength, the car will move easily. The same pertains to project management. The individualised motivation of each team member is very important. When team members have inner motivation therefore, they become more focused on their duties and put in their very best. Such self motivated team members would not work with other people as their yardstick. This means that they will be working up to their limit and not be working according to how much other people are working. Again, self-motivated team members will not border over whether other team members are relaxing on the job or not. All that they will seek for is the attainment of their personal goals. When such an attitude is recorded among as many of the team members as possible, the eventual result is higher productivity. 3.2 Team and Communication Within the team, John Adair idenitifes the leader as very instrumental figure. For leaders to achieve success and copoeration of their team members, effective communication has been identified as an ideal tool to use (Simpson et al 1991). There must be an open and approachable communication management style in place to ensure that members on the team feel part of the decision making process. Clearly when communicatio is open and well represented, the leader will be in a position to identify the weaknneses and strenghts of each member on the team and adapt the appropriate mechanisms to harnessing them. Affective communication will also ensure that each member on the team develops personal motivation towards the accomplishment of projects. (Cleland and Gareis, 2006) identifies inner-will as the most powerful tool within an organisation for ensuring success. This is because in his research on motivation in project management, he resolved that the number one agent for motivation is inner-will. This is to explain that indeed, people are motivated by a desire to do their best for the organisation. That is, once people have a personal desire to do their best, that is enough motivation to get them going and they may not need any external force or third party to motivate them with either intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. It is of course worth mentioning that c is in itself a form of intrinsic motivation and results in personal motivation (Drucker, 1954). Personal motivation occurs in many different scenarios and for many different purposes. But whatever the case is, the fundamental reason has always been that as soon as people have a desire to do their best, it is a motivation in disguise. For example a young graduate to takes up his first position in the organisation would in the course of the execution or management of a project have a strong desire to do his best in order to get favour from his superiors. Such motivation is personal and constitutes inner-will. A newly promoted manageress who was competing with others would also have a desire to do her best for the organisation in executing a given project in order to justify her promotion. This also constitutes inner-will and is a form of motivation. Lastly, an example can be given of a manager who would have the desire to give off his best for the organisation simply because he is concerned with the success of the organisation. This is also a form of inner-will motivation. It is therefore true to argue that people are motivated by a desire to do their best for the organisation. 3.3 Task The task is the most important component of project management. This is because no success can be recorded until the tasks are accomplished. Various can however not be performed perfectly if certain factors are not placed well in the organisational set up. The first of such factors has to do with good placement. Placement is a very important component of prject management. Most often than not, project managers put round pegs in square holes. This means that they do wrong allocation of tasks and responsibilities within the project execution phase. What his results in is that people do not get themselves easily acclimatised with the duties they are supposed to perform. As this becomes clear and they begin to fail, they demoralised. But when people can take full charge of what they have been assigned to do and do them well, they will be in a high spirit to keep delivery. The second factor is fairness at work. Project managers and leaders for that matter must be very fair to their employees and team members. Acts of unfairness breeds contempt (Hall and Nougaim, 1972). It makes people very reserved in the delivery of their duties. This is because they become dissatisfied and cheated. But when all people are treated fairly and equally and there is justice, there will be no need not to give off one’s best. 4.0 Motivation and Project Management 4.1 Forms of Motivation within the Organisational Context When discussing the forms of motivation, what are actually looked at are the forms of reinforcement that triggers the desire for people to give off their best in a workplace setting (Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman, 1959). To this effect, two major forms of motivation can be identified. These are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Largely, intrinsic motivation is not tangible or handy. They are factors or conditions that are put in place to express a form of appreciation for what workers do at the workplace (Steers and Porter, 1975). Generally, motivation comes as a form of appreciation. When motivation is given as an appreciation for good project delivery, it can lead to multiple occurrences of good work done because the motivation intend motivates works to give off their best. When motivation is also given as an appreciation even before a good project is delivered, it becomes a commitment of a sought on the person who receives it to live up to reasons for receiving the motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs in many ways and includes vacations, promotions, the use of appreciative expressions, cordial gestures, friendly project atmosphere, showing of concern towards workers and so on. The other form of motivation is extrinsic motivation and this is the opposite of the former. Extrinsic motivation involves the issuance of physical materials as a form of appreciation or as agents for committed project output. The commonest form of extrinsic motivation used in many organisational jurisdictions is money. The provision of other forms of project based materials like the provision of project resource, giving of personal cars, provision of mortgage, provision of scholarships and so on all constitute extrinsic motivation that can be used in the delivery of any given project under project management (Tuckman, 1965). 4.2 Project Managers as an Instrument of Motivation It has established earlier that self motivated team members can contribute so much to the success of project management. Knowing that team members do not work in vacuum and particularly that team members do not operate in absolute freedom but under the instructions of a the project manager as a leader, this section reviews instrumental the project manager can be as a leader to bring about motivation. As an instrument, the project manager is expected to be a vessel that will carry all the weight of motivation among the team (or in the organisation) to bring about motivation in the workers. First and foremost, the leader must understand that he or she is being looked upon by the team for inspiration or motivation. It is therefore important that the leader must himself be motivated (Zhang, 2001). Ill-motivated leader demoralises the spirit of the team to perform and this may not be a good instrumentation to bring about motivation to the others. It is also important that as an instrument, the project manager and leader for that matter be responsible for the motivation of each and every team member. The leader must therefore know his people in person and know what motivates them. The inner motivation of each of the members must also be of priority to the leader. When this happens, the leader can be an effective instrument to gush out motivation. Finally, the leader as an instrument of motivation must be in a position to sustain attained motivation. Under no circumstance must certain acts of the leader must be seen as compromising the motivation present among workers. 5.0 Conclusion This report has been a clear cut work on the role of leaders in harnessing the individual qualities of members on a team to achieve a given task, the John Adair theory which, there touches on the individual, team and task was therefore used to explain how this coordinated effort can be achieved. By and large, it would be said that leaders are the ultimate flag bearer unto success. They must therefore have a personal desire to bring about change. Such personal desire must be translated into the members on the team in such a way that each person in the team will be motivated to give off his best. But as indicated, the best form of motivation that should be used to approach any project is a self motivated desire. This is because people are motivated by a desire to do their best for the organization and this form of inner-will and self motivation is the best and most sustainable in the execution of any given project management duties. Finally, communication should be seen as a very vital tool when working with a group. Communication can either make or unmake an organization (Cleland and Gareis, 2006). This is because effective communication will make the group feel part and useful and would therefore continue to give off their best. An ineffective communication will on the other hand cause people to withdraw their services because they will feel unused and cheated. REFERENCE LIST Caltech, 2007, Developing and sustaining a high performance team. [Online] http://www.irc.caltech.edu/courses/High_Performance_Teams.htm [April 26, 2012] Fisher, K, 2000, Leading self-directed work teams: A guide to developing new team leadership skills. New York: McGraw-Hill. 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The New York Times Company. [Online] http://psychology.about.com/od/mindex/g/motivation-definition.htm [April 27, 2012] Association for Project Management, 2012, What is Project Management? [Online] http://www.apm.org.uk/WhatIsPM [April 26, 2012] Read More