Abstract
The aim of this project is to enlighten military unit specialist leaders, on which leadership behavior is appropriate to motivate and thereby maintain their staff. The Danish Defense has over the last few years had a challenge when it comes to maintaining staff. This raises the question of how to increase employee satisfaction through motivation. The Military Police are no exception, and since it is characterized as a specialist unit, where the specialists possess greater knowledge about professionalism, this imposes some requirements on the leaders.
This project has its point of departure in a unit from the Danish Military Police and the key findings can be utilized as recommendations for the detachment leaders. To determine an answer for which leadership behavior is appropriate, we needed to research what generally motivates the specialists. We observed a field day, interviewed two specialists and two leaders of the unit, and applied relevant theory from Deci and Ryan’s (2000) Self-determination Theory, along with Hein’s (2013) Arche type model to analyze the collected data.
Our findings were, that the specialists had sufficient prerequisites to be intrinsically motivated according to Deci and Ryan’s (2000) theory and that they were best described as introverted performance trippers, according to Hein’s (2013) theory. This meant that their requirements about autonomy, competence and relatedness were fulfilled and that they were motivated by development of their competence through internal competition and vocational challenge. These conclusions were used to research the best fitted leadership behavior for the specialist’s motivational profiles.
Our research showed, that as a leader of specialists you should perform shielding leadership, visible leadership, nurture relatedness and distribute assignment types. These findings serve as four recommendations for the detachment leader in the Military Police, and leaders of specialists in general.
1. Carry out shielding leadership: Keep bureaucracy at distance from the specialists and give them the broadest possible prerequisites for their assignments, in order to nurture autonomy. The solution depends on their competences and creativity
2. Perform visible leadership: To the possible extent – A big part of shielding leadership is undeniably carried out at the office, therefore aim for balance.
3. Facilitate relatedness and esprit de corps: In extension of visible leadership – Participate when the opportunity presents itself. It creates mutual trust to show investment in the specialists and the profession.
4. Distribute the assignments equally: If there isn’t a natural balance in the specialists’ assigned tasks, in relation to category 1 and 2 problems, it is the leader’s responsibility to do create one. This way everyone is achieving the same amount of motivation through the assigned tasks. The risk of unequal distribution is de motivation, frustration regression, wager earner behavior, and in the worst cases, resignation.