Motivation

     

Concept map for Motivation


Introduction

In today’s community, there are numberless of projects and project leaders. Most people like to have control over everything – both in private life and in working life. Among other factors, to have control and to be a leader will give us more self-confidence, courage and willingness to work. However, to be a leader and to know how to lead people are two different things. It is true that there are many leaders, but only few in number of them can be called ‘good leaders’. A good project leader should not only see to get the work done, but also how the work is done. Therefore, motivation of team members is one of the project leader’s main tasks. Motivation is no doubt a big factor of influence for how projects will end up like. The project leader’s challenge is laying on how to make foundation pillar for good collaboration and mutual respect. Many organisations know that motivation is important, but only few of them really do something with it. Motivation is so saying very central in this paper. My focus question in this paper will be: Why is motivation so important in teamwork?

Theories

In this section, I will introduce some theories from different people that I found. Later on in this paper, I will use these theories on reflecting my teamwork experience in CS5062.

McConnell’s theory

McConnell defines motivation as the following: “Motivation is a ‘soft’ factor: it is difficult to quantify, and it often takes a back seat to other factors that might be less important but hat are easier to measure.” He also mentions that there are five motivation factors which could lead to success for a software developer. These factors are; achievement, the possibility for growth, the work itself, private life and technical leadership (McConnell, 1996).

Sommerville’s & Maslow’s theories

Sommerville claims that one of the most important roles to a project leader is to motivate its team members. For a team member, motivation consists in getting satisfied its own need (Sommerville, p. 495). The different needs are ranked hierarchic with various levels. These needs are (ranked from highest to lowest); self-actualisation needs, Esteem/Ego needs (e.g. status, confidence, strength, attention), Love/Social needs (e.g. affection, belonging, social activities, friendships), Safety needs (e.g. security, freedom from pain or threat of physical attack, protection from danger or deprivation) and Physiological needs (e.g. homeostasis such as satisfaction of hunger and thirst, the need for oxygen and to maintain temperature regulation, sleep, sensory pleasures). Maslow’s need theories of motivation are telling us that individual structure of need can affect motivation. We can also use this theory of need as one category of need which is useful when we want to analyze motivation (Maslow, 1954).

Later on, Sommerville points out that one team member will be motivated if this is a member of a group that thinks the group as a whole, in preference to a collection of individuals who merely work together. Sommerville places emphasis on project leaders who should emphasize activities in configuration of project teams which establish the feeling of group loyalty. The feeling of group loyalty is essential for keeping a team works. It does not help even though a project team has good team members, if this team is not well-established (Sommerville, p. 497).

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Herzberg’s theory

Herzberg’s theory is about well-being and non well-being. For instance, if an employee has responsibility in his/her work, it will give well-being. On the other hand, bad salary can lead to non well-being at the place of work. Herzberg distinguishes between two types of factors; motivation factors and hygiene factors. Motivation factors are factors that make well-being, such as responsibility, possibilities for development and for performance/achievement. Hygiene factors are factors that make non well-being, such as working conditions, money (pay, salary), status, job security, company procedures, quality of supervision, quality of interpersonal relationships and technical management. These ...

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