Leadership: "Motivation can be destroyed with astonishing effectiveness"

Organizational researcher Hans Rusinek explains in the Handelsblatt how micromanagement and a lack of appreciation actively undermine employee motivation. For executives, understanding these mechanisms is essential to maintaining commitment and self-efficacy within the team.

In the modern working world, employee motivation is considered one of the most valuable resources for corporate success. However, as organizational researcher Hans Rusinek emphasized in November 2026, this potential is not so much under-promoted in many organizations, but rather actively undermined by wrong leadership decisions. The discouragement of the workforce often occurs gradually through specific management behaviors that call the meaning of work into question. For executives and those who aspire to be, this results in the need to better understand the mechanisms of demotivation in order to secure one's own enjoyment of the profession as well as the team's willingness to perform in the long term.

A central problem in many companies is the discrepancy between proclaimed values and actual everyday leadership. Rusinek points out that motivation is not a constant quality that can be "activated" once. Rather, it is a state that is sustainably damaged by micromanagement, a lack of appreciation, and non-transparent communication processes. When employees lose the feeling that their activities make a measurable contribution, or when bureaucratic hurdles overshadow the actual work, engagement drops rapidly. This finding aligns with long-standing studies in organizational psychology that identify self-efficacy as a core factor for professional satisfaction.

Strategies against the loss of meaning in everyday professional life

For the target group of MBA prospects and graduates of management degree programs, these findings are of particular relevance. In academic curricula, leadership theories are often taught in an idealized way, while practice is frequently shaped by political maneuvering and pressure for efficiency. Anyone pursuing a Master's degree in the field of management should therefore address the question of how resilient structures can be created at an early stage. It is not just about developing professional excellence, but also an emotional intelligence that recognizes when internal processes endanger the psychological safety and initiative of employees. Protecting one's own motivation also requires a reflective distance from institutional constraints.

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