Leadership: Leaders, Followers, Environments

Motivation, rewards, punishment, and performance

Leaders will be principally judged, as discussed earlier, by how their organizations perform relative to their competitors. Leader behaviors and traits contribute to that performance, either positively or negatively. Effective organizational performance is the result of three elements affecting both the leaders and the followers: 1. personal knowledge, skills, and aptitude; 2. motivation; and 3. opportunity (see Figure 5.1). Knowledge, skills, and aptitude include what one can do, what one is good at. This includes the skills and knowledge of both followers and leaders. Motivation can be defined as the effort, commitment, and persistence expended to accomplish a task or goal. Opportunity has to do with the resources one has to perform the task, the tools at our disposal. You might be able to include luck among the opportunities, because things like timing or moves by opponents are not often under our control but they can affect organizational performance. The early history of Southwest Airlines demonstrates the impact of luck rather vividly.

Just two days after Southwest’s inaugural flight, on the first Sunday morning of the airline’s operation, June 20, 1971, one of the airline’s few jets narrowly avoided what would have been a horrific crash. According to Southwest’s founding president, Lamar Muse, the plane’s right engine failed moments after takeoff. The pilot’s skill and cool reaction made the amazingly difficult, emergency ...