Underlying Motivation of Communities Revealed

Just as people have different personalities and motivations, so do communities.

In his upcoming book, Building Communities: 25 Strategies to Advance America, author Brian Cole presents the Community Motivation Theory. This theory explains that communities are very different with respect to the underlying motivation and drive of the most influential civic leaders.

Some civic leaders simply want to “play leader”. Others want to drive their own agenda. Other leaders want to advance a community agenda. Still other community leaders are driven by a deeper, holistic viewpoint of their role.

These underlying motivations form the basis for Cole’s Community Motivation Theory.
According to Cole, civic leaders have one of four underlying motivations: Association, Authority, Achievement, and Actualization.

Community leaders with an Association motivation simply enjoy being a part of the civic scene. Association leaders enjoy mixing with other individuals that love their community. Association leaders enjoy scheduling the next civic event, planning the next ribbon cutting, and fellowshipping with the citizenry. While Association leaders may enjoy the process of leadership, they rarely focus on the results of such leadership opportunities.

Authority leaders use their power for power’s sake. Authority leaders typically have an outcome in mind, although it may not be the collective vision of the citizenry at large.

Frequently known as “good ol’ boys”, Authority leaders drive their own personal agenda—often couched in what they promote as the “community’s agenda”.

Authority leaders frequently find themselves in skirmishes that result in a “zero sum game”. That is, there are a lot of local headlines in the newspaper, but the end result is typically nothing at all other than a hard fought battle.

Achievement leaders desire to advance the community’s agenda. That is, Achievement leaders respect the public process to learn the desires of the overall citizenry, and then put the wheels in motion to get projects, strategies, and initiatives completed.

The fourth and final motivation is the Actualization motivation. On rare occasions, civic leaders exhibit an Actualization motivation that causes them not simply to advance the agenda of the community, but to also to add value to that agenda by ensuring that initiatives are completed holistically and very efficiently.

Civic leaders with an Actualization motivation focus on the entire community, not simply the projects and initiatives themselves. Actualization leaders tend to form collaborations to advance the “big picture” and to design sustainable organizations and structures.

The importance of understanding the predominant community motivation, according to the Community Motivation Theory, is to better understand the likelihood that a community can actually envision and enact its future.

Communities with leaders with an Association or Authority motivation really do not have the desire and capability of advancing a broad agenda to gain widespread results. Communities that have leaders with an Achievement or an Actualization motivation do.
In effect, the Community Motivation Theory explains the underlying foundation for economic development success— or lack thereof.