Leadership Lesson #1

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Introduction

For my leadership lesson, I am focusing on the theme of motivation. Motivation is at the core of leadership. Without motivation, leaders would not "go above and beyond" to lead initiatives that cost time and energy. Moreover, motivation is what inspires leaders to start an initiative and maintain it, even in the face of different challenges. It is based upon the leader’s personal missions and values that elicit a rationale for doing what they do. Given the clear and important role for motivation in leadership, my two-fold inquiry question is as follows.

Why are individuals motivated to engage in voluntary leadership?
How do leaders relay motivation to their followers?

Literature Review

The source ‘Motivation to Lead, Motivation to Follow: The Role of the Self-Regulatory Focus in Leadership Process’ by Kark and Dijk provides interesting insight into the motivation to lead (MTL) and follower motivation. It explores the application of regulatory focus theory to leadership. Kark and Dijk suggest that leaders with a promotion focus are more driven to lead by the potential to accomplish goals, are more sensitive to rewards, are willing to take risks, and experience a greater emotional range (ex: extreme happiness or dejection). Leaders with a prevention focus, on the other hand, are more driven by a sense of duty and obligation, are more sensitive to punishments, and typically experience a less broad emotional range (e.g., anxious or calmness). In other words, those with the promotion regulatory focus have an ‘affective’ MTL wherein they enjoy the act of leading and want to actively challenge the status quo while those with the prevention regulatory focus have a ‘social normative’ wherein they lead out of feeling responsible and want to maintain the status quo.

Kark and Dijk argue that the difference in an individual’s regulatory focus impacts their leadership style (charismatic/transformational for those with the promotion focus and monitoring/transactional for those with the prevention focus). This different leadership style, in turn affects the followers' regulatory focus and overall motivation. Charismatic leaders elicit followers to be more positive/change oriented and ultimately create a culture that is fueled by innovation. Monitoring leaders tend to result in followers that are more vigilant for accuracy and appreciate stability, thus creating a culture that is driven by efficiency and quality.

This source is valuable in the sense that it provides a very comprehensive examination of how regulatory theory can deepen our understanding of both leaders and followers. It offers a number of propositions and frameworks that provide nuance to the inquiry at hand. The source also employs a wide variety of sources from established business and psychology journals to inform its application of regulatory theory. The main limitation of the source is its publication date (2007) which is somewhat outdated.

"Voluntary Leadership: Motivation and Influence" by Arbak and Villeval aims to address the question of why people choose to lead voluntarily when leading is associated with sacrifice (e.g., leader’s energy, not prioritizing own self interests like income, etc.) and risk. To study this, researchers constructed a public-good experiment wherein participants are tasked with making decisions related to charity donation. In one condition, leaders can volunteer naturally while in the other leaders are randomly selected by researchers to lead (the control condition). Researchers found that about 25% of people were willing to voluntarily lead and that this decision was associated with gender and their baseline charitable behavior (this is separate from personality traits which had very little impact on willingness to lead).

The results suggest a few different underlying motives to lead. One was "self-interested" behavior which was seen when followers were responsive to the leader and acted in accordance with the leader’s desired financial output. Another self-centered motive identified was the social status associated with leadership (which was evinced by candidates who repeatedly chose to lead and make significant donations unless they were rejected which would lead to a reduction in donations). A third ‘selfless’ motive was also seen wherein the participant endeavored to improve the group’s welfare no matter their position (e.g., contributing generously even when rejected the leadership role). Lastly, the experiment found that voluntary leaders promoted more efficiency than that of the imposed leaders in the control condition.

This source provides an unique, quantitative look at what factors promote leadership. Its experimental design serves as a major strength as many potential confounding variables were eliminated. That being said, the study is very much dependent on the experiment design which could have had a number of flaws that skewed results. Additionally, this source is also somewhat outdated (published in 2011).

Exploration of My Experience

Reading these sources prompted me to think more about exactly where my motivation to lead BSAN came from. I regard my drive to start BSAN to be a mix of both the prevention and promotion regulatory foci. On the prevention focus side, I felt somewhat of a ‘duty’ to start something on campus related to substance use disorders (SUD) after taking an honors course on drug addiction and doing my own research that revealed the extent of the issue. At the time, not having a resource for SUD awareness and education on campus appeared to be something we "ought" to have and that could be feasibly implemented through the Lead Forward Fellowship program I had seen advertised. The promotion focus also came into play. Though BSAN stemmed out of my ‘duty’ to my community, it also came from wanting to actively challenge the status quo and work towards a larger goal that would have "rewards" along the way, in this case, indicators of a thriving and growing network.

Connecting this to the other source I examined, I also have been thinking about which of the three motives my voluntary leadership derives from. I do not think that leading BSAN clearly comes with social status but I can see how it could be influenced by the other two motives. In terms of self-interest, I think there could be some self-interest in my motive to lead BSAN - leadership skills, preparation for my future career, etc. I also think the ‘selfless’ motive fits to an extent as I would participate in efforts towards the cause of SUD education regardless of whether or not I was leading BSAN. However, largely, it is difficult to isolate the self-interest and selfless motives in reality. Regardless, thinking about one’s underlying motives to lead can help facilitate development by helping leaders understand how to frame their work internally to support continued motivation.

Relating all of this back to some specific experiences I have had, there have been a number of times when someone asked me ‘why’ I led BSAN. I am not a pre-med major or a pre-pharmacy major so people are sometimes confused as to why I wanted to do work on a health issue. At first, I did not have an inspiring, prepared response and just summed it up as I want to go into public health research. Reflecting more on my motivations allowed me to communicate a more refined and accurate depiction of my motives. My want to lead BSAN derived from the aforementioned ‘duty’ to educate students on SUD (the "selfless" aspect) and my want to develop as a leader and achieve by growing a larger initiative (the "self-interested" aspect).

There is a certain "self-interest" or satisfaction I have experienced that comes with organizational growth. I enjoy, for instance, successfully recruiting and empowering volunteers. A number of our volunteers have expressed to me that they did not feel capable or qualified initially to get involved in social impact work. But through the encouraging efforts of the other fellows and I, these volunteers gained willingness to get involved in the first place as well as confidence for their own future advocacy efforts. This was supported quantitatively by our volunteer survey results at the end of last semester where the response to the statement "I am better prepared to enact a social impact initiative" had a 4.3 average score on a scale of 5 (with 5 being strongly agree).

It is also satisfying to see the near exponential growth of our Narcan distribution, with a mere 180 doses being distributed at our first event to about 450 doses at our last event.

I also would like to briefly mention the impact of charismatic/transformational leadership mentioned in the first source and its relation to my experience with BSAN followers. I think that us BSAN fellows have employed this type of leadership perhaps unknowingly at first. We are very intentional with establishing and maintaining positive relationships with our volunteers. At every tabling event, for instance, I try to chat with each volunteer present and get to know them/get updates on their life. The relationships we develop with volunteers along with our clearly conveyed passion for the cause support a BSAN "charisma" that, in accordance with the first source, supports follower motivation and a positive and innovative culture.

In summary, my overarching lesson is that leader motivation can derive from differing but complementary motives and this motivation can be transferred to followers through strong leader-follower relationship building.

Sources:

Arbak, E., Villeval, MC. Voluntary leadership: motivation and influence. Soc Choice Welf 40, 635–662 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-011-0626-2

Kark, R., & Van Dijk, D. (2007). Motivation to Lead, Motivation to Follow: The Role of the Self-Regulatory Focus in Leadership Processes. Academy of Management Review, 32(2), 500–528. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMR.2007.24351846