The article “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” by Frederick Herzberg discovers the main drivers for employees to get their real and unique motivation. The main goal is the organization’s productivity and profitability. However, the author focuses on the controversial points of the employee’s psychology of having a job or searching for a new job as the opposite sides of being satisfied with one job as a result of a high extent of dedication, responsibility, and self-interest. At this point, the article is not solely about motivation, but it is about the features of how to make work environment a desired place for employees through rational leadership and management.
The main approaches to motivate employees highlighted in the articles are making work interesting and full of challenges and responsibility (Herzberg, 2003). In this respect, a real inner potential of an employee can be discovered and further implemented for the company’s success. Making jobs more interesting is better than incentives, awards, praise, and cash, because a good salary will only instigate employees to search for jobs with a better or higher salary. Therefore, as the author states spiraling wages do not really motivate. Instead, managers have to provide workers with more opportunities for personal growth by means of proper job loading and job enrichment (Herzberg, 2003).
Looking at the main techniques provided by the author, I would focus on employees’ encouragement rather than on paying more. A good leader should pay attention to the managerial techniques such as sensitivity training, communication, job participation, employee counseling, and job hygiene (Herzberg, 2003). People are more satisfied with something interesting, sophisticated, challenging as it touches directly upon their natural desire for competition, victory, and finding a better place under the sun. From the leadership perspective given in the article, I would rather remove some controls, increase employees’ accountability, introduce more difficult tasks, and assign specialized tasks (Herzberg, 2003). These interventions will serve for the increase of responsibility and growth.
The article “Christ Comes to Brussels" An Introduction to Values-Based Leadership” in the book by James O’Toole discusses the main principles of values-based leadership paying attention to the well-known painting by James Ensor. In this respect, he determines significant features of what drives people to lead and be led, what types of leaders are the first in human minds, and the paradoxes of leader-subordinate relationships. The author pays attention to Jesus Christ as a leader and states that, like Christ, leaders “have to appeal to the minds and hearts of their followers” (O'Toole, 1995, p. 3). It means that aggression, manipulation, and exploitation should be put aside.
The article responds to the idea that in Western world leadership tactics and strategies have changed significantly in the 20th century. In this respect, with more personal freedom and rights, there is a higher extent of resistance among individuals. The author points out three aspects of leadership analyzing them from different perspectives. First, change is hard to be commanded, second, manipulation with followers is possible solely in short-term perspective, and third, a leader should be a good shepherd caring of each follower (O'Toole, 1995). In fact, the paradoxes described by the author are obvious in human life and history. People adore strict, aggressive, and manipulating leaders with features of dictatorship, but they do not want to have such an individual to lead themselves.
As for me, a good leader described in the article on the example of Christ should be the one who shares his ideas, goals, and perspectives with the followers valuing them on the basis of equality. It is very motivating for me when I have a leader who makes me view his perspective with the opportunity to make some changes from my side. It is exactly what the author indicates the leader’s vision shared among followers “because it is built on the foundation of their needs and aspirations” (O'Toole, 1995, p. 10). Thus, I think values-based leadership proved to be very effective in different fields of activities.
The passage from the book “Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization” by Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, & Smith (1994) touches upon the problem of personal mastery among employees. The role of a leader is to ensure there are enough resources to provide employees with particular training perspectives. However, giving such an opportunity to learn is not an ultimate option, because personal mastery cannot be increased by someone, but setting up conditions which encourage people is the option for increasing their personal mastery (Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, & Smith, 1994). A learning organization depends on leaders as coaches and enthusiasts.
Charismatic leaders are usually the ones who are open to new knowledge, information, and opportunities to live and learn. In this respect, it is vital for them to share their creativity understanding that organization develops along with the development of the staff. Encouragement to learn and train is usually sparked by “people’s own ardent interest and curiosity” (Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, & Smith, 1994, p. 193). It is significant for leaders to practice personal mastery and support the same initiative among followers. It is about a vision of a larger perspective while living in the frantic-paced Information age with the most valuable product, i.e. information. Hence, leader as a coach is not a desired but an obligatory leadership model in contemporary organization.
Looking at the main arguments in the excerpt, I find this information applicable to the reality of present days. For instance, it is similar to the incentives and ways of encouragement in companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. People are encouraged to use spare time for learning and creating some personal projects. I also learnt that individuals have to live and learn and be attentive to their leaders and managers who also keep learning on a daily basis, because otherwise an organization may become unprofitable and unable to compete.
References
Herzberg, F. (2003, January). One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? Motivating People, 3-11.
O'Toole, J. (1995). "Christ Comes to Brussels" An Introduction to Values-Based Leadership. In J. O'Toole, Leading Change: The Argument for Values-Based Leadership (pp. 1-16). New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
Senge, P. M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R. B., & Smith, B. J. (1994). In P. M. Senge, A. Kleiner, C. Roberts, R. B. Ross, & B. J. Smith, Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization (pp. 193-215). New York, NY: Crown Business.
