”FÖR MIG FUNGERAR INTE ’KOM IGEN, NU KÖR VI’” : Leder ökad chefsmotivation till ökad motivation hos de anställda?

During the last decade research in leadership has escalated and newleadership styles have started to prevail. This study intends to examinewhether a leaders increased level of motivation in turn can motivateemployees. A major company included all employees in a leader position inan exhaustive intervention with the purpose to increase the leaders’motivation in order for them to motivate their employees. After theintervention, which ended in spring 2012, interviews with six differentemployees at the company were made to see if their level of motivation hadincreased. The interviews were semi-structured with an interview guide as asupport for the researcher. The material is interpreted through hermeneuticmethod were the researcher uses the hermeneutic spiral to raise theunderstanding of the subject and reach validity. Through the threeinterpretations which are presented in the result the researcher found twowords which seemed to be the foundation for the concept of motivation: rolemodel and acknowledgement. The result shows that depending on what yousearch for in a leader the intervention has been either useful or useless. Theemployees who want a role model have not seen any difference in theleaders, whilst the employees who wanted more acknowledgementexperience that the leaders have changed due to the intervention. Four of thesix interviewed employees have become more motivated. For furtherresearch it would be interesting to dive into the leaders point of view, alsoresearching this topic with a Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire would beinteresting, as well as including the head office to see if the results of theintervention have fulfilled their expectations