BEST OF HBR

1976

Power Is theGreat Motivatorby David C. McClelland and David H. Burnham

Most HBR articles on motivation speak to managers about the people whose

work they oversee. Curiously, the writers assume that the motivation of manag-

ers themselves-that is to say, of our readers-is so well aligned with organiza-

tional goals that it needs no examination. David McClelland and his colleague

David Burnham knew better.

They found that managers fall into three motivational groups. Those in

the first, affinative managers, need to be liked more than they need to get

things done. Their decisions are aimed at increasing their own popular-

ity rather than promoting the goals ofthe organization. Managers moti-

vated by the need to achieve-the second group-aren't worried about

what people think of them. They focus on setting goals and reaching them,

but they put their own achievement and recognition first. Those in the third

group-institutional managers-are interested above all in power. Recogniz-

ing that you get things done inside organizations only if you can influence the

people around you,they focus on building power through influence rather than

through their own individual achievement. People in this third group are the

mosteffective, and their direct reports have a greater sense of responsibility,

see organizational goals more clearly, and exhibit more team spirit.

Contrary to popular opinion,

the best managers are the ones

who like power - and use it

WHAT MAKES OR MOTIVATES a goodmanager? The question is enormousin scope. Some people might say thata good manager is one who is success-ful-and by now most business research-ers and businesspeople know what mo-tivates people who successfully runtheir own small businesses. The key totheir success has turned out to be whatpsychologists call the need for achieve-ment, the desire to do something betteror more efficiently than it has beendone before. Any number of books andarticles summarize research studies ex-

plaining how the achievement motive isnecessary for a person to attain success.

But what has achievement motiva-tion got to do with good management?There is no reason on theoreticalgrounds why a person who has a strongneed to be more efficient should makea good manager. While it sounds as ifeveryone ought to have the need toachieve, in fact, as psychologists defineand measure achievement motivation,the need to achieve leads people to be-have in ways that do not necessarily en-gender good management

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For one thing, because they focus onpersonal improvement, achievement-motivated people want to do thingsthemselves. For another, they want con-crete short-term feedback on their per-formance so that they can tell how wellthey are doing. Yet managers, particu-larly in large, complex organizations,cannot perform by themselves all thetasks necessary for success. They mustmanage others to perform for the orga-nization. And they must be willing to dowithout immediate and personal feed-back since tasks are spread among manypeople.

The manager's job seems to call morefor someone who can influence peoplethan for someone who does things bet-ter alone. In motivational terms, then,we might expect the successful managerto have a greater need for power thana need to achieve. But there must beother qualities besides the need forpower that go into the makeup of agood manager. We will discuss here justwhat these qualities are and how theyinterrelate.

To measure the motivations of man-agers, we studied a number of individu-als in different large U.S. corporationswho were participating in managementworkshops designed to improve theirmanagerial effectiveness. (See the side-bar "Workshop Techniques.") We con-cluded that the top manager of a com-pany must possess a high need forpower-that is, a concem for influencingpeople. However, this need must be dis-ciplined and controlled so that it is di-rected toward the benefit ofthe institu-tion as a whole and not toward the

The late David C. McClelland was a pro-fessor of psychology at Harvard Universityin Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 7976when this article first appeared. David H.Burnham was at that time the presidentand chief executive officer of McBer &Company, a behavioral science consultingfirm. He is currently a principal of theBurnham Rosen Group, a strategic con-sulting and leadership-training firm inBoston.

manager's personal aggrandizement.Moreover, the top manager's need forpower ought to be greater than his orher need to be liked.

Measuring ManagerialEffectivenesswhat does it mean when we say that agood manager has a greater need forpower than for achievement? Considerthe case of Ken Briggs, a sales managerin a large U.S. corporation who joinedone of our managerial workshops. (Thenames and details of all the cases thatfollow have been disguised.) About sixyears ago. Ken Briggs was promoted toa managerial position at headquarters,where he was responsible for sales-people who serviced his company'slargest accounts.

