Please Note: This article is about the personal motivational experience of the Author and not a scientific Theory of Motivation.

My Theory of Motivation

“Giving responsibility for achieving desired results requires delegation of authority to take decisions on how to approach a task because every human being has his/her own contextual experiences of looking at problems and approaching those problems to find solutions.”

Key Concepts

Responsibility or credits should always go to the driver of the situation or task. Logically speaking, if someone is given the responsibility for something, it means that he/she has to complete it and anything that goes right should be credited to him/her and anything going wrong has to be considered his/her shortcoming. In this sense, taking control of the decision on how to do the task does not make much sense because if the person who is making the decision on how to do something is actually imposing or directing the other person and thus that person becomes the driver of the situation. Therefore the performer of the task should logically be not blamed for loss or failure if he or she follows the instructions as and when directed and still the results are not as desired. Since responsibility is about charging someone for the bad results or appreciating someone in one way or the other for the good results, therefore, the choice of tools, techniques, and methodologies should also somewhat stay in his/her hands.

Delegation of authority is source of giving a feeling of ownership of the results and consequences of the chosen alternatives. The delegation of authority means to give the performer a choice or authority to choose the way to do the task as he/she thinks the best. By delegating the authority, one feels the ownership for the consequences of the selected alternatives and this ownership works both as a driving force to motivate the individual as well as enforces him/her to sensibly and responsibly select the alternatives.

Diagraming the Theory

How it helped me in my tasks?

This theory has worked around in several situations that I have faced in my life. In terms of choosing my career, I feel more responsible for my work. As in my culture, majority of the parents do decide career choices for their children based on their own assumptions without taking into consideration their children’s choices, capabilities, and natures. But I have chosen to study my selected field myself. Now if it had been a decision of my parents and they had directed me to do something that is not what I feel comfortable with, then there would have been less driving force on me towards achievement because I would probably blame my parents for choosing the wrong career for me and that they should be responsible for any failure that I face. As of now, I feel responsible for anything that I do, and that is the reason, I put more efforts in achieving good results to show that I have selected the best choice and that I own my decision and hence will own the results.

Relationship to Path-goal theory

In my opinion, my theory relates to the participative leadership style of the path goal theory, where the workers are given the opportunity to bring in the ideas for solving a problem or completing a task and the leader is more considerate of the options provided by the workers. Since participative leadership is preferred for leaders who may not be able to provide the best way or decision, it is more desirable to delegate the authority to the worker to choose.