8. Strategic Motivating Language

This chapter presents three forms of strategic ML use—(1) organizational level: internal, (2) organizational level: external, and (3) team based. In all three cases, leaders must have a clear idea of what they need to accomplish and their constituents’ characteristics. By understanding these two factors, a leader can tailor her or his ML use to maximize organizational outcomes. The need for understanding follower characteristics brings up the issue of feedback in motivating language. With strategic ML, and its need for constant adjustment to fit multiple changing circumstances, the feedback process must be made explicit. This chapter presents an idea about how the feedback process might work, but future work should develop this idea.