In filling out his questionnaire at theworkshop, Ken showed that he correctlyperceived what his job required ofhim-namely, that he should influenceothers' success more than achieve newgoals himself or socialize with his sub-ordinates. However, when asked, withother members of the workshop, towrite a story depicting a managerialsituation, Ken unwittingly revealedthrough his fiction that he did not sharethose concerns. Indeed, he discoveredthat his need for achievement was veryhigh - in fact, higher than the 90th per-centile-and his need for power was verylow, in about the 15th percentile. Ken'shigh need to achieve was no surprise -after all, he had been a very successfulsalesman-but obviously his desire to in-fluence others was much less than hisjob required. Ken was a little disturbedbut thought that perhaps the measuringinstruments were not accurate and thatthe gap between the ideal and his scorewas not as great as it seemed.

Then came the real shocker. Ken'ssubordinates confirmed what his sto-ries revealed: He was a poor manager,having little positive impact on thosewho worked for him. They felt thatlittle responsibility had been delegatedto them. He never rewarded them butonly criticized them. And the office was

poorly organized, confused, and cha-otic. On all those scales, his office ratedin the tenth to 15th percentile relative tonational norms.

As Ken talked the results ofthe surveyover privately with a workshop leader,he became more and more upset. Hefinally agreed, however, that the resultsconfirmed feelings he had been afraidto admit to himself or others. For years,he had been miserable in his manage-rial role. He now knew the reason: Hesimply did not want, and he had not

Do ourfindings suggest

that the good manager

is one who cares for power

and is not at all concerned

about the needs of other

people? Not quite.

been able, to influence or manage oth-ers. As he thought back, he realized hehad failed every time he had tried toinfluence his staff, and he felt worsethan ever.

Ken had responded to failure by set-ting very high standards - his officescored in the 98th percentile on thisscale - and by trying to do most thingshimself, which was close to impossible.His own activity and lack of delegationconsequently left his staff demoralized.Ken's experience is typical of those whohave a strong need to achieve but littledesire for power. They may become verysuccessful salespeople and, as a conse-quence, may be promoted into mana-gerial jobs for which they, ironically, areunsuited.

If the need to achieve does not makea good manager, what motive does? Itis not enough to suspect that power mo-tivation may be important; one needshard evidence that people who arebetter managers than Ken Briggs isare in fact more highly motivated bypower and perhaps score higher in other

118 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

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characteristics as well. But how doesone decide who is the better manager?

Real-world performance measuresare hard to come by if one is trying torate managerial effectiveness in production, marketing, finance, or researchand development. In trying to deter-mine who the better managers were inKen Briggs's company, we did not wantto rely only on their superiors. For avariety of reasons, superiors' judgmentsof their subordinates' real-world per-formance may be inaccurate. In theabsence of some standard measure ofperfonnance, we decided that the nextbest index of a manager's effectivenesswould be the climate he or she createsin the office, reflected in the morale ofsubordinates.

Almost by definition, a good manageris one who, among other things, helpssubordinates feel strong and responsi-ble, rewards them properly for goodperformance, and sees that things areorganized so that subordinates feel theyknow what they should be doing. Aboveall, managers should foster among sub-ordinates a strong sense of team spirit,of pride in working as part of a team. Ifa manager creates and encourages thisspirit, his or her subordinates certainlyshould perform better.

In the company Ken Briggs works for,we have direct evidence of a connectionbetween morale and performance inthe one area where performance mea-sures are easy to find - namely, sales. InApril 1973, at least three employeesfrom each ofthis company's i6 sales dis-tricts filled out questionnaires that ratedtheir office for organizational clarityand team spirit. Their scores were aver-aged and totaled to give an overallmorale score for each office. Then, thepercentage gains or losses in sales in1973 were compared with those for 1972for each district. The difference in salesfigures by district ranged from a gain ofnearly 30% to a toss of 8%, with a me-dian gain of about 14%. The graph "TheLink Between Morale and Sales" showshow, in Ken Briggs's company at least,high morale at the beginning ofthe year

became a good index of how well thesales division would actually performthroughout the year. Moreover, it seemslikely that the manager who can createhigh morale among salespeople can alsodo the same for employees in otherareas (production, design, and so on),which leads to better overall perfor-mance. What characteristics, then, doesa manager need to create that kind ofmorale?

