Essential Lessons on Leadership (Collection), 2/e

Chapter 10. The Heart of Leadership: Motivating Workers

One of the two major themes of this book is that leaders must understand the context in which they are leading if they are to be effective. But it’s possible for a leader to understand the context without knowing how to motive the team members in that context. If you can’t motivate your team, you won’t be effective no matter how well you may intellectually understand the context of your organization.

In this chapter, I describe a number of factors that can affect motivation that can apply in almost any context. Human nature being what it is, people generally respond well to the same kind of treatment no matter what the context. Perhaps surprisingly, I have found that most of what motivates ...