Motivation comes from the word motive, which means a need or drive within a person to achieve certain goals. Self-motivation and motivation do not have the same meaning, self-motivation is initiated by a person without the influence of others, while motivation functions on the principle of the influence of others. Motivation causes, directs and maintains the desired behavior of people. Motivation is a topic that has occupied mankind since ancient times, people used to be motivated by fear and the urge to survive, but luckily today we live in much better conditions, so the way of motivation itself is completely different. Motivation and self-motivation have become crucial for managers and employees because people are the main resource in modern organizations. There are various theories of employee motivation, good workers should be rewarded for desirable behavior and bad workers should be punished. Nowadays, it is not very easy to apply because punishments often have an undesirable effect, which leads to the fact that the employees who are punished freeze their work and everything related to it, and therefore the productivity of the company falls. As a rule, two types of motivation are distinguished, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation or internal motivation is a part of human nature, it arises from the internal needs of the individual himself and thus it is a motivation that lasts longer. Extrinsic motivation is beyond a person's control, it is driven by external rewards such as money. Motivating employees can be a very difficult process because people are different and have different wants and needs. It is very important to motivate employees to set clear expectations, hand over responsibility, if something is well done, you should give recognition and encourage the employee's personal development both at work and in other spheres of his life. Every leader must have his own strategy of motivation and self-motivation, a self-motivated leader can successfully motivate employees. The paper provides an example of motivation and self-motivation of managers and employees of the company Vukovarska pivovara, K PIVOVARI d.o.o., Privredna banka Zagreb and Kaufland k.d.