The Power FactorTo find out, we surveyed more than50 managers in both high- and low-morale units in all sections of a singlelarge company. We found that thepower motivation scores for most ofthe managers - more than 70% - werehigher than those of the average per-son. This finding confirms that powermotivation is important to manage-ment. (Remember that as we use theterm, "power motivation" refers not todictatorial behavior but to a desire tohave an impact, to be strong and influ-ential.) The better managers, as judgedby the morale of those working forthem, tended to score even higher inpower motivation. But the most impor-tant determining factor of high moraleturned out to be not how their need forpower compared with their need toachieve but whether it was higher thantheir need to be liked. This relation-ship existed for 80% ofthe better salesmanagers but for only 10% of thepoorer managers. And the same held

The affiiiative nnanager

wants to stay on good terms

with everybody and,

therefore, is the one most

likely to make exceptions

for particular needs.

true for other managers in nearly everypart ofthe organization.

In the research, product develop-ment, and operations divisions, 73% ofthe better managers had a strongerneed for power than need to be liked, ascompared with only 22% ofthe poorermanagers, who tended to be whatwe term "affiiiative managers"-whosestrongest drive is to be liked. Whyshould this be so?

Sociologists have long argued that fora bureaucracy to function effectively,those who manage it must apply rulesuniversally: that is, if they make excep-tions for the particular needs of indi-viduals, the whole system will breakdown. The manager with a high need tobe liked is precisely the one who wantsto stay on good terms with everybodyand, therefore, is the one most likely tomake exceptions for particular needs.If an employee asks for time off to stayhome and look after a sick spouse andthe kids, the affiiiative manager agreesalmost without thinking, out of com-passion for the employee's situation.When former President Gerald Fordremarked in pardoning Richard Nixonthat Nixon had "suffered enough," hewas responding as an affiiiative man-ager would because he was empathiz-ing primarily with Nixon's needs andfeelings.

Sociological theory and our findingsboth argue, however, that the personwhose need for affiliation is high doesnot make a good manager. This kind of

120 HAKVAKD BUSINESS REVIEW

Power Is the Great Motivator

person creates low morale because he orshe does not understand that other peopie in the office will tend to regard ex-ceptions to the rules as unfair to them-selves, just as many U.S. citizens felt thatit was unfair to let Nixon off and punishothers who were less involved than hewas in the Watergate scandal.

So far, our findings are a little alarm-ing. Do they suggest that the good man-ager is one who cares for power and isnot at all concerned about the needs ofother people? Not quite, for the goodmanager has other characteristics thatmust still be taken into account. Aboveall, the good manager's power motiva-tion is not oriented toward personalaggrandizement but toward the institu-tion that he or she serves.

In another major research study, wefound that the signs of controlled ac-tion, or inhibition, that appear when aperson exercises imagination in writ-ing stories tell a great deal about thekind of power that person needs.' Wediscovered that if a high power motiva-tion score is balanced by high inhibi-tion, stories about power tend to be al-truistic. That is, the heroes in the storyexercise power on behalf of someoneelse. This isthe socialized face of power,as distinguished from the concern forpersonal power, which is characteristicof individuals whose stories are loadedwith power imagery but show no signof inhibition or self-control. In our ear-lier study, we found ample evidence thatthe latter individuals exercise theirpower impulsively. They are more oftenrude to other people, they drink toomuch, they try to exploit others sexu-ally, and they collect symbols of per-sonal prestige such as fancy cars or bigoffices.

Individuals high in power and in con-trol, on the other hand, are more insti-tution minded; they tend to get electedto more offices, to control their drink-ing, and to have a desire to serve others.Not surprisingly, we found in the work-shops that the better managers in thecorporation also tend to score high onboth power and inhibition.

Three Kinds of Managers

Let us recapitulate what we have dis-cussed so far and have illustrated withdata from one company. The bettermanagers we studied - what we call in-stitutional managers-are high in powermotivation, low in affiliation motiva-tion, and high in inhibition. They careabout institutional power and use it tostimulate their employees to be moreproductive. Now let us compare themwith a^liative managers (those peoplefor whom the need for affiliation ishigher than the need for power) andwith the personal-power managers (thosein whom the need for power is higherthan the need for affiliation but whoseinhibition score is low).

In the sales division ofthe companywe chose to use as an illustration, thereare managers who match the threetypes fairly closely. The chart "WhichManager Is Most Effective?" shows howtheir subordinates rated the offices theyworked in on responsibility, organiza-tional clarity, and team spirit. Managerswho are concerned about being liked

tend to have subordinates who feel thatthey have little personal responsi bi I i /,believe that organizational proceduresare not clear, and have little pride intheir work group. In short, as we ex-pected, affiliative managers make somany ad hominem and ad hoc decisionsthat they almost totally abandon or-derly procedures. Their disregard forprocedure leaves employees feelingweak, irresponsible, and without a senseof what might happen next, of wherethey stand in relation to their manager,or even of what they ought to be doing.In this company, the group of affiliativemanagers portrayed in the chart fallsbelow the 40th percentile in all threemeasures of morale.

