Motivation in the Workplace

Management in any organization has the mandate to create enthusiasm amongst their employees so that they can feel motivated while executing their duties. Therefore, it is upon the leaders in any business set up to arouse interest in the performance of their employees. Motivation is one of the functions involved by the management to raise the morale of the employees. Motivation is significant in employee development. As an employee, it is important to realize the best points and maximize the points for the purpose of productivity. I believe that a variety of motivation methods can be used to raise employee morale and attitude toward organizations activities. Employee satisfaction is determined on the basis of whether their desires and needs at work are met by the environment that they work in through their leaders. From the perspective theory, the employees are motivated by three perspectives; achievement, affiliation and power.

Section 1 : Self-reflection

 Every organization has their set targets which their employees work to achieve. Achieving the goals, however, are based on the employee satisfaction, productivity, and working environment.  is from the organizational goals that are clearly illustrated in their constitution that defines any organizations in terms of their roles and employee duties. Therefore, as a measure of performance and reward, achievement provides a basis for the establishment. An organization where the policies and regulations effectively apply to its daily operations tend to depict the outcome. The self-assessment depicts the need to adopt characteristics that precede the performance.

In the past, I have been down in terms of my behavioral decision making, and it has been one of my SMART goals to improve and meet a target. Such has been evident wherever I was involved in any group activities where decisions had to make on any group conflicting ideas. To some extent, I wasn’t able to achieve my SMART goals in my behavioral decision making, and I had to still put on more efforts. One of my primary specific goals was to be active in my team and group and be the team leader to provide more ideas and input using intuition when discussing more important issues with other group members. On this, I was to some extent not able to achieve the required goals I had set. Even during our group discussion, I could not be able to make decisions based on the understanding of a situation or a person. Since our group prefers shared leadership, I haven’t been able to bring together members who at times conflict or grudges during our discussion. On the ideas I was compelled to contribute, I wasn’t able to give my best opinions to ensure that the decision made is okay. Every time an issue came in, all of us would give their contributions to what they should be done and how it should be done. Each of us now had options on whether to insist on our ideas or keep quiet and support others ideas, which of course was my favorite option. Although I gave my thoughts after going the details and the reasons behind the conflict among group members. For me, listening to other group members is what I treasure while making eye contact with all other participants. Even though there are those who dominate the conversations, I always stick to my values and beliefs and engage all people involved. When making a decision, I listen to others most since all my choices are guided by my empathic listening. The reasons why I failed to achieve some of my goals is relying mostly on what others say. Whenever a thought came into me, group members had come up with a much better plan. In this case, leads to a group member thinks I am sometimes quiet during the discussion (Appendix 1).

Achievement is one of the pillars of the theory of needs which is significant in decision making. Therefore, from the self-assessment point (Appendix 2), I fall under the level of high achievement. I prefer executing the functions allocated to me and ensure that the organizational goals are achieved. My wish is to follow the organization guidelines and constitutions to offer guidance as I also champion for my self-job satisfaction. To measure individual performance, I require to use various variables that provide a framework that ensures performance. Just like any other individuals, my needs can be classified, and it is from that classification that I used to asses myself to determine the progress that I have made in the move to meet my SMART goals (Samson & Daft, 2015). The variables have been highlighted from the McClelland’s Three Needs Theory, where it is stated that motivational factors can drive employees more to achieve their dreams by offering benefits. In the workplace, the organization requires the use of resources both monetary and non-monetary items that lead employees to stay motivated and goals they would want to attain. From the result of the self-assessment, when it comes to achievement, I would put effort to score higher points in work that is allocated for me and also help others to achieve a better goal in the workplace. This could be seen in the Gamulation activity. As budget is limited, I am willing to reduce my budget as a marketing manager which in some stages is not very important according to the crisis and allocate the resources to other members in order to reach the highest overall satisfaction we could get. Thus, in the last crises, our team had a huge improvement in the three sectors and scored points that are way above the total average (Appendix 3). The sacrifice and achievement in order to lead the whole team to a higher score also reflect the self-assessment that has a high score in achievements. Nevertheless, achievement as a measure of performance could lead to positive outcomes among employees, if a good outcome occurred, employees will be motivated not only the benefit they would receive but also a sense of accomplishment. I am motivated to work in a team of high achievers. It is evident that the other groups who appeared to be high achievers in the prices to reflect on their success but were instead focused on seeing that they achieve better results than they ever did before.

