Mobilisation of resources is about selecting highly motivated team members and ensuring staff remain motivated. According to Gannon (2007, p. 301) ‘watching children grow up is an instructive exercise in how we become motivated’. Hence, motivation derives from ‘curiosity’ and ‘energy’ (Gannon, 2007, p. 301). Moreover, team members should have a goal that interests them and drives their energy. Thus, the desire to achieve a goal and to be successful is motivating. However, the challenge for the project manager is to deliver the goal and make it desirable for team members.
Therefore, to ensure and preserve motivation, a project manager should become a leader, not just a manager. Defining leadership is a challenging task as there are different approaches and theories explaining the nature of a leader. On the one hand, trait concepts state that some people were born with particular characteristics that allow them to lead others. In contrast, leadership as a process suggests that anyone can learn how to be a leader in the context of communication with other people.
Furthermore, appointed leaders are the ones who are authorized to rule others. However, some leaders emerge in situations or organizations when they influence other people, even not being entitled to it. Therefore, the difference between leadership and management is one of the critical issues in elaborating methods to motivate a team.
For example, results of the study conducted by Simonet and Tett (2012, p. 210) conclude that ‘true leaders… are innovative thinkers expected to take the organization in new and fruitful directions and arouse followers’ internal motives’. However, some researchers see the critical difference between managers and leader in the fact that ‘managers have subordinates’ and ‘leader has followers’ (Leadership vs management n.d., para. 3-5).
Hence, traditional managers have ‘authoritarian and transactional style’, they ‘focus on work and seek comfort’; and leaders, in contrast, have ‘charismatic and transformational style’, and they attract people by ‘promising followers that they not just receive extrinsic rewards but will somehow become better people’ (Leadership vs management n.d., para. 5-10). Moreover, transformational leaders seek risk because ‘when pursuing their vision, they consider it natural to encounter problems and hurdles that must be overcome along the way’ (Leadership vs management n.d., para. 12). Hence, team members mobilise resources of their team members, making them overcome difficulties and challenges they face.
However, Antonakisa and House (2014, p. 746) do not contrast transformational and transactional styles of leadership proposing another ‘instrumental leadership’ according to which leaders must ‘scan the internal and external environment, chart strategic and task objectives, and provide performance feedback’. This way, leaders function according to strategic plans of the organization and perform highly efficient motivating and mobilising resources.
Consequently, instrumental leadership helps to avoid ‘over-achieving’ as it leads to burnouts and destroys motivation (Gannon 2007, p. 301). Hence, project managers should be ‘sensitive to the needs’ of team members and ‘provide the correct balance between applying pressure to deliver and providing encouragement to maintain motivation’ (Gannon 2007, p. 301). Besides, coordination of costs and benefits of motivation should help them to keep motivation ‘constructive rather than destructive’ (Gannon 2007, p. 301).
Mastering leadership and communication skills to motivate staff are one of the key tasks for project managers.
Reference List
Antonakisa, J & Houseb, R 2014, ‘Instrumental leadership: measurement and extension of transformational–transactional leadership theory’, The Leadership Quarterly, vol. 25, no, 4, pp. 746–771.
Gannon, F 2007, ‘Motivation’, EMBO reports, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 301.
Leadership vs. management n.d. Web.
Simonet, D & Tett R 2012, ‘Five perspectives on the leadership– management relationship: a competency-based evaluation and integration’, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 199–213.