The managers who are motivated bya need for personal power are some-what more effective. They are able toengender a greater sense of responsibil-ity in their divisions and, above all, cre-ate a greater team spirit. They can bethought ofas managerial equivalents ofsuccessful tank commanders such asGeneral George Patton, whose own dar-ing inspired admiration in his troops.

The Link Between Morale and SalesThe higher the morale early in the year, the higher the sales by year end.

30

25

m

^ 20o

19/2

E 15o

ICt

^ 10•a

> .

5

•2 districts

•4 districts

4 districts

6 districts

10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Morale score in April 1973(perceived organizational clarity plus team spirit)

80

MOTIVATING PEOPLE JANUARY 2003 121

BEST OF HBR

But notice how in the chart these peo-ple are still only around the 40th per-centile in the amount oforganizationalclarity they create, whereas the institu-tional managers-the high-power, low-affiliation, high-inhibition managers -score much higher.

Managers motivated by persona!power are not disciplined enough to begood institution builders, and oftentheir subordinates are loyal to them asindividuals rather than to the institu-tion they serve. When a personal-powermanager leaves, disorganization oftenfollows. The strong group spirit that themanager has personally inspired de-flates. The subordinates do not knowwhat to do by themselves.

Of all the managerial types, the insti-tutional manager is the most successfulin creating an effective work climate.Subordinates feel that they have moreresponsibility. Also, those kinds of man-agers create high morale because theyproduce the greatest sense oforganiza-tional clarity and team spirit. If such amanager leaves, he or she can be morereadily replaced by another because theemployees have been encouraged to beloyal to the institution rather than to aparticular person.

Since it seems undeniable that a man-ager with a power orientation createsbetter morale in subordinates than onewith a people orientation, we must con-sider that a concem for power is essen-tial to good management.

Our findings seem to fly in the face ofa long and influential tradition of or-ganizational psychology, which insiststhat authoritarian management is whatis wrong with most businesses in theUnited States. Let us say frankly thatwe think the bogeyman of authoritari-anism has been wrongly used to dovm-play the importance of power in man-agement. After all, management is aninfluence game. Some proponents ofdemocratic management seem to haveforgotten this fact, urging managers tobe more concerned with people's per-sonal needs than with helping them toget things done.

But much ofthe apparent conflict be-tween our findings and those of otherbehavioral scientists in this area stemsfrom the fact that we are talking aboutmotives, and behaviorists are often talk-ing about actions. What we are saying isthat managers must be interested inplaying the influence game in a con-trolled way. That does not necessarilymean that they are or should be au-thoritarian in action. On the contrary,it appears that power-motivated man-agers make their subordinates feelstrong rather than weak. The true au-thoritarian in action would have the re-verse effect, making people feel weakand powerless.

Thus another important ingredientin the profile of a manager is managerialstyle. In our example, 63% of the bettermanagers (those whose subordinateshad higher morale) scored higher on thedemocratic or coaching styles of man-agement as compared with only 22% ofthe poorer managers. By contrast, thelatter scored higher on authoritarian orcoercive management styles. Since thebetter managers were also higher inpower motivation, it seems that in actionthey express their power motivation ina democratic way, which is more likelyto be effective.

To see how motivation and style in-teract, consider the case of George Pren-tice, a manager in the sales division ofanother company. George had exactlythe right combination of motives to bean institutional manager. He was high

Power without discipline

is often directed toward

the manager's personal

aggrandizement, not toward

the benefit ofthe institution.

in the need for power, low in the needfor affiliation, and high in inhibition.He exercised his power in a controlled,organized way. The stories he wroterefiected this fact. In one story, forinstance, he wrote, "The men sittingaround the table were feeling prettygood; they had just finished plans forreorganizing the company; the com-pany has been beset with a number oforganizational problems. This group,headed by a hard-driving, brilliant youngexecutive, has completely reorganizedthe company structurally with new jobsand responsibilities...."

