Motivating for Performance: What Makes a Company a Great Place to Work?
Introduction

Motivating for performance is one of the most important issues a great leader and manager can address. Entrepreneurs like Richard Branson have been given extra attention in recent years as researchers seek ways to understand what make a company a great place to work for. Branson’s Virgin Group is routinely listed as one of most desired places to work, and Branson’s personal charisma and devotion to embracing the public good through a variety of corporate social responsibility aims (De Vries, 1998) has helped to create a positive workplace culture—an essential element when it comes to motivating for performance (Ladkin, 2008). Branson shows that great leaders focus on vision and also on getting out of the way of competent workers. Rather than try to micromanage everything, leader have to trust their workers to do their jobs—and they do this because they know they have hired the right person for the job. Great leaders and managers motivate for performance by creating a great workplace environment, in which every worker is perfectly situated and respected for what he or she brings to the workplace. The respect shown to these workers is then passed on to consumers. This paper will look at different management and leadership concepts and theories that help to explain how to motivate for performance and create a workplace culture that workers want to be a part of.

Management/Leadership Concepts

Managers are crucial to an organization’s success and to enhancing the performance of workers because they are tasked with maintaining order, discipline, processes and systems within the organization. Without them, no one is there to oversee how things go—and things can quickly break down and spiral out of hand when there is no oversight or sense of accountability. Leaders are crucial to the success of the organization because they have to be able to guide, direct and lead workers in situations that require new mindsets, new visions, and new solutions to challenges and obstacles. Leaders have to be able provide the motivation and managers have to be able to implement the motivational drivers—such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, like praise and appreciation for a job well done, raises or bonuses for project goals being met, and so on (Gerhart & Fang, 2015).

Leaders also have to be able to demonstrate a variety of styles and techniques to facilitate employee motivation. The use of skills like social and emotional intelligence, leadership styles like transformational leadership and servant leadership, and the use of incentives based on an assessment of individual worker needs can all be ways to promote motivation in the workplace. Managers and leaders will typically use a combination of metrics to help determine where performance is lacking and use a different set of metrics to determine what the individual worker is missing in terms of needs that, once satisfied, will allow the worker’s performance to increase. Managers can utilize a variety of measurement tools to obtain this data. Leaders can use their personal charisma to help motivate as well—by communicating the vision for the company that they have and demonstrating through their own actions how to attain that vision. In the case of Branson, respect towards all persons and communities is the example he gives and a willingness to do whatever it takes to promote his brand and let people that he and his company put service first (De Vries, 1998).

Two Management/Leadership Theories

Maslow (1943) first identified a theory of human motivation that could be used in management with his hierarchy of needs model. This model showed that human beings have different stages of needs that have to be satisfied for the person to move upwards towards self-efficacy—i.e., a state where they are self-driven, self-motivated, and self-determining. The manager’s goal in an organization, upon applying the theory of Maslow (1943), is to identify the needs of the individual...…turn off workers, which typically results in performance decreases and in some cases outright deliberate acts of sabotage.

Second, managers can use these concepts, leadership styles and tools to create a workplace culture that is respectful of diversity and appreciative of different workers’ cultural dimensions. A positive workplace culture is needed to create a place where workers want to be. As Branson shows, by demonstrating respect for employees and treating them the way that anyone would want to be treated, the manager effectively creates a workplace that is attractive (De Vries, 1998). People want to work for companies where they feel welcomed and where they feel their talents can be utilized. The manager who applies the theories of Maslow and Hofstede while utilizing a variety leadership styles, such as transformational leadership and servant leadership, will be able to create that environment consistently.

Conclusion

When it comes to promoting performance and creating a great place where workers want to work, managers and leaders have to be mindful, first and foremost, of the workers needs. These may be personal, professional or cultural. In any case, the manager/leader must be aware of them and must be able to utilize a variety of metrics to identify them and how they can be addressed. Workers want to go where they will feel appreciated, supported and incentivized. There is a trade-off that they acknowledge: by giving the company their time, they want something in return. The successful manager will understand the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that facilitate a happy return for workers. From commonplace praises and demonstrations of appreciation to promotions, raises, bonuses and other types of rewards for meeting performance goals, there are a variety of ways managers can promote performance and create a company where people want to work. Their use of social and emotional intelligence and their understanding of how to help workers develop personally to better achieve organizational objectives will also be of substantial use.