The Idea in Brief
In order to motivate others, managers must be motivated themselves. The key issue here is the source of the motivation—the way the manager defines success. Some equate success with personal achievement; some see it as being liked by others. In order to succeed in a complex organization, a manager needs to have a power motivation, which is not a dictatorial impulse but rather the desire to have impact, to be strong and influential. This power must be disciplined and channeled in ways that benefit the organization, not the manager himself.
The Idea in Practice
In terms of motivation, there are three types of managers:
1. Affiliative managers score high in inhibition—that is, they are very capable of curbing their own impulses and using power for the benefit of the organization. But they need to be liked more than they need to have power; thus, instead of using their self-control to benefit the organization, affiliative managers often use it to ensure that they’re liked. Such managers tend to have direct reports who have little pride in their work group, and who feel that they have little responsibility and that organizational procedures are unclear. The reasons are easy to understand: affiliative managers tend to disregard procedures in favor of ad hoc decisions, which enable them to act based on how they anticipate people will feel about the decision.
2. Personal power managers are those for whom the need for power outweighs the need to be liked. These managers score low in inhibition: lacking self-control, they tend to act impulsively or arbitrarily. Personal power managers are usually more effective than affiliative managers, better able to generate team spirit and a sense of responsibility in their direct reports. But they are not good institution builders; their lack of self-control translates into direct reports who are loyal to them instead of the organization. Thus, when a personal power manager leaves the organization, the team spirit and sense of organization rapidly dissipate.
3. Institutional managers, like personal power managers, need to have power and to be able to influence others more than they need to be liked. But they differ from personal power managers in one key respect: they score high in inhibition. Institutional managers care more about using power for the benefit of the organization than for their own aggrandizement. As a result, they are the most successful of the three types at creating an effective work environment—one in which employees have high morale and feel a strong sense of responsibility and organizational clarity. Two additional characteristics of institutional managers: they tend to have a more democratic leadership style, one that emphasizes coaching rather than commanding, and they possess greater emotional maturity than the other types.
In a retrospective commentary written in 1995, coauthor David McClelland notes that the need for achievement takes on greater importance in small companies, and that the need to influence others can even be a handicap. The reason, he explains, is that “a constant concern for improvement, for growing the business in a cost-efficient way,” is more crucial to the work of small-company managers.
What makes or motivates a good manager? The question is enormous in scope. Some people might say that a good manager is one who is successful—and by now most business researchers and businesspeople know what motivates people who successfully run their own small businesses. The key to their success has turned out to be what psychologists call the need for achievement, the desire to do something better or more efficiently than it has been done before. Any number of books and articles summarize research studies explaining how the achievement motive is necessary for a person to attain success.