Secondly, from the leadership perspective, the power of a leader will determine the direction of the employees. In other words, the activities of the organization can be achieved if the leader exercises his powers. Therefore, leaders should be firm and goal oriented to encourage the members to contribute to the main agenda. Nonetheless, I have a low rate of power according to the result (Appendix 2). I don’t have the desire to influence people and although I am trying to be the leader in the group. The SMART goals I had set was trying to influence others with my ideas and lead the group to a further discussion. As a result, the goal didn’t work successfully. I am still a listener kind of member. Listening to members and giving advice inappropriate times is the way I support and respect group members when they have new ideas as well as avoiding conflicts when others have different opinions or thoughts. A leader’s power can be derived from specific or general considerations. The leader of an organization can have any form of power depending on the environment and the people constituting the organization. I think a good leader should apply his knowledge to drive the attention of individuals to the target. The aim is to ensure maximum cooperation. Nonetheless, being a leader who holds power has a lot of responsibilities within the group. The method of managing the group and avoid leading to bias is what make being a leader challenges.

Section 2: Plan

Now that management has become a pivotal component of business performance that requires attention; I need to plan on how to boost my management skills and be able to know how to lead. It in order that I will employ the SMART analysis technique to arrive at my goals in leadership that I intend to achieve. It will help me to make sure that any leadership goal that I plan to achieve is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. I also plan to master the skills of leadership perspective so that I can have the activities of the organization through the exercising of powers of a leader. As at now, the peer evaluation reveals that I am sometimes quiet and my peers cannot know my opinions. In my plans, I intend to be more active as I model myself to be a leader in those groups while taking part in discussions to give my views (Schermerhorn et al., 2014).

Even though it is my goal to be a leader who participates in discussions, I am still a listener kind of member. Listening to members and giving advice inappropriate times is the way I support and respect group members when they have new ideas as well as avoiding conflicts when others have different opinions or thoughts. A leader’s power can be derived from specific or general considerations. The leader of an organization can have any form of power depending on the environment and the people constituting the organization. I think a good leader should apply his knowledge to drive the attention of individuals to the target. The aim is to ensure maximum cooperation. Due to this reason, I plan to master any leadership skills that may make me be at this level. Nonetheless, being a leader who holds power has a lot of responsibilities within the group. The method of managing the group and avoid leading to bias is what make being a leader challenges.

            A time comes when the direction is needed to the employees in places of work so that even the organization can achieve its goals as described in its constitution. I order to achieve this; I need to be bold enough and be able to speak out my minds so that I do not fear other members or colleagues whom we are working together with. As it was evident from the reflection, I am a kind of a soft speaker who assumes that members have better ideas than the ones that I have. Leadership needs people who are bold and can give direction, and that is exactly what my plans are aiming.

Conclusion

The self-reflection analysis conducted above has removed that i need a series of adjustments to achieve my SMART goals that I have as an aspiring leader. The two challenges that I face is being silent and just agreeing with everyone opinion when I am supposed to contribute and make sure that my opinion counts. The reflection has also revealed that performance and job satisfaction in any organization is dependent on the manner in which the employees get motivated to perform their duties. However, top achievers have been seen to be those who focus on achieving their targets in workplaces rather than concentration on monetary rewards or other forms of reward. Mostly, according to analysis, good leadership increases the level of job satisfaction, productivity and improves the environment that one works. It is my determination, therefore that I will use the course concepts learned here to improve on my leadership skills while improving my workability and performance. The assignment has achieved the objective that it was intended for as I have noted my weaknesses and how I can work on them to achieve better results. I believe the SMART technique learned here will help me model my goals so that they can always be achievable even later when I get to a leadership position.

References

Samson, D. & Daft, R., 2015. Fundamentals of Management. 5th ed. Australia: Cengage Learning.

Schermerhorn, J. et al., 2014. Management: Foundations and Applications. 2nd ed. Australia: John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd.

Appendix

Appendix 1: Peer evaluation from group members

Appendix 2: self-assessment

Appendix 3:  Scores from Gamulation