Understanding what drives individuals to perform at their best is a fundamental question for leaders aiming to cultivate high-performing teams. While traditional approaches focus on meeting basic human needs—autonomy, belongingness, and competence—leaders must also consider the critical role of "available resources" in unlocking employee potential.
Resources enable employees to thrive by providing the tools and support needed to meet their goals, overcome challenges, and navigate workplace demands. These resources can be tangible, such as tools and technologies, or intangible, like social support and stability. Leaders who ensure resources are accessible and aligned with organizational goals create environments where employees feel supported and capable of succeeding.
To effectively leverage resources, leaders can use frameworks that categorize and address resource needs at multiple levels. One such tool is Nielsen's IGLO framework, which identifies resources at the individual, group, leader, and organizational levels.
Resources on the IGLO Levels
1. Individual-Level Resources
Individual resources are personal attributes, skills, and capacities employees bring to their roles, such as resilience, self-efficacy, and optimism. These resources help employees manage job demands and maintain motivation and well-being.
Leaders can support individual resources in various ways, for example by:
- Encouraging personal development and offering training opportunities
- Promoting job crafting, where employees shape their roles to align with their strengths and interests
2. Group-Level Resources
Group resources are embedded in team dynamics and include elements like peer support, flexibility (e.g., a task can be done by more than one team member), and diversity of input (e.g., the potential of different team members bringing different perspectives to the table). These resources promote cohesion, collaboration, and innovative problem-solving.
Leaders can unlock these resources in multiple ways, for example by:
- Ensuring collaboration involves all team members, with everyone understanding each other’s work and skills
- Creating a psychologically safe environment where team members feel empowered to speak up
3. Leader-Level Resources
Leaders possess unique advantages that extend beyond providing social support, including strategic oversight and hierarchical power.
These advantages enable them for example to:
- Mediate conflicts effectively
- Advocate for their teams’ needs externally by shielding them from excessive pressures or unrealistic demands
4. Organizational-Level Resources
Organizational resources encompass direction, means and structure. While direction comes from an organization’s purpose, mission and vision, means refer to the tangible resources necessary for work, such as machinery, IT equipment and physical infrastructure. Structure encompasses the policies, systems and processes that define how work is organized and executed. These resources help employees understand what is expected of them and equip them with the material and stability needed to perform their tasks effectively.
Leaders can unlock these resources in various ways, for example by:
- Ensure employees have access to the necessary tools and infrastructure by identifying and addressing resource gaps.
- Promote and uphold fair policies and systems, such as equitable reward practices and flexible job design.
Combining Perspectives for a Holistic Approach
By understanding and unlocking resources at these four levels, leaders can cultivate environments that not only promote individual and group motivation and well-being but also drive sustainable organizational performance.
Integrating the ABC and IGLO perspectives allows leaders to address both the fundamental drivers of motivation and the practical means to act on it. This dual approach equips leaders to create workplaces that enhance motivation, drive performance, and foster sustainable organizational success.
References
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Marrone, J. A. (2010). Team boundary spanning: A multidimensional review of past research and future directions. Journal of Management, 36(4), 911–940
Nielsen, K. (2017). The IGLO framework: Understanding and leveraging resources at multiple levels in organizations. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 4(3), 190-203.
Parker, S. K., Andrei, D. M., & Van den Broeck, A. (2019). Motivation beyond self-determination theory: Introducing work design as a key motivator. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/[insert-full-URL]
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Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. The Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201.
I acknowledge the use of ChatGPT ( https://chat.openai.com/ ) to improve accuracy and refine my writing.
