McGregor

McGregor polarized the assumptions about people in organi- zations into two extremes, then went hrther to suggest that managers adopt either of these extremes which then deter- mines their style of management. He coined the much quoted Theory X, Theory Y.

Theory X

The average man is by nature indolent.

He lacks ambition and prefers to be led.

He is inherently self-centred and indifferent to organiza-

0 He is resistant to change.

He is gullible and not very bright.

tional needs.

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a Theory Y

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0 People are not by nature passive or indifferent to organiza- tion needs. If they have become so, it is because of experi- z a

I ence.

Motivation counts in everybody. Everybody has the poten- tial and capacity to assume responsibility and to strive to meet organizational needs.

Depending which pole you adhere to, you would use different approaches to motivating people.

This is a ‘stick and carrot‘ approach - coercion versus job satisfaction. Perhaps the real contribution of McGregor is that he makes the point that although motivation is a separate thing for each individual, managers tend to use a broad personalized approach to everyone. They call it their style. Managers cannot be different to each individual, a personal sense of continuity and style is part of being a manager.

In a sense, what matters is not so much what motivates but

‘what works for me’. The implication here is that, as a manager, you have to learn from life and experience. We know that some people are better people managers than others, but we also know that people get better at it with experience. That is, pro- viding that they themselves are open to learning. What this means is looking continually at the results of your efforts and being prepared to try different approaches.

This last contention points clearly to one solid fact in the motivation debate - you, the manager, count because as the motivator you will never be neutral in the eyes of those who work for you. In fact, if you ask if there are any certainties, any sure-fire bets in the what motivates stakes, the answer is a qual- ified, yes. We know for one thing that no matter whether you are an X or a

Y

person, or a pay or job satisfaction advocate, there are four aspects of work to which an employee is never neutral, these are:

1 The immediate boss;

2 The pay;

3 Their effort;

4 Their confidence to do the job.

While you come to see them as satisfiers or dissatisfiers or whether or not they motivate, they are always salient to the amount of drive being applied in the job.

Notwithstanding the theoretical discussion and the observable fact of individual differences, common sense would suggest that there are a number of actions which may or may not con- stitute motivation but might register as ‘good housekeeping in this area. These are:

0 Clear communication - people cannot respond to a stimu- lus if they cannot see it clearly, the manager must convince that the rewards and the performance are related.

0 Offer valued rewards.

0 Do not over control.

Recognize achievement

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recognition appears in every theo- retical scheme and it accords with our common sense that to recognize achievement will increase performance.

0 Ensure that rewards are equitable.

Teaching someone something is an excellent basis for being

0 Ensure that all aspects of employment tell a coherent story.

able to motivate them.

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4 Negative behaviour

We have all, at some time, had the experience of being either upset, anxious or angry about something and trying to ‘forget it‘ by immersing ourselves in work. At first it doesn’t work, the thoughts that made us anxious keep returning. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Work and the anxiety compete until the problem goes away or concentration on work eventually tri- umphs. The point being made here is that we cannot motivate ourselves while we are in any way anxious. If you, as a manager, are trying to motivate a person who is anxious, they simply will not respond because they will not see what you are doing. The message is that anxiety intervenes in the motivation process.

This is why any serious consideration of motivation must include a discussion of the role of, for want of a better phrase, negative aspects.

A moment’s reflection tells us that we do not always behave in a way which represents the way we feel. If you recall from Chapter 1, our fundamental problem as managers is that we can only deal with the behaviour that presents itself to us. The heart of our problem is whether there is a direct relationship between the way we feel and the way we behave. Can the former be predicted from the latter? While acknowledging that there must be many times when there is such a direct relation- ship - for example feeling hungry makes us eat - intuition sug- gests that may not always be so.

The relationship is unreliable and it would be wrong to trust it when you are faced only with behaviour. Either with intent, or unconsciously, an individual may distort the way they

behave from the genesis of behaviour; feeling. (Note feeling is not the only source of behaviour, instinct and habit are also salient, but we are only concerned here with feeling.)

In considering how a person responds to a feeling of psy- chological discomfort two adaption processes are important, these are distortion and dilution.