What motivates people to work and to achieve? What circumstances create an environment in which some people achieve and others do not? Does motivation come from within or does it come from others - from leaders or managers? Can you motivate the un-motivated? Does it have to involve money? Why is it that some work teams achieve and others do not? Is it that the better work unit has better people? If this is so, then does that mean that the better work unit would succeed whether they were led or not? Is leadership the same as management or is leadership a part of management? Are managers and leaders the same?

When I was researching the subject of success in the middle eighties I proposed the question 'What makes this sales team perform better than that one'? I was met with 'The difference is the manager'. It should not have been a surprise. Yet for my own part, having been part of various working groups throughout a successful commercial career, I felt uncomfortable that my exertions might likewise be explained away to some researcher as being the result of some managerial intervention rather than my own skill. It begs the question - 'Does a team, whether successful or not, have a separate distinct motivational entity, or does a team owe its success to a manager?' Indeed, if a team of workers relies upon its success to the sum total of the individual driving forces within it, does it need managing at all? Clearly, the responses I got to the question 'What makes this team more successful than that team' left me in little doubt that senior managers believe success to be determined by successful managers - but then they would say that wouldn't they?

I have conducted research with a number of top performers operating in teams. These top performers exist in all teams and whilst representing only 10-15% of the working population, they are in many cases responsible for 60% to 80% of results. It appeared to me that the PARETO principle of the 80/20 split was not just merely a theoretical statistic but a valid reality. I found that in teams where around only 10-15% of that team was successful, and the rest were not, most of that 10-15% were unequivocal in their condemnation of the team leader. Top performers it would appear have little time for average performing managers, or indeed for average performing colleagues. What I also found was that these top performers represented to their lesser performing colleagues a focus, which I found, replicated in Charismatic Leaders, in that they displayed in the eyes of their peers a set of values and behaviours missing from their team leaders. Seemingly, people want leadership, and when it is missing, they bestow the qualities associated with good leaders on anyone close enough to wear the mantle.

In sport it is held that managers are responsible for the team