What do good leaders do to Motivate people Research Paper

What do good leaders do to Motivate people - Research Paper Example It is their ability to influence and motivate others that made them highly successful leaders. From business and organization behavior perspectives, leaders are those who influence, motivate and control people with a view to cultivate social capital and employee vigor (Carmeli, Ben-Hador, Waldman & Rupp, 2009). ‘Motivation’ is undeniably one of the most significant resources that leaders should make use to achieve organizational objectives, attain high performance working and ensure competitive edge. This piece of research attempts to present theoretical perspectives of leadership and to explain what and how leaders do things differently to motivate people. This paper, presenting succinct details on different leadership models, exemplifies ways and strategies that leaders take in to account to motivate their subordinates and get them involved in achieving organizational goals. Leadership is a unique personal and professional quality. It is necessarily an inborn quality according to some researchers and it is ‘made’ according to some other researches. Trait theory of leadership, one of the earliest theories of leadership that gave way to the Behavioral theory and Contingency theory, viewed that distinctive physical and psychological characteristics account for leadership and its effectiveness. Various physical and psychological traits such as height, intelligence, attractiveness, self-reliance, creativity etc were studied and analyzed. Basic intelligence, clear and strong values and high level of personal energy were always listed in the main traits for effective leadership (Manning, Curtis and Manning, 2003, p. 16). In recent years, some researchers argued that leaders are ‘made’ and not born. Warren Bennis is one of the most important names who contributed much to leadership studies. He strongly disagreed with the concept that leadership is an innate ability. He defined leadership as â€Å"the capacity to translate vision in to reality† (Corcoran, 2008, p. 3). Being the founding director of Warren Bennis tried to avoid the traditional view about leadership and the concepts of trait-theories, as he argued that leaders are made from training, education, developmental program and learning experiences. Based on this view, leaders can become still more effective leaders and develop their skills further by testing and applying various strategies and techniques to better influence and motivate their followers. Influence and motivation are important matters to leadership. From the fact that leaders’ effectiveness is influenced by training and developmental program, it can be understood that leaders can try several ways to motivate their people and thus to improve their leadership effectiveness. Effective