PART FOUR

Motivation and Leadership

For years, even though Drucker almost completely ignored the topic of leadership as such, he wrote extensively about motivation. In his very first book, published in 1939, Drucker argued that in effect what dictatorships did was substitute security, stability, and order as a motivator for the traditional financial motivations provided by the capitalist system.¹

Although he continued thinking and writing about motivation over the years, he did not make a connection between motivation and leadership, probably because he did not attempt to unify his theories of leadership until relatively late in his career. Yet Drucker did list motivating as one of the “basic operations” of a manager’s work.²

Typically, his insights were bold, fearless, and explicit. At a time when permissive management was supposed to be the new direction of motivation, replacing so called command-and-control leadership, Drucker took a different tack. While supporting the idea of self direction and responsibility, he said this could not be accomplished without authority, guidance, and direction, that a leader must always be in charge, and that while “Theory X” no longer worked to achieve optimal performance in an organization, “Theory Y” without restraint was possibly worse.

Moreover, he claimed that “employee satisfaction” would lead to mediocrity at best and stated that what was really needed as a motivator was employee dissatisfaction. Although he felt that financial motivation by itself was a huge mistake, he believed altruism as the main motivator was inherently incorrect. And in one of his last warnings to managers of the new twenty first century, he cautioned that in the future workers must be treated not simply as employees but also as volunteers. His advice to leaders on how leaders should motivate is unique, logical, and powerful.