This described how George himselfwas perceived by the company, andshortly after the workshop, he was pro-moted to vice president in charge of allsales. But George was also known to hiscolleagues as a monster, a tough guy whowould "walk over his grandmother" ifshe stood in the way of his advance-ment He had the right motive combi-nation and, in fact, was more interestedin institutional growth than he was inpersonal power, but his managerial stylewas all wrong. Taking his cue from someofthe top executives in the corporation,he told people what they had to do, andhe threatened them with dire conse-quences if they did not do it.

When George was confronted withhis authoritarianism in a workshop, herecognized that this style was counter-productive - in fact, in another part ofthe study we found that it was associatedwith low morale-and he subsequently

122 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Power Is the Great Motivator

began to act more like a coach, whichwas the style for which he scored thelowest, initially. George saw more clearlythat his job was not to force other peo-ple to do things but rather to help themfigure out ways of getting their jobsdone better for the company.

Profile ofthe InstitutionalManagerOne reason it was easy for George Pren-tice to change his managerial style wasthat, as we saw in his imaginative sto-ries, he was already thinking abouthelping others - a characteristic of peo-ple with the institution-building moti-vational pattern. In further examininginstitution builders' thoughts and ac-tions, we found they have four majorcharacteristics:

• Institutional managers are more or-ganization minded; that is, they tendto join more organizations and to feelresponsible for building up those orga-

nizations. Furthermore, they believestrongly in the importance of central-ized authority.

• They report that they like to work.This finding is particularly interestingbecause our research on achievementmotivation has led many commentatorsto argue that achievement motivationpromotes the Protestant work ethic. Al-most the precise opposite is true. Peoplewho have a high need to achieve like toreduce their work by becoming moreefficient. They would like to see thesame result obtained in less time or withless effort. But managers who have aneed for institutional power actuallyseem to like the discipline of work. Itsatisfies their need for getting thingsdone in an orderly way.

• They seem quite willing to sacrificesome of their own self-interest for thewelfare ofthe organization they serve.

• They have a keen sense of justice. Itis almost as if they feel that people who

Which Manager Is Most Effective?Subordinates of managers with different motive profiles report different

levels of responsibility, organizational clarity, and team spirit.

10 20 30 40 50Percentile ranking of average scores relative to national norms.

Scores for at least three subordinates of:• Affiiiative managers {affiliation greater than power, high inhibition)• Personal-power managers (power greater than affiliation, low inhibition)• Institutional managers (power greater than affiliation, high inhibition)

60

work hard and sacrifice for the good ofthe organization should and will get ajust reward for their effort.

It is easy to see how each of these fourcharacteristics helps a person become agood manager, concemed about whatthe institution can achieve.

We discovered one more fact in study-ing the better managers at George Pren-tice's company. They were more mature.Mature people can be most simply de-scribed as less egotistic. Somehow theirpositive self-image is not at stake intheir jobs. They are less defensive, morewilling to seek advice from experts, andhave a longer-range view. They accu-mulate fewer personal possessions andseem older and wiser. It is as if they haveawakened to the fact that they are notgoing to live forever and have lost someofthe feeling that their ovm personalfuture is all that important

Many U.S. businesspeople fear thiskind of maturity. They suspect that itwill make them less hard driving, lessexpansion minded, and less committedto organizational effectiveness. Our datado not support their fears.

Those fears are exactly the onesGeorge Prentice had before he went tothe workshop. Afterward, he was a moreeffective manager, not despite his lossof some ofthe sense of his own impor-tance but because of it. The reason issimple: His subordinates believed after-ward that he was genuinely more con-cemed about the company than he wasabout himself. Whereas once they re-spected his confidence but feared him,they now tmst him. Once, he supportedtheir image of him as a "big man" bytalking about the new Porsche andHonda he had bought; when we sawhim recently, he said, almost as an aside,"I don't buy things anymore."

Altering Managerial StyleGeorge Prentice was able to change hismanagerial style after leaming moreabout himself. But does self-knowledgegenerally improve managerial behavior?

Consider the results shown in thechart "Managers Can Change Their

MOTIVATING PEOPLE JANUARY 2003 123

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Styles," where employee morale scoresare compared before and after theirmanagers attended workshop training.To judge by their subordinates' re-sponses, the managers were clearlymore effective after coming to termswith their styles. The subordinates feltthat they received more rewards, thatthe organizationai procedures wereclearer, and that morale was higher.

