Leader Motives

It is important to think about the individual leader’s personality when we are discussing power and leadership. All people vary in their personal motivation to have or wield power.

Need for Power: the motivation to influence or control others (McClelland, 1975; McClelland & Burnham, 2008). Individuals with a high need for power get satisfaction from influencing others. They look for positions where they can influence others. They are good at building trusting relationships and they can be outspoken and forceful. They like to see signs of their authority and status and like others to defer to them. The need for power has shown to be positively related to success for nontechnical managers (McClelland & Boyatzis, 1982).

• Personalized power: individuals with high need for personalized power are selfish, impulsive, uninhibited, and lacking in self-control. These people exercise power for their own needs, not for the good of the organization.
• Socialized power: is expressed in the service of higher goals to others or organizations and involves self-sacrifice toward those ends. It often involves empowering, rather than an autocratic style of leadership.

Motivation to Manage

People vary in their motivation to manage as well as in their need for power. There are six composites for the motivation to manage (Miner, 1974);

• Maintaining good relationships with authority figures.
• Wanting to compete for recognition and advancement.
• Being active and assertive.
• Wanting to exercise influence over subordinates.
• Being visibly different from followers.
• Being willing to do routine administrative tasks.

Leadership practitioners can learn a number of important things from the research on need for power and motivation to manage. First, not all individuals like being leaders. Those with a low need for power may not want to lead. Second, a high need for power or motivation to manage does not guarantee leadership success. Miner (1978) found that motivation to manage was related to leadership success only in bureaucratic organizations. Third, in order to be successful in the long term, leaders may have to have a high need for socialized power. Leaders who impulsively exercise power to satisfy their own selfish needs will probably be ineffective in the long term. Finally, followers, as well as leaders, differ in the need for power and motivation to manage. Leaders may need to behave differently toward different followers.