Motivation or manipulation

Motivation or manipulation? We all are aware of the fact that motivation is an extremely useful tool leads to the success of an organization. Motivating employees bring higher performances, better results and it is also an easier way to achieve common goal of the firm. That is the reason why leaders have been trying to find the best way to motivate their employees. However, they often mistake manipulating as motivation because the borderline between those two leadership strategies are very unclear and not so visible. Some leaders believe they are motivating their employees without realizing that they actually manipulate them. The word “manipulation” has somewhat negative connotation. Some manipulative acts can be considered as something bad but is it always bad? – That’s still a dilemma for most of the leaders nowadays. The word “motivation” is often confused with “manipulation”. Motivation “is genuinely seeking out the wants, needs and desires of the other party, and then working with the other party to find so solutions that meet your needs – and theirs”; for example, motivated employees do the work assigned to them more efficiently because they feel the responsibility and interested in the work itself. On the other hand, manipulation “is thinking of a reason others will want to do something, and then convincing them your correctness”, persuading them to do work for your benefit, for instance, when you tell your employees to sell inferior product at an inflated price or making people work overtime without paying them extra wage. This is a bad example of leader misusing motivation to manipulate employees and also his customers.
Leaders often face problems in defining the difference between those two leadership strategies. It is really hard to tell because first of all, it depends on the leader’s motives. In other words, leaders tend to be manipulative when they adopt new policies, agendas, strategies, tactics, or methods that support their own personal aims