But what do those differences meanin human terms? How did the managerschange? Sometimes they decided theyshould get into another line of work.This happened to Ken Briggs, for exam-ple, who found that the reason he wasdoing so poorly as a manager was be-cause he had almost no interest in in-fluencing others. He understood how hewould have to change in order to dowell in his present job but in the enddecided, with the help of management,that he would prefer to work back intohis first love, sales.

Ken Briggs moved into remainder-ing, helping retail outlets for his com-pany's products get rid of last year's

stock so that they could take on eachyear's new styles. He is very successful inthis new role; he has cut costs, increaseddollar volume, and in time worked him-self into an independent role sellingsome of the old stock on his own in away that is quite satisfactory to the busi-ness. And he does not have to manageanybody anymore.

In George Prentice's case, less changewas needed. He obviously was a verycompetent manager with the right mo-tive profile for a top company position.When he was promoted, he performedeven more successfully than he hadpreviously because he realized that heneeded to become more positive in hisapproach and less coercive in his man-agerial style.

But what about a person who doesnot want to change jobs and discoversthat he or sbe does not have the rightmotive profile to be a manager? Thecase of Charlie Blake is instructive. Char-lie was as low in power motivation asKen Briggs, his need to achieve wasabout average, and his affiliation moti-

Managers Can Change Their StylesTraining managers clearly improves their employees' morale.

0 10 20 30 40 50Percentile ranking ofthe average scores of more than 50 salespeople

on selected dimensions relative to national norms.

Before manager training After manager training

vation was above average. Thus he hadthe affiliative manager profile, and, asexpected, the morale among his subor-dinates was very low. When Charlielearned that his subordinates' sense ofresponsibility and perception of a re-ward system were in the tenth per-centile and that team spirit was in the30th, he was shocked. When shown afilm depicting three managerial cli-mates, Charlie said he preferred whatturned out to be the authoritarian cli-mate. He became angry when the work-shop trainer and other members in thegroup pointed out the limitations of tbismanagerial style. He became obstruc-tive to the group process, and he ob-jected strenuously to what was beingtaught.

In an interview conducted much later,Charlie said, "I blew my cool. Wben 1started yelling at you for being allwrong, I got even madder wben youpointed out that, according to my stylequestionnaire, you bet that that was justwhat I did to my salespeople. Down un-derneath, I knew something must bewrong. The sales performance for mydivision wasn't so good. Most of it wasdue to me anyway and not to my sales-people. Obviously, their reports thatthey felt I delegated very little responsi-bility to them and didn't reward them atall had to mean something. So 1 finallydecided to sit down and try to figurewbat 1 could do about it. I knew I bad tostart being a manager instead of tryingto do everything myself and blowing mycool at otbers because tbey didn't dowhat I thought tbey should. In the end,after I calmed down, on tbe way backfrom the workshop, I realized that it isnot so bad to make a mistake; it's bad notto learn from it."

After the course, Charlie put his plansinto effect. Six months later, his subor-dinates were asked to rate him again. Heattended a second workshop to studythe results and reported, "On the wayhome, I was nervous. I knew I had beenworking with tbose guys and not sellingso much myself, but I was afraid of whatthey would say about how things were

124 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

going in the office. When 1 found outthat the team spirit and some of thoseother low scores had jumped fromaround the 30th to the 55th percentile,I was so delighted and relieved that Icouldn't say anything ail day long."

When he was asked how his behaviorhad changed, Charlie said,"In previousyears when corporate headquarters saidwe had to make iio% of our originalgoal, I had called the salespeople in andsaid, in effect, 'This is ridiculous; we arenot going to make it, but you know per-fectly well what will happen if we don't.So get out there and work your tails off.'The result was that 1 worked 20 hoursa day, and they did nothing.

"This time I approached the sales-people differently. I told them threethings. First, they were going to have todo some sacrificing for the company.Second, working harder is not going todo much good because we are alreadyworking about as hard as we can. Whatwill be required are special deals andpromotions. You are going to have tofigure out some new angles if we areto make it. Third, I'm going to back youup. I'm going to set a realistic goal witheach of you. If you make that goal butdon't make the company goal, I'll seeto it that you are not punished. But ifyou do make the company goal, I'll seeto it that you will get some kind of spe-cial rewards."

