Motivation is defined as an urge in an individual to perform goal directed behavior. Therefore, motivation cannot be inflicted from outside but it is an intrinsic desire in a man to achieve the target goal through performance or activity.

Motives are expression of person’s need. Hence, they are personal and internal. Incentives on the other hand are external to the person. They are made part of work environment by management in order to encourage workers to accomplish task. The motivational model indicates that a sense of felt deprivation generates needs and such needs create tension in an individual. The individual perceive and makes cost benefit analysis on the ways and means of releasing such tension. Once such perception is cleared, individual pounces upon the activities and achieves some results. If it is success he feels rewarded and falls in the cycle of motivation again. If it is failure he feels punished and once again after due modification of ways and means pounces back on the cycle or feels frustrated. Therefore, motivation leads to a goal directed behavior.

When people join an organization, they bring with them certain needs that affect on-the-job performance. Some of these needs are physiological ; others are related to psychological and social values. The later are much more difficult to determine and satisfy, and they vary greatly from one to another. Maslow has developed a hierarchy of needs as follows : physiological, security, social, esteem, and self-actualization needs. They interact with the environment to shape on-the-job wants that are the basis of motivation. In addition, motivation is affected by people’s perceptions, including their feelings of equity or fairness in a situation.

According to a model developed by Herzberg, motivation is influenced by maintenance and motivational factors. Important motivational factors are the work itself, achievement, growth, responsibility, advancement and recognition. These are primarily intrinsic motivators rather than extrinsic ones. The Maslow and Herzberg models have many similarities because they both focus on needs, but they do so from somewhat different points of view.

Two different models of motivation are the expectancy model and behavior modification. The expectancy model states that motivation is a product of how much one wants something and the probability that a certain action will lead to it. The formula is valence X expectancy = motivation. Valence is the strength of a person’s performance for one outcome in relation to others. Expectancy is the strength of belief that a given act will be followed by particular outcomes.

Behavior modification states that behavior depends on its consequences. It is achieved through operant condition. Its various approaches include positive and negative reinforcement, shaping, and extinction. Punishment normally is not used. Reinforcement can be continuous or partial. Criticism of behavior modification are that it manipulates people and does not apply very well in complex work environments.
Cognitive models dominate thinking about motivation, but behavior modification is finding increasing use. Most attention has been given to type A motivation (macromotivation) ; but in order to build a complete motivational environment, more emphasis must be given to type B motivation (micromotivation).

Motivation therefore, though is a dominant intrinsic urge in an individual yet the leader of the team can guide the ways and means by which the followers can satisfy their needs. It is obviously difficult to motivate an individual since he is guided by expressed motivation or unconscious motivation and multiplicity of motivational sequences. It is easy to introduce a team motivation or group motivation where the individual idiosyncrasy looses importance and the group goal becomes the target. It is then not motivation per se but a group morale – an “espirit de corps” i.e. a sense of group activity with desire for high achievement of the group goal where an individual can comfortably ignore his personal goals or needs. Such morale is mostly psychological in nature and not physiological.

A leader’s job is, therefore, to inculcate the extirpation of the group morale if he proposes to achieve the target through his follows where equal weight is given to performance of task and welfare of the followers, a stage of suspended pendulum or middle of the road method.