Abstract
The role inherent motivation plays in determining the leadership style preference of an individual was studied to identify a methodology to improve an organizational development practitioner’s ability to align leadership training with employee preferences in the for-profit business environment. A quantitative methodology was selected to analyze the relationship between individual inherent motivation and leadership style preference using two separate surveys, the Motivation Sources Inventory (Barbuto & Scholl, 1998), which focused on identifying the participants’ inherent individual motivational characteristics, and the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass, 1985) and the Servant Leadership Scale (Liden, Wayne, Zhao, & Henderson, 2008), which identified individual leadership style preference. Data was collected from 80 participants. A comprehensive review of the relevant literature pertaining to motivation and leadership was compiled. Four hypotheses were tested to examine the relationships among intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Charismatic Leadership, and Servant Leadership. Significant correlations were identified between individuals with an intrinsic motivation and a preference for Transformational Leadership, Charismatic Leadership, and Servant Leadership, and individuals with an extrinsic motivational characteristic and a preference for Transactional Leadership. The findings suggest a proposed solution that allows organizational development practitioners to make more informed decisions about the types of leadership training and development to be offered to various organizational employees. The organizational leader’s role in employing the proposed solution’s methodology to implement the solution in the organization and best practices associated with incorporating the proposed solution as a mechanism for change in the organization are detailed.|Keywords: Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, charismatic leadership, servant leadership