ABSTRACT
To exercise influence, leaders must understand how people are motivated. Effective influence tactics thus get followers to act and, at the same time, to think about their behavior in ways that are acceptable to themselves and, not unrelatedly, to others. Leaders who draw on their understanding of human motivation to get people to do things may well be immune to the charge that they bypass or override rationality, an accusation that sticks for leaders who use “harder” tactics such as coercion and deception. The behavioral results of the hard tactics are often short-lived because the targets of coercion and similar methods do not accept “inner responsibility for their actions”. Behavior that is clearly grounded in an individual’s wants and desires—perhaps, his more general character—looks quite different from behavior that can be traced only to the motives of someone exercising control over him.