The salespeople challenged Charlie,saying he did not have enough influenceto give them rewards. Rather than be-coming angry, Charlie promised rewardsthat were in his power to give-such aslonger vacations.

Note that Charlie has now begun tobehave in a number of ways that wefound to be characteristic of the goodinstitutional manager. He is, above all,higher in power motivation-the desireto influence his salespeople-and lowerin his tendency to try to do everythinghimself. He asks people to sacrifice forthe company. He does not defensivelychew them out when they challengehim but tries to figure out what theirneeds are so that he can infiuence them.

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He realizes that his job is more one ofstrengthening and supporting his sub-ordinates than of criticizing them. Andhe is keenly interested in giving themjust rewards for their efforts.

The changes in his approach to hisjob have certainly paid off The sales forhis office in 1973 were more than 16%higher than those ofthe previous year,and they rose still further in 1974. In1973, his office's gain over the previousyear ranked seventh in the nation; in1974, it ranked third. And he wasn't theonly one in his company to change man-agerial styles. Overall sales at his com-pany were up substantially in 1973, anincrease that played a large part in turn-ing the overall company performancearound from a $15 million loss in 1972 toa $3 million profit in 1973. The companycontinued to improve its performancein 1974 with a further 11% gain in salesand a 38% increase in profits.

Of course, everybody can't always bereached by a workshop. Henry Cartermanaged a sales office for a companythat had very low morale (around the20th percentile) before he went fortraining. When morale was checkedsome six months later, it had not im-proved. Overall sales gains subsequentlyreflected this fact - only 2% above theprevious year's figures.

Oddly enough, Henry's problem wasthat he was so well liked by everybodyhe felt little pressure to change. Alwaysthe life ofthe party, he was particularlypopular because he supplied other man-

Institutional managers

create high morale because

they produce the greatest

sense oforganizational

clarity and team spirit.

agers with special hard-to-get brandsof cigars and wines at a discount. Heused his close ties with everyone to bol-ster his position in the company, eventhough it was known that his office didnot perform as well as others.

His great interpersonal skills becameevident at the workshop when he didvery poorly at one ofthe business games.When the discussion turned to why hehad done so badly and whether he actedthat way on the job, two prestigious par-ticipants immediately sprang to his de-fense, explaining away Henry's failureby arguing that the way he did thingswas often a real help to others and thecompany. As a result, Henry did nothave to cope with such questions at all.He had so successfully developed hisrole as a likable, helpful friend to every-one in management that, even thoughhis salespeople performed badly, he didnot feel under any pressure to changethe way he managed people.

What have we leamed from KenBriggs, George Prentice, Charlie Blake,and Henry Carter? We have discoveredwhat motives make an effective man-ager-and that change is possible if aperson has the right combination ofqualities.

Oddly enough, the good manager ina large company does not have a highneed for achievement, as we define andmeasure that motive, although theremust be plenty of that motive some-where in his or her organization. Thetop managers shown here have a need

for power greater than their interestin being liked. The manager's concemfor power should be socialized - con-trolled so that the institution as a whole,not only the individual, benefits. Peopleand nations with this motive profile areempire builders; they tend to createhigh morale and to expand the orga-nizations they head. But there is alsodanger in this motive profile; as in coun-tries, empire building can lead to im-perialism and authoritarianism in com-panies. The same motive pattern thatproduces good power management canalso lead a company to try to dominateothers, ostensibly in the interests ofor-ganizational expansion. Thus it is notsurprising that big business has had tobe regulated periodically by federalagencies.

Similarly, the best managers possesstwo characteristics that act as regula-tors - a greater emotional maturity,where there is little egotism, and ademocratic, coaching managerial style.If a manager's institutional power mo-tivation is checked by maturity, it doesnot lead to an aggressive, egotistic ex-pansiveness. That means managers cancontrol their subordinates and influenceothers around them without having toresort to coercion or to an authoritarianmanagement style.

Summarized in this way, what wehave found out through empirical andstatistical investigations may sound likegood common sense. But it is more thancommon sense; now we can say objec-tively what the characteristics of thegood manager are. Managers of corpo-rations can select those who are likelyto be good managers and train those al-ready in managerial positions to be moreeffective with more confidence. v

1. David C. McClelland, William N. Davis, RudolfKalin, and Eric Wanner, The Drinking Man: Alcoholand Human Motivation (Free Press, 1972).

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126 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW