Chapter Title Here Please / 1
100 Ways
R EVISED E DITION
to
Motivate
Others
Great Leaders
Can Produce Insane Results
W ithout Driving People Crazy
How
STEVE CHANDLER
and
SCOTT RICHARDSON
Franklin Lakes, NJ
2 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Copyright © 2008 by Steve Chandler and Scott Richardson
All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International
Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole
or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without
written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.
100 WAYS TO MOTIVATE OTHERS, REVISED EDITION
Cover design by Lu Rossman/Digi Dog Design NY
Printed in the U.S.A. by Book-mart Press
To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ
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for further information on books from Career Press.
The Career Press, Inc., 3 Tice Road, PO Box 687,
Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417
www.careerpress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chandler, Steve, 1944–
100 ways to motivate others : how great leaders can produce insane
results without driving people crazy / by Steve Chandler and Scott
Richardson. — Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-56414-992-3
1. Employee motivation. 2. Leadership. I. Richardson, Scott, 1954–
II. Title. III. Title: One hundred ways to motivate others.
HF5549.5.M63C434 2008
658.3’14--dc22
2007046561
To Rodney Mercado
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Acknowledgments
To the greatest motivator there ever was, Mr. Rodney
Mercado, child prodigy, genius in 10 fields, and professor
of music and violin at the University of Arizona.
To Chuck Coonradt, who, unlike other consultants,
not only talks about how to motivate others, but has a
proven system, the Game of Work, that delivers stunning
results and fun to the workplace in the same breath. Chuck
used the Game of Work on his own business first, and
blew the lid off the results for his company Positive Mental
Attitude Audiotape. Chuck realized that what he had created, the Game of Work system, was worth a fortune to
companies of all sizes: It brought more financial success
than even Positive Mental Attitude! Chuck has helped our
own businesses succeed.
To our master motivator-coach extraordinaire Steve
Hardison (www.theultimatecoach.net) about whose talents
we have written much, but never enough.
To Ron Fry, Stacey Farkas, and Michael Pye at Career
Press for many years of wonderful service to our writing
efforts.
And to the memory of Lyndon Duke (1941–2004), a
magnificent teacher, motivator, and friend.
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Chapter Title Here Please / 7
While business is a game of numbers,
real achievement is measured in infinite emotional
wealths: friendship, usefulness, helping, learning, or,
said another way, the one who dies with the most
joys wins.
—Dale Dauten
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Contents
Introduction: Time to Play Go Fish ............................................ 13
100 Ways to Motivate Others
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
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Know Where Motivation Comes From .............................. 19
Teach Self-Discipline .......................................................... 20
Tune In Before You Turn On ............................................. 23
Be the Cause, Not the Effect ............................................... 24
Stop Criticizing Upper Management .................................. 25
Do the One Thing ................................................................ 27
Keep Giving Feedback ........................................................ 29
Get Input From Your People .............................................. 31
Accelerate Change ............................................................... 33
Know Your Owners and Victims ........................................ 35
Lead From the Front ........................................................... 38
Preach the Role of Thought ................................................ 39
Tell the Truth Quickly ........................................................ 42
Don’t Confuse Stressing Out With Caring .......................... 44
Manage Your Own Superiors .............................................. 45
Put Your Hose Away ........................................................... 47
Get the Picture ..................................................................... 48
Manage Agreements, Not People ........................................ 49
Focus on the Result, Not the Excuse .................................. 54
Coach the Outcome ............................................................. 58
Create a Game ..................................................................... 63
Know Your Purpose ............................................................ 66
See What’s Possible ............................................................. 68
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Enjoy the A.R.T. of Confrontation ..................................... 71
Feed Your Healthy Ego ...................................................... 72
Hire the Motivated .............................................................. 74
Stop Talking ........................................................................ 76
Refuse to Buy Their Limitation .......................................... 78
Play Both Good Cop and Bad Cop ..................................... 79
Don’t Go Crazy .................................................................... 80
Stop Cuddling Up ................................................................ 82
Do the Worst First ............................................................... 84
Learn to Experiment ........................................................... 89
Communicate Consciously ................................................. 90
Score the Performance ........................................................ 91
Manage the Fundamentals First .......................................... 94
Motivate by Doing ............................................................... 96
Know Your People’s Strengths ........................................... 98
Debate Yourself ................................................................. 104
Lead With Language .......................................................... 106
Use Positive Reinforcement ............................................. 109
Teach Your People “No” Power ....................................... 110
Keep Your People Thinking Friendly Customer Thoughts .. 112
Use Your Best Time for Your Biggest Challenge ............ 116
Use 10 Minutes Well ......................................................... 117
Know What You Want to Grow ....................................... 118
Soften Your Heart ............................................................. 120
Coach Your People to Complete ...................................... 121
Do the Math on Your Approach ....................................... 123
Count Yourself In .............................................................. 125
To Motivate Your People, First Just Relax ...................... 127
Don’t Throw the Quit Switch ............................................ 131
Lead With Enthusiasm ...................................................... 133
Encourage Your People to Concentrate ........................... 135
Inspire Inner Stability ....................................................... 137
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Give Up Being Right ......................................................... 139
Wake Yourself Up ............................................................ 140
Always Show Them ........................................................... 142
Focus Like a Camera ......................................................... 145
Think of Management as Easy .......................................... 148
Cultivate the Power of Reassurance ................................. 149
Phase Out Disagreement ................................................... 150
Keep Learning ................................................................... 152
Learn What Leadership Is Not .......................................... 153
Hear Your People Out ...................................................... 154
Play It Lightly .................................................................... 155
Keep All Your Smallest Promises .................................... 156
Give Power to the Other Person ....................................... 158
Don’t Forget to Breathe ..................................................... 160
Know You’ve Got the Time .............................................. 162
Use the Power of Deadlines .............................................. 163
Translate Worry Into Concern .......................................... 165
Let Your Mind Rule Your Heart ...................................... 166
Build a Culture of Acknowledgment ................................ 167
Seize Responsibility .......................................................... 168
Get Some Coaching Yourself ............................................ 171
Make It Happen Today ..................................................... 172
Learn the Inner Thing ....................................................... 173
Forget About Failure ......................................................... 176
Follow Consulting With Action ....................................... 177
Create a Vision .................................................................. 178
Stop Looking Over Your Shoulder ................................... 179
Lead by Selling .................................................................. 180
Hold On to Principle ......................................................... 183
Create Your Relationships ................................................ 184
Don’t Be Afraid to Make Requests ................................... 186
Don’t Change Yourself ...................................................... 188
Pump Up Your E-mails .................................................... 190
89.
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92.
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94.
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98.
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100.
101.
Stop Pushing ...................................................................... 191
Become Conscious ............................................................ 193
Come From the Future ...................................................... 194
Teach Them to Teach Themselves ................................... 196
Stop Apologizing for Change ............................................ 197
Let People Find It .............................................................. 199
Be a Ruthless Optimist ...................................................... 201
Pay Attention ..................................................................... 202
Create a Routine ................................................................ 204
Deliver the Reward ............................................................ 206
Slow Down ......................................................................... 208
Decide to Be Great ............................................................ 209
Let Them See You Change and Grow .............................. 210
Recommended Reading ............................................................ 217
Index ........................................................................................... 219
About the Authors ..................................................................... 225
Introduction / 13
Introduction
Time to Play Go Fish
Don’t believe anything you read in this book.
Even though these 100 pieces were written from reallife coaching and consulting experience, you won’t gain
anything by trying to decide whether you believe any of them.
Belief is not the way to succeed here. Practice is the way.
Grab a handful of these 100 tried and proven ways to
motivate others and use them. Try them out. See what you
get. Examine your results. That’s what will get you what
you really want: motivated people.
Most people we run into do what doesn’t work, because most people try to motivate others by downloading
their own anxiety onto them. Parents do this constantly;
so do managers and leaders in the workplace. They get anxious about their people’s poor performance, and then they
download that anxiety onto their people. Now everybody’s
tense and anxious!
Downloading your anxiety onto other people only motivates them to get away from you as quickly as possible. It
doesn’t motivate them to do what you really want them to
do. It doesn’t help them get the best out of themselves.
13
14 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Managers blame their own people for poor numbers,
when it’s really the manager’s responsibility. CEOs blame
their managers, when it’s really the CEO. They call consultants in a panic, talk about the numbers, and then ask,
“Do you recommend we implement FISH?”
“FISH” is a current training fad that has a great deal
of value in inspiring employees and focusing on the customer. But we don’t deliver FISH in this book. We deliver
an observation about fish. “A fish rots from the head
down,” we remind the manager whose people are not performing. And that’s our version of FISH.
So, the first step in motivating others is for you, if
you’re the leader wanting the motivation, to realize that
“if there’s a problem, I’m the problem.” Once you truly
get that, then you can use these 100 ways.
The mastery of a few key paradoxes is vital. They are
the paradoxes that have allowed our coaching and consulting to break through the mediocrity and inspire success where there was no success before.
Paradoxes such as:
1. To get more done, slow down.
2. To get your point across, stop talking.
3. To hit your numbers faster, take them less
seriously and make a game of it.
4. To really lead people, go ahead of them.
These are a few of the paradoxes that open leadership
up into a spiral of success you have never imagined.
Enjoy this book as much as we enjoyed writing it for
you. We hope you’ll find, as we have, that leadership can
be fun if you break it into 100 easy pieces.
Introduction / 15
Well, even that’s not completely true. There are actually 101 Ways in this newly revised paperback version of
the original. We wanted to add in the best motivational
tool of all: inspiration. How you can inspire your people
by letting them watch you grow. Letting them see a “before” and “after” picture of you as you master more and
more skills of excellent leadership. You might even skip
to the last “way” and read it first, then go on to read the
rest of the book, because by reading the book itself you’ll
be demonstrating Way 101, a bonus for this new edition.
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Chapter Title Here Please / 17
100 Ways
to
Motivate
Others
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Know Where Motivation Comes From / 19
1. Know Where Motivation
Comes From
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you
want done because he wants to do it.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
There was a manager who came early to a seminar we
were presenting on leadership. He was attired in an olive
green polo shirt and white pleated slacks, ready for a day
of golf.
He walked to the front of the room and said, “Look,
your session is not mandatory, so I’m not planning on
attending.”
“That’s fine, but I wonder why you came early to this
session to tell us that. There must be something that you’d
like to know.”
“Well, yes, there is,” the manager confessed. “All I
want to know is how to get my people on the sales team to
improve. How do I manage them?”
“Is that all you want to know?”
“Yes, that’s it,” declared the manager.
“Well, we can save you a lot of time and make sure
that you get to your golf game on time.”
The manager leaned forward, waiting for the words of
wisdom that he could extract about how to manage his
people.
And we told him:
“You can’t.”
“What?”
20 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
“You can’t manage anyone. So there, you can go and
have a great game.”
“What are you saying?” asked the manager. “I thought
you give whole seminars on motivating others. What do
you mean, I can’t?”
“We do give whole seminars on this topic. But one of
the first things we teach managers is that they can’t really
directly control their people. Motivation always comes from
within your employee, not from you.”
“So what is it you do teach?”
“We teach you how to get people to motivate themselves. That is the key. And you do that by managing agreements, not people. And that is what we are going to discuss
this morning.”
The manager put his car keys in his pocket and sat
down in the first seat closest to the front of the room for
the rest of the seminar. He has spent his whole life trying
to manage the behavior and emotions of other people, at
home as well as at work. Therefore, his life was full of
stress and disappointment. We were going to show him
that motivation comes from the inside, not the outside.
2. Teach Self-Discipline
Discipline is remembering what you want.
—David Campbell, Founder, Saks Fifth Avenue
The myth that nearly everyone believes is that we “have”
self-discipline. It’s something in us, like a genetic gift, that
we either have or we don’t.
Teach Self-Discipline / 21
The truth is that we can all “have” self-discipline. The
question is really whether or not we learn to develop and
use self-discipline.
Here’s another way to realize it: Self-discipline is like
a language. Any child can learn a language. (All children
do learn a language, actually.) Any 90-year-old can also
learn a new language. If you are 9 or 90 and you’re lost in
the rain in Juarez, it works when you use some Spanish to
find your way to warmth and safety. It works.
In this case, Spanish is like self-discipline in that you
are using it for something. You were not born with the
language, but you can learn it and use it. In fact, you can
use as much or as little as you wish.
And the more you use, the more you can make happen.
If you were an American transferred to Juarez to live
for a year and needed to make your living there, the more
Spanish you spoke, the better it would be for you.
If you had never spoken Spanish before, you could
still use it like a tool.
You could open your little English/Spanish phrases
dictionary and start using it. You could ask for directions
or help by using that little dictionary! You wouldn’t need
to have been born with any special language skills.
The same is true with self-discipline, in the same exact
way. Yet most people don’t believe it. Most people think
they either have it or they don’t. Most people think it’s a
character trait or a permanent aspect of their personality.
That’s a profound mistake. That’s a mistake that can
ruin a life.
But the good news is that it is never too late to correct
that mistake in yourself and your people.
22 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Listen to how people get this so wrong:
“He would be my top salesperson if he had any selfdiscipline at all,” a company leader recently said. “But he
has none.”
Not true. He has as much self-discipline as anyone else
does; he just hasn’t chosen to use it yet. Just as we all have
as many Spanish words to draw upon as anyone else.
It is true that the more often I choose to go to my little
dictionary and use the words, the easier it becomes to use
Spanish. If I go enough times to the book, and practice
enough words and phrases, it gets so easy to speak Spanish
that it seems as if it’s part of my nature, like it’s something
I “have” inside me. Just like golf looks as if it comes naturally to Tiger Woods.
Self-discipline is the same.
If the person you lead truly understood that self-discipline
is something one uses, not something one has, then that
person could use it to accomplish virtually any goal he or
she ever set. That person could use it whenever he wanted,
or leave it behind whenever he wanted.
Instead, people worry. They worry about whether
they’ve got what it takes. Whether it’s “in” them. Whether
their parents and guardians put it there. (Some think it’s
put there experientially; some think it’s put there genetically. It’s neither. It’s never put “in” there at all. It’s a tool
that anyone can use. Like a hammer. Like a dictionary.)
Enlightened leaders get more out of their people because they know that each of their people already has everything it takes to be successful. They don’t buy the
excuses, the apologies, and the sad fatalism that most nonperformers skillfully sell to their managers. They just don’t
buy in.
Tune In Before You Turn On / 23
3. Tune In Before
You Turn On
Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let
them surprise you with their results.
—George S. Patton
You can’t motivate someone who can’t hear you.
If what you’re saying is bouncing off their psychological armor, it makes little difference how good you are at
saying it. You are not being heard. Your people have to
hear you to be moved by you.
In order for someone to hear you, she must first be
heard. It doesn’t work the other way around. It doesn’t
work when you always go first because your employee must
first appreciate that you are on her wavelength and understand her thinking completely.
We were working with a financial services CEO named
Lance who had difficulties with his four-woman major account team. They didn’t care for him and didn’t trust him,
and they dreaded every meeting with him because he would
go over their shortcomings.
Lance was at his wit’s end and asked for coaching.
“Meet with each of them one at a time,” we advised.
“What do I say?”
“Say nothing. Just listen.”
“Listen to what?”
“The person across from you.”
“What’s my agenda?”
“No agenda.”
24 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
“What do I ask them?”
“How is life? How is life for you in this company? What
would you change?”
“Then what?”
“Then just listen.”
“I don’t know if I could do that.”
The source of his major account team’s low morale
had just been identified. The rest was up to Lance.
4. Be the Cause, Not the Effect
Shallow people believe in luck. Wise and strong people
believe in cause and effect.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
A masterful motivator of others asks, “What do we want
to cause to happen today? What do we want to produce?”
Those are the best management questions of all. People
who have a hard time managing people simply have a hard
time asking themselves those two questions, because
they’re always thinking about what’s happening to them
instead of what they’re going to cause to happen.
When your people see you as a cause instead of an
effect, it won’t be hard to teach them to think the same
way. Soon, you will be causing them to play far beyond
their own self-concepts.
You can cause that to happen. But it all comes from
who you are being from moment to moment. A producer
or a critic?
Stop Criticizing Upper Management / 25
We had the opportunity to watch and hear Neale
Donald Walsch speak a couple years ago, and his message
inspired us, as always. It’s amazing who we can be if we
are willing to drop the story of who we think we should be.
In our coaching practice we have always marveled at the
fact that people grow, evolve, and move forward the minute
they are willing to live without their stories about themselves (weaknesses) and others (threats). Steve’s book The
Story of You came out of those breakthroughs in coaching
sessions.
Or, as Walsch has said, “Every decision you make—
every decision—is not a decision about what to do. It’s a
decision about Who You Are. When you see this, when
you understand it, everything changes. You begin to see
life in a new way. All events, occurrences, and situations
turn into opportunities to do what you came here to do.”
Choosing to be a producer who causes things to happen will set you apart from most other people. And that’s
not always easy. Most managers just try to manage like
other people manage, and lose all the potential of who
they could really be by doing that. Or, in the words of the
fiery and brilliant philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, “We
forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people.”
5. Stop Criticizing Upper
Management
Two things are bad for the heart—running uphill
and running down people.
—Bernard Gimbel
26 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
This is a huge temptation: distancing yourself from
your own superiors.
Maybe you do this to win favor and create bonding at
the victim level with the team, but it won’t work. In fact,
what you have done will eventually damage the confidence
of the team. It will send three messages that are very damaging to morale and motivation:
1. This organization can’t be trusted.
2. Our own management is against us.
3. Yours truly, your own team leader, is weak
and powerless in the organization.
This leads to an unpleasant but definite kind of bonding, but it also leads to deep trust problems and further
disrespect for the integrity of the organization. Running
down upper management can be done covertly (a rolling
of the eyes at the mention of the CFO’s name) or overtly
(“I don’t know why we’re doing this, no one ever consults
with me on company policy, probably because they know
I’d disagree”). This mistake is deepened by the repeated
use of the word “they.” (“They want us to start....” “I don’t
know why they are having us do it this way....” “They don’t
understand what you guys are going through here....” “They,
they, they....”)
The word they used in excess soon becomes a nearobscenity and solidifies the impression that we are isolated, misunderstood victims.
A true leader has the courage to represent upper management, not run it down. A true leader never uses the
word they to refer to senior officials in the company. A
true leader says “we.”
Do the One Thing / 27
6. Do the One Thing
Management is doing things right;
leadership is doing the right things.
—Peter F. Drucker
I can’t motivate others if I am not doing the right thing.
And to keep myself in a relaxed and centered state, it’s
important for me not to be scattered, distracted, or spread
thin.
It’s important that I don’t race around thinking that
I’ve got too much to do, because I don’t have too much to
do. The truth is, there is only one thing to do, and that is the
one thing I have chosen to do right now.
If I do that one thing as if it’s all I have to think about,
it will be extremely well done and my relationship with any
other person involved in that task will be better and more
relaxed and full of trust than before.
A careful study of my past week shows me that I did a
lot of things last week, and they all got done one thing at a
time. In fact, even in my busiest time ever, I was only able
to do one thing at a time, even though I stressed myself
and other people out by always thinking of seven things at
once so that when I talked to you all I could think about
was the seven other people I needed to talk to. Sorry I
seemed so disconnected to you when we talked. I apologize. And eventually all seven people felt that stress and
that lack of attentiveness—that absolute lack of warmth.
A person who thinks that he or she should try to do
more than one thing at a time produces fear, adrenaline,
and anxiety in the human system, and others pick up on
28 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
that. That does not warm people, and they eventually want
to keep away from it, so your relationships suffer.
The mind entertains one thought at a time, and only
one. Why fight it?
The greatest cause of feeling “swamped” and “overwhelmed” in life is caused by not being willing to slow
down and embrace that one thing the mind can think of.
The greatest source of stress in the workplace is the
mind’s attempt to carry many thoughts, many tasks, many
future scenarios, many cares, many worries, and many
concerns at once.
The mind can’t do that.
No mind can, not even Einstein’s mind could.
It can only carry one thing.
Therefore, from now on, I want to choose ONE
THING from the list of things that need to be done, and
then do that one thing as if that were the only thing. If it’s
a phone call, then I need to slow down and relax and let
myself be in a good, focused mood so that the phone call
will be a complete experience, and the recipient and I can
be upbeat afterward.
Recently we talked to Jason, a national sales manager
who had just finished a brutal, long phone conference with
his team. He spent the conference call nervously urging
on his team to higher numbers and warning them that the
team goals were not going to be met at the rate they were
going. He had called the meeting because his own superiors had just called him to question him about his team’s
poor performance.
Although Jason had been working 12-hour days, he
felt he was falling behind in everything. On top of that, his
Keep Giving Feedback / 29
superiors’ anxiety was then passed down to him. Because
it was passed down into a hectic, disorganized mind, he
freaked out and took it out on his team.
This is not motivation.
Motivation requires a calm, centered leader, focused
on one thing, and only one thing.
7. Keep Giving Feedback
The failure to give appropriate and timely feedback is the most
extreme cruelty that we can inflict on any human being.
—Charles Coonradt, Management Consultant
Human beings crave feedback.
Try ignoring any 3-year-old. At first, he will ask for
positive attention, but if he is continually ignored, soon
you will hear a loud crash or cry, because any feedback,
even negative feedback, is better than no feedback.
Some people think that this principle only applies to
children. But it applies even more so to adults. The cruelest form of punishment in prison is solitary confinement.
Most prisoners will do anything—even temporarily improve
their behavior—to avoid being in a situation with little or
no feedback.
You may have heard of the relaxing effect of a sensory
deprivation chamber. You are placed for a few minutes in
a dark, cocoon-like chamber, floating in body-temperature
salt water, with all light and sound cut off. It’s great for a
few minutes. But not for long.
30 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
One day the sole attendant at one of those sensorydeprivation tanks walked off the job in a huff over some
injustice at work, leaving a customer stranded in the chamber. Several hours later, the customer was rescued, but
still had to be hospitalized. Not from any physical harm,
but from the psychosis caused by deprivation of sensory
feedback. What occurs when all outside feedback is cut
off is that the mind manufactures its own sensory feedback in the form of hallucinations that often personify the
person’s worst fears. The resulting nightmares and terrors can drive even normal people to the point of insanity.
Your own people are no different. If you cut off the
feedback, their minds will manufacture their own feedback, quite often based on their worst fears. It’s no accident that “trust and communication” are the two
organizational problems most often cited by employee
surveys.
One of the most notorious military and secret intelligence torture devices over the years has been to place a
recalcitrant prisoner into “the black room.” The time spent
in total sensory deprivation breaks prisoners faster than
physical beatings.
Let’s take the scene home. The husband is encouraging his wife to get ready for an evening event on time.
She asks, “How does this jacket look on me?”
“Fine, just fine, let’s go!”
“Well, I knew I didn’t look good in it. I just can’t find
anything else to wear!” she says.
Human beings crave real feedback, not just some patronizing, pacifying words.
The managers who have the biggest trouble motivating their people are the ones who give the least feedback.
Get Input From Your People / 31
And when their people say, “How are we doing?” they say,
“Well I don’t know, I haven’t looked at the printout or
anything, but I have a sense that we’re doing pretty well
this month, but I don’t know.”
Those managers have a much harder time inspiring
achievement in their teams. Achievement requires continuous feedback. And if you’re going to get the most out
of your people, it’s imperative that you be the one who is
the most up on what the numbers are and what they mean,
because motivators do their homework. They know the
score. And they keep feeding the score back to their people.
8. Get Input From
Your People
I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
—Woodrow Wilson
Good leaders continue to seek creative input from their
direct reports. This practice is not only good for the business, it’s also highly motivational for both parties to the
conversation.
A good leader will ask people on her team, “How can
we send a signal over the phone, when the customer calls
with a question, that we are different than the other companies, and they are going to feel more welcome and at
home with us? How do we create a relationship right there
at the point of that call? What are your thoughts on this?”
The quality of our motivational skill is directly related
to the quality of our questions.
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A frustrated manager whose numbers are mediocre
asks the following kind of questions instead of the questions just asked by our true leader above: “How ya doin’?
Wasssup? How was your weekend? How is your department today? Up to your neck in it? Swamped as usual?
Are you maintaining? Hang in there, bro. Customers givin’
you a hard time about that new ad? Jerks. I’m dropping
by to check some stuff out. Don’t worry too much, you
guys are cool. I won’t be too hard on you. You know the
drill. Hang in.”
That’s a leader who can’t figure out why his team’s
numbers are low. The quality of that leader’s life is directly affected by the low quality of his questions. Directly.
A great leader will ask questions that lead to sales
ideas. A great leader will build a big success on the implementation of those ideas. Questions such as: “How could
we make the buying experience at our company fundamentally different, on a personal level, than at the competition? How could we get our people to be like friends
to the customer and get them to hang out with us more
and buy more? How might we reward our own people
for remembering a customer’s name? What are some
of the ways we can inspire our team to get excited about
increasing the size of each sale? Do our people discuss the concept of creating a customer for life? Have
you gone to a whiteboard and shown them the financial windfall involved? How do we get everybody brainstorming this all day long? How do we get the team
more involved in the success of the store? What are
your thoughts?”
Accelerate Change / 33
9. Accelerate Change
Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it
does to survive in the future.
—Peter F. Drucker
My role as a leader is always—always—to keep my
people cheered up, optimistic, and ready to play full-out
in the face of change. That’s my job. Most managers do
not see this as their job. They see their job as being
babysitters, problem-solvers, and firefighters. And so they
produce babies, problems, and fires all around them.
In the face of change, this dysfunction is most painfully revealed. Therefore, it’s important to anticipate the
psychological reaction to change in your employees and
to see how it follows a predictable cycle.
Your employees pass through these four stages in the
cycle, and you can learn how to manage this passage:
The Change Cycle
1. Objection: “This can’t be good.”
2. Reduced Consciousness: “I really don’t
want to deal with this.”
3. Exploration: “How can I make this change
work for me?”
4. Buy-in: “I have figured out how I can make
this work for me and for others.”
Sometimes the first three stages in the cycle take a
long, long time for your people to pass through. Productivity and morale can take a dizzying dip as employees
resist change. It is human nature to resist change. We all
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do it. We hate to get into the shower and then we hate to
get out.
But if I am a very good leader, I’ll want to thoroughly
understand the change cycle so that I can get my people to
stage 4—the “Buy-in”—as soon as humanly possible. I want
their total and deep buy-in to make this change work for
them, for me, and for the company.
So how do I help move them through stages 1, 2, and 3?
First of all, I prepare myself to communicate about
this change in the most enthusiastic and positive way possible. And I mean prepare. As many great coaches have
said, “It isn’t the will to win that wins the game, it’s the will
to prepare to win.”
So I want to prepare myself. I want to educate and
inform myself about the change so I can be an enthused
spokesperson in favor of the change.
Most managers don’t do this. They realize that their
people are resisting the change, so they identify with the
loyal resistance. They sympathize with the outcry. They
give voice to what a hassle the change is. They even apologize for it. They say it shouldn’t have happened.
“This never should have happened. I’m sorry. With all
you go through already, it’s a shame there’s this now, too.”
A remark that cultivates victims!
Every internal change is made to improve the viability
or effectiveness of the company. That truth is the one I
want to sell. I want my people to see what’s in this for
them. I want them to really see for themselves that a more
viable company is a more secure place to work.
What about change from the outside? Regulators,
market shifts, vendor problems? In those cases I want to
Know Your Owners and Victims / 35
stress to my team that the competition faces the same
changes. When it rains on the field, it rains on both teams.
Then I want to stress the superiority of our team’s rain
strategy so that this rain becomes our advantage.
I also want to keep change alive on my team as a positive habit. Yes, we change all the time. We look forward
to change. We even have fun changing before we have to.
10. Know Your Owners
and Victims
Those who follow the part of themselves that is great will become
great. Those that follow the part that is small will become small.
—Mencius
The people you motivate will tend to divide themselves
into two categories: owners and victims.
This distinction comes from Steve’s Reinventing Yourself,
Revised Edition (Career Press, 2005), which reveals in detail how owners are people who take full responsibility for
their happiness, and victims are always lost in their unfortunate stories. Victims blame others, victims blame circumstance, and victims are hard to deal with.
Owners own their own morale. They own their response
to any situation. (Victims blame the situation.)
At a recent seminar, a company CEO named Marcus
approached Steve at the break:
“I have a lot of victims working for me,” Marcus said.
“It’s a part of our American culture today,” Steve answered.
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“Yeah, I know, but how can I get them to recognize
their victim tendencies?”
“Try something else instead,” Steve said. “Try getting
excited when they are not victims. Try pointing out their
ownership actions; try acknowledging them when they are
proactive and self-responsible.”
“Okay. What are the best techniques to use with each
type of person?” Marcus asked. “I mean, I have both. I
have owners, too. Do you treat them differently?”
“With the owners in your life, you don’t need techniques. Just appreciate them,” Steve said. “And you will.
With the victims, be patient. Hear their feelings out
empathetically. You can empathize with their feelings without buying in to their victim’s viewpoint. Show them the
other view. Live it for them. They will see with their own
eyes that it gets better results.”
“Can’t I just have you come in to give them a seminar
in ownership?” Marcus asked.
“In the end, even if we were to train your staff in ownership thinking, you would still have to lead them there
every day, or it would be easy to lose. Figure your own
ways to lead them there. Design ways that incorporate your
own personality and style into it. There is no magic prescription. There is only commitment. People who are committed to having a team of self-responsible, creative, upbeat
people will get exactly that. Leaders whose commitment
isn’t there won’t get it. The three basic things you can do
are: (1) Reward ownership wherever you see it. (2) Be an
owner yourself. (3) Take full responsibility for your staff’s
morale and performance.”
Marcus looked concerned. We could tell he still wasn’t
buying everything.
Know Your Owners and Victims / 37
“What’s troubling you?” Steve asked.
“Don’t be offended.”
“Of course not.”
“How do I turn around a victim without me appearing
to be that annoying ‘positive thinker’?”
“You don’t have to come off as an annoying positive
thinker to be a true leader. Just be realistic, honest, and
upbeat. Focus on opportunities and possibilities. Focus
on the true and realistic upside. Don’t gossip or run down
other people. There is no reliable trick that always works,
but in our experience, when you are a really strong example of ownership, and you clearly acknowledge it and
reward it and notice it in other people (especially in meetings, where victims can hear you doing it), it gets harder
and harder for people to play victim in that setting. Remember that being a victim is essentially a racket. It is a
manipulation. You don’t have to pretend that it’s a valid
point of view intellectually, because it is not.”
“Okay, I see. That sounds doable,” Marcus said. “But
there’s one new employee I’m thinking about. He started
out great for a few months, but now he seems so lost and
feels betrayed. That’s his demeanor, anyway. How do I
instill a sense of ownership in him?”
“You really can’t ‘instill’ it,” said Steve. “Not directly.
Ownership, by its nature, is grown by the owner of the
ownership. But you can encourage it, and nourish it when
you see it. You can nurture it and reward it. You can even
celebrate it. If you do all those things, it will appear. Like
a flower in your garden. You don’t make the flower grow,
but if you do certain things, it will appear.”
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11. Lead From the Front
You can’t change people. You must be the change
you wish to see in people.
—Gandhi
There is nothing more motivational than leading from
the front.
It motivates others when you are out there and you do
it yourself. It’s inspiring to them when you do what you
want them to do. Be inspiring. Your people would rather
be inspired than fixed or corrected. They would rather be
inspired than anything else.
As a motivational practice, leading from the front hits
harder and lasts longer than any other practice. It changes
people more deeply and more completely than anything
else you can do.
So be what you want to see.
If you want your people to be more positive, be more
positive. If you want them to take more pride in their work,
take more pride in yours. Show them how it’s done. If you
want them to look good and dress professionally, look
better yourself. Want them to be on time? Always be early
(and tell them why...tell them what punctuality means to
you, not to them).
And as General George Patton (a soul mate of
Gandhi’s) said, “There are three principles of leadership:
(1) Example, (2) Example, and (3) Example.”
Preach the Role of Thought / 39
12. Preach the
Role of Thought
Great men are they who see that thought is stronger than any
material force, that thoughts rule the world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Business and life coach JacQuaeline told us this story
last week about a mechanic in a school district complaining
of punching a time clock and doing the same thing on his
job over and over for the last 20 years.
“I’m burned out and need a change!” the mechanic
declared.
“Possibly,” JacQuaeline replied. “But you might want
to try learning to love what you are resisting, because if
you don’t, you will likely run into it in your next job too, in
another guise.”
The mechanic responded, “I can love what I’m resisting? I’m not sure that I believe that’s possible, but even if
I did, how is it done?”
“Well,” his coach said, “what is a higher purpose to
your job than just turning nuts and bolts every day?”
“That’s easy,” replied the mechanic. “The higher purpose of my job is saving children’s lives every day.”
“Yes, that’s great!” whispered the coach. “Now, every
morning when you get into your higher purpose, saving
children’s lives every day, you will be clear that your job
and responsibility is so important that the time clock almost won’t matter anymore.”
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She had given him a new way to think. She had put him
in touch with the power of higher thought to transform
experience.
Make certain all the people you want to motivate understand the role of thought in life. There is nothing more
important.
A: I’m depressed.
B: You just think you’re depressed.
A: Same thing...it feels like the same thing.
B: It feels like the same thing, because it is the same thing.
A: What if I thought I was really happy?
B: I think that would make you feel really happy.
A: I know it would.
Why is it that the rain depresses one person and makes
another person happy?
If things “make you” feel something, why does this
thing called rain make one person feel one thing and the
other person feel the other thing? Why, if things make
you feel something, doesn’t the rain make both people feel
the same thing?
One person you lead might say, “Oh no, bad weather,
how depressing.” Another person might say, “Oh boy, we
have some wonderful, refreshing rain!”
Because the rain doesn’t actually make you feel anything. (No person, place, or thing can make you feel
anything.)
It is the thought about the rain that causes your feeling.
And throughout all your leadership adventures, you can
teach your people this most important concept: the causal
power of thought.
Preach the Role of Thought
/ 41
One person thinks (just thinks!) the new pay plan is
great. The other person thinks (but just thinks) the plan is
depressing. Nothing in the world has any meaning until
they give it meaning. Nothing in the workplace does either. Your people often look to you for meaning. What
does this new directive really mean?
Do you sense the opportunity you have?
We can make things mean anything we want them to,
within reason. Why not use that power?
People don’t make your employees angry; their own
thoughts make them angry. They can’t be angry unless
they think the thoughts that make them angry.
If your nastiest employee wins the lottery in the morning, who’s going to make her angry that day? No one. No
matter what anyone says to her, she isn’t going to care.
She’s not going to give it another thought. Your employees can only get angry with someone if they think about
that person as a threat to their happiness. If they don’t
think about that, how can they be angry?
Your people are free to think about anything they want.
They have absolute freedom of thought.
The highest IQ ever measured in any human being was
achieved by Marilyn vos Savant, many years in a row. Someone once asked Marilyn what the relationship was between
feeling and thinking. She said, “Feeling is what you get for
thinking the way you do.”
People feel motivated only when they think motivated
thoughts. Thought rules. Circumstance does not rule. The
closer your relationship to that truth, the better the leader
you are.
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13. Tell the Truth Quickly
Question: How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
Answer: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
—Abraham Lincoln
Great leaders always share a common habit: they tell
the truth faster than other managers do.
Steve recalls his work with helping managers motivate
salespeople. (And notice that this doesn’t just apply to
salespeople. It applies to all people.)
I always found that people would tell me about their
limitations, and I would listen patiently and try to talk them
out of their limitations, and they would try to talk me back
into what their limitations really were. Limitation seemed
to be their fixation.
One day, I was working with a salesperson in a difficult one-on-one coaching session, and finally I just blurted
it out (I guess I was tired, or upset, or was having a stressful day), and I said, “You know, you’re just lying to me.”
“What?” he said.
“You’re lying. Don’t tell me there’s nothing you can
do. There’s a lot you can do. So let’s you and I work with
the truth, because if we work with the truth and we don’t
lie to each other, we are going to get to your success so
much faster than if we do it this way, focusing on your
self-deceptions.”
Well, my client was just absolutely shocked. He stared
at me for a long time. It’s not always a great relationshipbuilder to call someone a liar. I don’t recommend it. If I
hadn’t been as tired as I was, I don’t think I would have
Tell the Truth Quickly / 43
done it, but the remarkable thing was, my client all of a
sudden began to smile! He sat back in his chair and he
said, “You know what? You are right.”
I said, “Really?”
He said, “You are right, that’s not the truth at all, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“You are right,” he said. “There’s a lot I can do.”
“Yes, there is.”
This is the main lie you hear in the world of business
and especially in sales: “There’s nothing I can do.” This is
the “I am helpless and powerless” lie. The truth is, there is
always a lot you can do. You just have to choose the most
creative and efficient way to do it. As Shakespeare wrote,
“Action is eloquence.”
One way a salesperson we know starts her day with
action is to ask herself, “If I were coaching me, what would
I advise myself to do right now? What creative action would
bring the highest return to me?”
Another quick cure for the feeling that “there’s nothing I can do” is to ask ourselves, “If I were my customer
or my prospect, what would I want me to do?”
And what you can always do is GIVE. Great salespeople, and any people who lead their teams in performance and who prosper the most from their profession,
are great givers. They stay in constant touch with their
power to do so much by constantly giving their internal
and external clients beneficial things—helpful information,
offers of service, respect for their time, support for their
success, cheerful friendly encounters, sincere acknowledgments, the inside scoop—giving, giving, giving all day long,
always putting the client’s wants and needs first. They always ask the best questions and always listen better than
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anyone else listens. As that commitment grows and expands, and those gifts of attention are lavished on each
client in creative and ongoing communications, that salesperson becomes a world-level expert in client psychology
and buying behavior. And that salesperson also realizes
that such a dizzying level of expertise can only be acquired
through massive benefit-based interaction!
A new week begins, and this thought occurs: “There’s
so much good I can do, I just can’t wait.”
14. Don’t Confuse Stressing Out
With Caring
Stress, in addition to being itself and the result of itself,
is also the cause of itself.
—Hans Selye, Psychologist
Most managers try double negatives as a way to motivate others. First, they intentionally upset themselves over
the prospect of not reaching their goals, and then they use
the upset as negative energy to fire up the team.
It doesn’t work.
Stressing out over our team’s goals is not the same as
caring about them. Stressing out is not a useful form of
motivation.
No performer, when tense, or stressed, performs well.
No leader does. No salesperson. No athlete. No fund-raiser.
No field-goal kicker. No free-throw shooter. No parent.
A stressed-out, tense performer only has access to a
small percent of his brain. If your favorite team is playing,
Manage Your Own Superiors / 45
do you want a tense, stressed-out person shooting a free
throw, or kicking a long field goal in the last moments of
the game? Or would you rather see a confident, calm player
step up to the challenge?
Most people stress themselves out as a form (or a show)
of “really caring” about hitting some goal. But it’s not caring, it’s stressing out. Stressing out makes one perform
worse. True caring makes one perform better. That’s why
it’s vital for a leader to know the difference. The two
couldn’t be more different.
Caring is relaxing, focusing, and calling on all of your
resources, all of that relaxed magic, all of that lazy dynamite you bring to bear when you pay full attention with
peace of mind. No one performs better than when he or
she is relaxed and focused.
“Stress is basically a disconnection from the Earth,”
says the great creativity teacher Natalie Goldberg. “It’s a
forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.”
It is not necessary to stress that way. Leadership success comes from knowing to focus and remain focused.
Anything you pay attention to will expand.
So don’t spend your attention any old place. Spend it
where you want the greatest results: in clients, customers,
money, whatever. In a relaxed and happy way, you can be
undivided and peaceful and powerful. You can succeed.
15. Manage Your Own Superiors
There is no such thing as constructive criticism.
—Dale Carnegie
46 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Jean was an administrator in a large hospital system
with which we were working. She welcomed the coaching
work we were doing but had a pressing question about her
own leadership.
“We have had a lot of different bosses to report to,”
Jean said. “It seems that just when we’re used to working
for a certain CEO, the hospital brings in someone new.”
“What exactly is the problem with that?” we asked.
“Well, with so many changes in leadership over the years,”
Jean asked, “how do we develop trust in the process?”
“By trusting the process. Trust is not the same as verification. Trust risks something. And it is not necessarily
bad or good that leadership changes. The question is, can
you teach yourself to live and work peacefully with the
change? It’s not whether it has changed so much, but
rather this: What are you going to do to capitalize on the
change?”
“What if we don’t like the leadership now?” she pressed
on.
“What don’t you like?”
“We get mixed messages from them!” Jean said. “And
how can you keep asking us to take ownership when we
get mixed messages from senior management?”
“Every large organization we have ever worked with
has had to confront, in varying degrees, this issue of ‘mixed
messages.’ Mixed messages happen because people are only
human and it’s hard to coordinate a lot of energetic, creative people to present themselves as one narrow message.”
“I agree,” said Jean. “But it’s a challenge.”
“It’s a challenge that must be dealt with. But it is not
necessary to use it as a source of defeat or depression. It’s
Put Your Hose Away / 47
a challenge. We have often seen the ‘message from the top’
become more coherent and unified when the request for
unity ‘from below’ becomes more benevolent and creative.”
“You’re saying I should manage them a little better,”
Jean said.
“Exactly.”
“With the key words being ‘benevolent’ and ‘creative’?”
“Those would be the key words.”
16. Put Your Hose Away
Wise leaders and high achievers come to understand that they
can’t hope to eliminate problems...and wouldn’t want to.
—Dale Dauten
Why are so many managers ineffective leaders?
Because they are firefighters. When you become a
firefighter, you don’t lead anymore. You don’t decide
where your team is going. The fire decides for you. (The
fire is whatever current problem has flared up and captured your time and imagination.)
The fire controls your life. You think you are controlling the fire, but the fire is controlling you.
You become unconscious of opportunity. You become
blind to possibilities, because you are engulfed in, and defined by, the fire.
If you’re an unmotivational manager, even when you
put the fire out, you hop back on the truck and take off
across the company looking for another fire. Soon, all you
know is fires, and all you know how to do is fight them.
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Even when there is no real fire, you’ll find something you’ll
redefine as a fire because you are a firefighter and always
want to be working.
A great motivator doesn’t fight fires 24/7. A true motivator leads people from the present into the future. The
only time a fire becomes relevant is when it’s in the way of
that future goal. Sometimes a leader doesn’t even have to
put the fire out. She sometimes just takes a path around
(or above) the fire to get to the desired future.
A firefighter, on the other hand, will stop everything
and fight every fire. That’s the basic difference between an
unconscious manager (letting the fires dictate activity) and
a conscious leader (letting desired goals dictate activity).
17. Get the Picture
People cannot be managed.... Inventories can be managed,
but people must be led.
—H. Ross Perot
Here’s a question often asked: Isn’t leadership something people are born with? Aren’t some people referred
to as born leaders?
Yes, but it’s a myth. Leadership is a skill, like gardening
or chess or playing a computer game. It can be taught and it
can be learned at any age if the commitment to learn is
present. Companies can turn their managers into leaders.
But if companies could transform all their managers
into leaders, why wouldn’t every company just do that?
Manage Agreements, Not People / 49
They don’t know what a leader is. So how can they
train for it? They don’t read books on leadership, they
don’t have leadership training seminars, and they don’t
hold meetings in which leadership is discussed and
brainstormed. Therefore, they can’t define it. So they say
people are born leaders.
The remedy for this is to always revise your picture of
what a good leader is. People are not motivated by people
who can’t even picture good leadership.
In his powerful, innovative book on business management, The Laughing Warriors (Lumina Media, 2003), Dale
Dauten offers a picture of a leader with a code to work by:
“THINK LIKE A HERO (Who can I help today?), WORK
LIKE AN ARTIST (What else can we try?), REFUSE
TO BE ORDINARY (Pursue excellence, then kill it.), and
CELEBRATE (But take no credit.).”
Continuously picturing that code in and of itself would
create leadership.
18. Manage Agreements,
Not People
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful
in the performance of it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Does anybody here work with a person who seems
unmanageable?” Steve asked as he opened one of his leadership seminars.
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The managers who filled the room nodded and smiled.
Some rolled their eyes skyward in agreement. They obviously
had a lot of experience trying to manage people like that.
“How do you do it?” one manager called out. “How
do you manage unmanageable people?”
“I don’t know,” Steve said.
“What do you mean you don’t know? We’re here to
find out how to do it,” someone else called out.
“I’ve never seen it done,” Steve said. “Because I believe, in the end, all people are pretty unmanageable. I’ve
never known anyone who was good at managing people.”
“Then why have a seminar on managing people if it
can’t be done?”
“Well, you tell me, can it be done? Do you actually
manage your people? Do you manage your spouse? Can
you do it? I don’t think so.”
“Well, then, is class dismissed?”
“No, certainly not. Because we can all stay and learn
how great leaders get great results from their people. But
maybe they do it without managing people, because basically you can’t manage people.”
“If they don’t manage people, what do they do?”
“They manage agreements.”
Managers make a mistake when they try to manage
their people. They end up trying to shovel mercury with a
pitchfork, managing people’s emotions and personalities.
Then they try to “take care” of their most upset people,
not in the name of better communication and understanding, but in the name of containing dissent and being liked.
This leads to poor time management and a lot of
ineffective amateur psychotherapy. It also encourages
Manage Agreements, Not People / 51
employees to take a more immature position in their
communication with management, almost an attempt to
be re-parented by a supervisor rather than having an adultto-adult relationship.
A leader’s first responsibility is to make sure the relationship is a mature one.
A skillful leader does not run around playing amateur
psychotherapist, trying to manage people’s emotions and
personalities all day. A skillful leader is compassionate,
and always seeks to understand the feelings of others. But
a skillful leader does not try to manage those feelings.
A leader, instead, manages agreements. A leader creates agreements with team members and enters into those
agreements on an adult-to-adult basis. All communication
is done with respect. There is no giving in to the temptation to be intimidating, bossy, or all-knowing.
Once agreements are made on an adult-to-adult basis,
people don’t have to be managed anymore. What gets
managed is the agreement. It is more mature and respectful to do it that way, and both sides enjoy more open and
trusting communication. There is also more accountability running both ways. It is now easier to discuss uncomfortable subjects.
Harry was an employee who always showed up late for
team meetings. Many managers would deal with this problem by talking behind Harry’s back, or trying to intimidate Harry with sarcasm, or freezing Harry out by not
returning his calls, or meeting with Harry to play therapist. But our client Jill would do none of that.
Jill co-authored an agreement with Harry that said
Harry (and Jill) would both be on time for meetings.
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They agreed to agree, and they agreed to keep their
commitment to the agreement. It is an adult process that
leads to open communication and relaxed accountability.
Jill has come to realize that when adults agree to keep
their agreements with each other, it leads to a more openly
accountable company culture. It leads to higher levels of
self-responsibility and self-respect.
The biggest beneficial impact of managing agreements
is on communication. It frees communication up to be
more honest, open, and complete.
A commitment to managing agreements is basically a
commitment to being two professional adults working together, as opposed to “I’m your dad, I’m your father, I’m
your mother, I’m your parent, and I will re-parent you.
You’re a child, and you’re bad and you’ve done wrong,
and I’m upset with you, and I’m disappointed in you, and
I know that you’ve got your reasons and you’ve got your
alibis and your stories, but still, I’m disappointed in you.”
That kind of approach is not management, it’s not leadership, it’s not even professional. That kind of approach,
which we would say eight out of 10 managers do, is just a
knee-jerk, intuitively parent-child approach to managing
human beings.
The problem with parent-child management is that the
person being managed does not feel respected in that exchange. And the most important, the most powerful, precondition to good performance is trust and respect.
Let’s say my project leader has been assigned to get
the team to do something. The team all agreed to watch a
video and then take a certain test about it given on the
Internet. But then they don’t do it! What does it mean
Manage Agreements, Not People / 53
that they won’t do things like that? What does it mean
about them? What does it mean about me?
All it means is that the person in charge of getting that
project done is someone with whom I need to strengthen
my agreement. It’s not someone who’s done something
“wrong.” I don’t need to call them on the carpet. It’s someone with whom I don’t have a very strong agreement.
And so I need to sit down with him or get into a good
phone conversation with him, and say, “You and I need an
agreement on this because this is something that must be
done, and I want to have it done in the way that you can do
it the most effectively, that won’t get in the way of your
day-to-day work. So let’s talk about this. Let me help you
with this so that it does get done. It’s not an option, so you
and I must come up with a way together, that we can both
co-author, together, an agreement on how this is going to
get done.”
Then I should ask these questions of that person: “Are
you willing to do this? Is this something you can make
sure your people follow up on? Do you have a way of doing it? Do you need my support?”
And finally, at the end of the conversation, I’ve got
that person agreeing with me about the project.
Now, notice that this agreement is two-sided. So I also,
as the co-professional in this agreement, am agreeing to
certain things, too.
That person might have said, “You know, one of the
hard things about this is we don’t have anything to watch
this video on, we don’t have a TV monitor in the store.”
And so I would say, “If I can get you a TV for your
store, will that be all you need?”
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“Yes, it will.”
“Well, here’s what you can count on: By Friday, I’ll have
a TV monitor in the store. What else can I do for you?”
Because a leader is always serving, too. Not just laying
down the law, but serving. And always asking, “How can I
assist you? How can I serve you and help you with this?”
Because the true leader wants an absolute promise and
absolute performance.
And now that we have agreed, I ask very sincerely, “Can
I count on you now to have this done, with 100-percent
compliance? Can I count on that from you?”
“Yes, of course you can.”
Great. We shake. Two professionals are leaving this
meeting with an agreement they both made out of mutual
respect, out of professional, grown-up conversation. Nobody had to be “managed.”
19. Focus on the Result,
Not the Excuse
A leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless,
soulless and visionless...someone’s got to make a wake-up call.
—Warren Bennis
If you are a sales manager, you probably run into the
same frustrations that Frank conveyed to us when we talked
last week.
“I believe I need advice on how to deliver the ‘Just Do
It’ message to my people,” Frank said. “I’ve said it every
way I can, and I think I’m starting to sound like a broken
Focus on the Result, Not the Excuse / 55
record. I don’t know why I called you. I thought maybe
you were advising your clients to pick up some new book
to read, or that you might have some general words of
wisdom.”
“What, specifically, is your problem?”
“Half of the people on the team I manage are total
non-producers!” he said. “And I keep telling them...it’s
not magical...it’s getting the leads...and getting it done....
I’ve said, ‘Just get off your butt, and go get referrals, make
60 to 75 phone calls, visit with eight to 10 potential buyers
each week and watch how successful you’ll be.’”
“What’s really missing here?” we asked him. “What’s
wrong with your picture? Why aren’t they out there doing
what would lead to sales?”
“That’s why I called you. If I knew what was missing, I
wouldn’t have called you.”
“Because it isn’t ‘just doing it’ that is missing from the
non-producers’ equation. Although we always think it is.
What’s really missing runs deeper than that. What’s really
missing is the ‘just wanting it.’”
“Oh, I know they all say they want it. They want the
commissions and they want the success.”
“They don’t want it, or they would have it.”
“Oh, so you think people get everything they want?”
“Actually, yes they do.”
“Really? I don’t see that.”
“That’s what we humans are all about. We know how
to get what we want. We are biological systems designed
to do that.”
We talked longer. There was something we wanted
Frank to see: Frank’s non-producers are under-producing
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because they do not want to produce. Not deep down. If
you are a manager you must understand that. If you are a
non-producer, you must understand that.
Non-producers are simply not focusing all their attention on succeeding at selling. If they were, they would be
producers. Even if they say they are focused on results,
they’re not. They are in sales because of other reasons...they
believe they need the money, maybe, and therefore think
they “should be” there.
But they can’t get any intellectual or motivational leverage from “should.” “Should” sets them up for failure
because it implies that they are still a child, and that they
are trying to live up to other people’s expectations—the
expectation of the spouse, family, or society. But there’s
no power in that. No focus. No leverage.
Salespeople who do what they think they “should do”
all day convert their managers into parents. Then they ageregress into childhood and whine and complain. Even when
you try to micromanage their activities, even when you are
eloquent in showing them that Activity A leads to Result B
(always) and Result B leads to Result C (always), they
still do it halfheartedly and search in vain for a new “how
to” from other mentors and peers.
Frank now begins to see this form of dysfunction quite
clearly, but he still doesn’t know what to do about it.
What Frank needs to manage is the want to, not the how
to. Frank needs a quick course in outcome-management
because, like most people, he is stuck in the world of processmanagement. The real joy of leadership can only come
when you’re getting results.
Focus on the Result, Not the Excuse / 57
“Tell me what I, as a manager, ought to do,” he said,
after he realized that he already understood this whole
idea.
“Once you get the non-producer’s sales goal (plan,
quota, numbers) in front of you for mutual discussion,”
we said, “you need to draw out and cultivate the ‘why.’
Ask the person, ‘Why do you want this? What will it do
for you? What else will it do for you? What’s one thing
more it will do for you? If I were to tell you that there
were activities that would absolutely get you to this number, would you do these activities? If not, why not? Would
you promise both yourself and me that you would do these
activities until you hit the number? Why not?’”
If you’re a manager like Frank, please keep in mind
that you have people who don’t really want what they are
telling you they want, and even they don’t realize that.
You know that if they truly wanted to be producers, nothing in the world could stop them.
“Intention Deficit Disorder” is what we have named the
dysfunction that is always at the core of non-production. It
is not a deficit in technique or know-how. Technique and
know-how are hungrily acquired by the person who has an
absolute and focused intention to succeed.
The real long-term trick to good management is to
hire people who want success. Once you have mastered
that tricky art form, you will always succeed. But we get
lazy in the hiring process and look for and listen for all the
wrong things.
Why do we do this? Why do we miss this crucial lack
of desire in the hiring process? This is why: the person we
hire really has a big “want to”—but only when it comes to
getting the job. They really want the job. However, this is
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distinctly different than wanting to succeed at the job.
These are two completely different goals. So we are hazy in
the interviewing process, only half-listening, and we mistake the burning desire to get the job with a burning desire
to succeed. It is a completely different and separate thing.
The best managers we have ever trained always took
more time and trouble in the hiring process than any of
their competitors did. Then, once they had hired ambitious people, they based their management on the management of those people’s personal goals. When sales
managers learned to link the activity of cold-calling to the
salesperson’s most specific personal goals, cold-calling
became something much more meaningful.
These managers were spending their days managing
results, not activities. Their positive reinforcement was
always for results, not for activities.
20. Coach the Outcome
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises
and hopes...but no plans.
—Peter F. Drucker
Every non-producer you are managing is in some form
of conflict.
They say they want to succeed and hit their numbers,
but their activities say otherwise. They themselves can’t even
see it, but you, the manager, can, and it drives you nuts.
Finally, you have that talk that you always have,
wherein you say to them, “I have a feeling that I want this
for you more than you want it for yourself.”
Coach the Outcome / 59
And they get misty-eyed and their tears well up while
they insist you are wrong. And you, being such a compassionate person, believe them! So you give them yet another chance to prove it to you. You do all kinds of heroics
for them and waste all your time on them when your time
could be better spent with your producers.
Always remember that the time you spend helping a
producer helps your team’s production more than the time
you spend with your non-producer.
Some research we have seen shows that managers
spend more than 70 percent of their time trying to get
non-producers to produce. And most producers, when they
quit for another job, quit because they didn’t get enough attention. They didn’t feel as if the company appreciated them
enough nor could they grow fast enough in their position.
If you help a producer who is selling 10 muffins a week
learn how to sell 15, you have moved them up to 150 percent of their former level, and, even better, you have added
five muffins to your team’s total. If you were to spend that
time, instead, with a non-producer, and get them up to 150
percent, you might have just moved them up from two
muffins to three. You’ve only added one muffin (instead
of five) to the team total. Most managers spend most of
their days with the non-producer...adding one muffin to
the team’s total.
Managers need to simplify, simplify, simplify. They do
not need to do what they normally do: complicate,
multitask, and complicate.
Keep it as simple as you can for your non-producers,
focusing on outcomes and results only. Spend more and
more time with producers who are looking for that extra
edge you can give them.
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Non-producers have a huge lesson to learn from you.
They could be learning every day that their production is
a direct result of their own desire (or lack of it) to hit that
precise number. People figure out ways to get what they
want. Most non-producers want to keep their jobs (because of their spousal disapproval if they lose it, because
of their fear of personal shame if they lose it, and so on),
so all their activity is directed at keeping the job from one
month to the next. If they can do the minimum in sales
and still keep their job, they are getting what they want.
People get what they want.
The manager’s challenge is to redirect all daily effort
toward hitting a precise number. If your people believed
that they had to hit that number, they would hit that
number, and technique would never be an issue. Skills
would never be an issue. They would find them. They
would try out every technique in the book until that number appeared.
Somehow, non-producers have convinced themselves
that there is no direct cause and effect between increasing
certain activities and hitting their numbers.
Do you remember those little toy robots or cars you
had when you were a kid that would bump into a wall and
then turn 30 degrees and go again? If you put one of those
toys in a room with an open door, it will always find the
way out the door. Always. It is programmed to do so. It is
mechanically programmed to keep trying things until it is
out of there.
That’s also what top producers program themselves
to do. It’s the same thing. They keep trying stuff until they
find a way. If they bump into a wall, they immediately turn
30 degrees and set out again.
Coach the Outcome / 61
The non-producer bumps into the wall and gets depressed and then shuts himself down. Sometimes for 20
minutes, sometimes for a whole day or week. Alternately,
he bumps into a wall and doesn’t turn in any other direction, so he keeps bumping into the same wall until his batteries run down. Death of a salesman.
Managers also make the mistake of buying in to their
non-producers’ perceived problems. They buy in to the
non-producers’ never-ending crusade to convince everyone that there is no cause and effect in their work. It’s all
a matter of luck! In fact, non-producers almost delight in
bringing back evidence that there is no cause and effect.
They tell you long case histories of all the activities they
did that led to nothing. All the heartbreak. All the times
they were misled by prospective buyers.
A manager’s real opportunity is in teaching his people
absolute respect for personal responsibility and results.
Everyone selling in the free market is 100-percent accountable for his or her financial situation. Every salesperson is
outcome-accountable as well as activity-accountable.
Your non-producers will always want to sell you on
what they have done, all the actions they have taken. What
they don’t want is to take responsibility for outcomes. Good
sales management is outcome management, not activities
management. Yet most sales managers go crazy all day
managing activities.
Why? Because they know that if you really do these
activities without ceasing, you will get results. So they
manage the activities. They need to change that and
manage results. They need to hold people accountable
for the results they are getting, and not how hard they
are trying. The minute a manager falls for how hard
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people are trying, he has broken the cause-and-effect
link.
If you, as manager, ask them, “How much X do you
do?” they will ask, “How do I learn a better technique for
X?” And while better techniques are always good, it’s not
the point here. You are now discussing results. They will
subconsciously try to steer you away from results into technique. Just like a child does with a parent! “Dad, I tried,
but I can’t! I can’t do it!” Discuss technique after the commitment to results is clarified.
Non-producers, at the deepest level, do not yet want
to get the result. You have to understand this so you won’t
go crazy trying to figure them out. They don’t want the
result. They want the job. They want your approval. They
want to be seen as “really trying.” But deep down, they
don’t want the result. It’s that simple.
The truly great managers spend most of their time
helping good producers go from 10 muffins to 15. They
have fun. They are creative. They feed off of their producers’ skills and enthusiasm. Their teams constantly outperform other teams. Why? Because other teams’ managers
have been hypnotized by their non-producers. Their nonproducers actually become good salespeople selling the
wrong thing. Selling you the worst thing: “there is no cause
and effect...there is no guarantee.”
Simplify. Focus on results. You will always get what
you focus on. If you merely focus on activities, that’s what
you’ll get: a whole lot of activities. But if you focus on
results, that’s what you’ll get: a whole lot of results.
Create a Game / 63
21. Create a Game
Although some people think that life is a battle,
it is actually a game of giving and receiving.
—Florence Scovel Shinn, Philosopher/Author
Complete this sentence with the first word that pops
into your head: “Life is a ____.”
What came to mind first? (Let’s hope the popular
bumper sticker, “Life is a Bitch and Then You Die” did
not come to mind.)
Whatever comes to mind first, here’s something that you
(and we) can be sure of: that is exactly how life now is for you.
What was your answer? In a poll of mid-level managers, the most common answer was “Life is a battle.” But
in a poll of senior executives, the most common answer
was “Life is a game.”
Which version of life would you choose if you had a
choice?
To be as motivational a leader as you can possibly be,
you might want to show your people that life with you is a
game.
What makes any activity a game? There needs to be
some way to keep score, to tell whether people are winning or losing. Then it becomes pure fun.
So be clear that although all kinds of prizes may be
attached to the game, the game itself is being played for
the sheer fun of it.
How can you incorporate this into your life?
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Chuck Coonradt, a longtime friend and mentor, is a
management consultant and the best-selling author of The
Game of Work. He has created an entire system for making a game out of work.
Chuck recalled that when he started in the grocery
business, in the icy frozen-food section of the warehouse,
he noticed that the owners would bend over backwards to
take care of their workers. They would give them breaks
every hour to warm up and they would give them preferential pay. But no matter what they did, the workers would
bitterly complain about the chilling cold.
“However, you could take these exact same workers
and put a deer rifle into their hands,” Chuck said, “and
you could send them out into weather that was much worse
than anything in the warehouse, and they would call it fun!
And you wouldn’t have to pay them a dime! In fact, they
would pay for it themselves!”
The key to making work fun, as Tom Sawyer taught us
many years ago, is to turn what most people would consider drudgery into a game.
Randy was a leader-client of ours who had a problem
with absenteeism. For many months he tried to attack and
eliminate the problem. Finally, he realized that it might
be possible to lighten things up by introducing the game
element.
So Randy created a game. (Leaders create; managers
react.) He issued a playing card to every employee who
achieved perfect attendance for the month. A card was drawn
at random from a bucket of cards. The employee then put
the card up in his or her cubicle. At the end of six months,
the person with the best poker hand won a major prize; the
second and third best hands also won good cash prizes.
Create a Game / 65
“My absenteeism problem virtually disappeared,” Randy
later recalled. “In fact, we had some problems with actual
sick people trying to work when they shouldn’t have. They
would wake up with a fever, and their spouse would say,
‘You’re staying home today,’ and they would say, ‘Are you
crazy? I’m holding two aces and you want me to stay home?’”
After being in business for four years selling a prepackaged management development program, Chuck
Coonradt made what became the most important sales call
of his career.
He called on a plant manager in a pre-constructed
housing company. As part of their discussion, the manager
began to give Chuck the “Kids Today” lecture—kids don’t
care, kids won’t work, kids don’t have the same values you
and I had when we were growing up.
“As he was speaking, we were looking over the factory
floor from the management office 30 feet above the factory floor,” Chuck recalled. “He pointed down to the eight
young men siding a house and said, ‘What are you and
your program going to do about that?’”
Chuck said that he looked at their work pace and said
that it “would best be compared to arthritic snails in wet
cement. These guys appeared to be two degrees out of
reverse and leaning backwards! He had given me objections for which I didn’t have an answer. I really didn’t
know what to say.”
Then an amazing thing occurred—lunch. As soon as
the lunch bell rang, these eight workers dropped their hammers as if they were electrified, took off on a dead run as
if being stuck with cattle prods, four of them taking off
their shirts, running 50 yards down the factory floor to a
basketball court.
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The motivational transformation was amazing! Chuck
watched the game, mesmerized, for exactly 22 minutes.
Everybody knew their job on the court, did their job on
the court, and supported the team with energy, engagement, and enthusiasm—all without management. They
knew how to contribute to the teams they were on, and
they enjoyed it.
At 12:22 the game stopped, they picked up their sack
lunches and their sodas, and began to walk back to their
workstations, where, at 1 p.m., they were back on the
clock—arthritic snails back in the wet cement.
Chuck turned to the plant manager and said, “I don’t
believe there is a raw human material problem. I don’t
think there is anything wrong with these kids’ motivation.”
And on that day, Chuck began a quest to see if it would
be possible to transfer the energy, enthusiasm, and engagement that he saw on the basketball court to the factory work floor. His success at doing so has become
legendary throughout the business world.
“Now we identify the motivation of recreation and bring
it to the workplace,” Chuck says. “The motivation of recreation includes feedback, scorekeeping, goal-setting, consistent coaching, and personal choice.”
22. Know Your Purpose
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should
not be done at all.
—Peter F. Drucker
Know Your Purpose / 67
It is hard to motivate others if you don’t have time to
talk to them. There are fewer discouraging sights than a
human chicken running around with his head cut off—
and not enough time to find it.
Managers whose teams are not performing up to expectations are simply doing ineffective things all day.
Rather than stopping and deciding what would be the right
thing to do, they do the wrong things faster and faster.
Then they stress out over the “workload.” (There is no
“workload” to worry about if you are doing the right thing.
There is only that thing.)
And as corporate time-management specialist David
Allen says of today’s busy leaders: “You have more to do
than you can possibly do. You just need to feel good about
your choices.”
Multitasking is the greatest myth in modern-day business. The thinking part of the brain itself does not multitask,
and so people do not really multitask. The human system
is not set up that way. The brain experiences and holds
only one thought at a time.
Managers often think they are multitasking, but they
are really just doing one thing badly and then quickly moving to another thing, doing it badly and quickly. Soon
they’re preoccupied with all the tasks they’ve touched but
left incomplete.
Business efficiency expert Kerry Gleeson said, “The
constant, unproductive preoccupation with all the things
we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and
energy.” Not the things we do, the things we think we still
have to do.
People who find the joy in leadership find ways to relax into an extremely purposeful day, goal-oriented and
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focused on the highest-priority activity. They relax into
every given moment. Sure they get distracted, and sure,
people call them and “problems” come up. But they know
what to return to. Because they know their purpose. Because they chose it.
That’s the kind of leader that is admired and followed.
23. See What’s Possible
Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem
of their personnel. If people believe in themselves,
it’s amazing what they can accomplish.
—Sam Walton
One of the best ways to motivate others is to learn
from those who have motivated you. Learn from the great
leaders you have had. Channel them, clone them, and incorporate them into who you are all day.
Scott Richardson recalls: “The most effective, inspirational motivator that I ever had was a violin prodigy who
was my violin teacher.”
That teacher was an associate professor of music at
the University of Arizona named Rodney Mercado. I met
him when I was 16 and ready to quit the violin. My mother,
who desperately wanted me to be a violin player said, “Hang
on, I’ll find you the best teacher out there.”
I was skeptical. But one day, she came in and said to
me, “I found him; he’s the teacher of your teacher.”
The first time I met him, I had to audition for him. I’d
never had to audition for a teacher before. Usually you’d
See What’s Possible / 69
just pay the money, and they took you. But Professor
Mercado chose his students carefully, just as a great leader
chooses his team.
And I did the absolutely worst audition I’d ever done
in my life! I thought, “Well, that sealed it. I don’t have to
worry about having him for my teacher.”
Soon after, he called me on the phone and said, “I’ve
accepted you.”
And I thought, “There must be some mistake, this can’t
be true. I mean, my playing was so horrible, I couldn’t
imagine anyone accepting me based on that audition.”
But he had the ability to see what was possible in other
people. If anyone else had heard my audition, he would
have said that it was hopeless. But he heard more than the
playing. He heard the possibility behind the playing.
And in that, he was a profoundly great coach and leader,
because one of the most vital aspects of motivating others
is the ability to see what’s possible instead of just seeing
what’s happening now.
Ever since that time, I’ve learned not to give up on
people too quickly. I’ve learned to look deeply and listen
deeply. Soon, skills and strengths I never saw before in
people would show up.
I learned that people perform in response to who they
think they are for us at the moment. In other words, how
they think we see them is how they perform for us; therefore, if we can create a new possibility for them, and communicate that to them, their performance instantly takes
off.
Professor Mercado showed me another example of the
power of communicating possibility when he was teaching
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a boy named Michael, who later became a good friend of
mine.
Michael was unusual. When he was in junior high, as
far as I could guess, he had never ever cut his long black
hair because it was longer than his sister’s, which was down
below her belt. And Michael always kept his hair in front
of his face, so you actually couldn’t see what he looked
like. And he never spoke a word in public.
His parents asked Professor Mercado if he would be
willing to teach Michael the violin. Mercado agreed and
they had lessons, but as far as any outsider could tell, it
was strictly a one-way communication. Michael never responded outwardly. He never even picked up the violin!
Yet Mercado continued to teach him, week after week.
And then one day, when he was in 8th grade, Michael
picked up the violin and started playing. And in less than
a month, he was asked to solo in front of the Tucson
Symphony!
I could see for myself that this happened because Professor Mercado communicated to Michael (without any
outward acknowledgment that communication was being
received) that who Michael was (for Professor Mercado)
was a virtuoso violinist. He communicated possibility.
So I have always remembered from this experience
that people’s performance is a response to who they perceive themselves to be for us at the moment. Once we
create a new possibility for those around us, and communicate to them that this new possibility is who they are for
us, their performance instantly takes off.
There’s no better way to motivate another human being.
Enjoy the A.R.T. of Confrontation / 71
24. Enjoy the A.R.T. of
Confrontation
To command is to serve, nothing more, and nothing less.
—André Malraux, French Philosopher
One of the tricks we teach to inspire increased motivation in others is what we call “The A.R.T. of Confrontation.” It shows leaders how to enjoy holding people
accountable.
Most managers think it’s impossible to enjoy holding
people accountable. They think it’s the hard part of being
a manager. They think it’s one of the downsides—a necessary evil associated with the burden of command.
Therefore you can see why they don’t do a very good
job of holding people accountable.
Fortunately, there is an enjoyable way to do it.
When you need to speak to an employee about a behavior or a performance level that is not working for you,
experiment with using this A.R.T:
A: First, appreciate and acknowledge the employee
for who she is, what she brings to the organization, noting
specific strengths and talents. Then give a very, very specific recent example of something that employee did that
particularly impressed and benefited you.
R: Next, restate your own commitment to that person. “I believe in you. I hired you because of what I saw in
you. I see even more in you than when I hired you. I am
committed to your success here. I am devoted to your
career, to you being happy and fulfilled.” Then, tell that
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employee exactly and specifically what she can count on,
always, from you. List what you do, how you fight for fair
pay, how you are available at all times, how you work to
always get the employee the tools she needs for success,
and so on.
This recommitment places the conversation in the
proper context. Ninety percent of managerial “reprimands”
are destructive to the manager-employee relationship because they are felt to be out of context. The big picture
must be established first, always.
T: Last, track the agreement. You want to track the
existing agreement you have with your employee (if there
is one) about the matter in question. If there is no existing
agreement, you should create one on the spot. Mutually
authored with mutual respect.
Agreements are co-creations. They are not mandates
or rules. When an agreement is not being kept, both sides
need to put all their cards on the table in a mutually supportive way to either rebuild the agreement or create a
new agreement. People will break other people’s rules. But
people will keep their own agreements.
25. Feed Your Healthy Ego
Learning to be a leader is the same process as learning to be an
integrated and healthy person.
—Warren Bennis
High self-esteem is our birthright. It is the core spirit
inside of us. We do not need to pass a battery of humiliating
Feed Your Healthy Ego / 73
tests to attain it. We need only to drop the thinking that
prevents it. We need to get out of its way and let it shine,
in ourselves and in others.
Masterful, artful, spirited leadership has ways of bringing out the best and the highest expression of self-esteem
in others.
But it starts at home with me. If I’m a leader, it starts
with my own self-confidence. We human beings find it
easier to follow self-confident people. We are quicker to
become enrolled in a project when the person enrolling us
is self-confident.
Most managers today don’t take time to raise their
own self-esteem and get centered in their personal pride
of achievement. They spend too much time worrying about
how they are being perceived, which results in insecurity
and low self-esteem.
Nathaniel Branden, in his powerful book Self-Esteem
at Work (Jossey-Bass, First Edition, 1998), says it this way:
A person who feels undeserving of achievement
and success is unlikely to ignite high aspirations
in others. Nor can leaders draw forth the best in
others if their primary need, arising from their
insecurities, is to prove themselves right and
others wrong, in which case their relationship
to others is not inspirational but adversarial. It
is a fallacy to say that a great leader should be
egoless. A leader needs an ego sufficiently healthy
that it does not perceive itself as on trial in every encounter—is not operating out of anxiety
and defensiveness—so that the leader is free to
be task and results-oriented, not oriented toward self-aggrandizement or self-protection.
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A healthy ego asks: What needs to be done? An
insecure ego asks: How do I avoid looking bad?
Build your inner strength by doing what needs to be
done and then moving to the next thing that needs to be
done. The less you focus on how you’re coming across,
the better you’ll come across.
26. Hire the Motivated
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick
good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to
keep from meddling with them while they do it.
—Theodore Roosevelt
It sounds too simple. But the best way to have people
on your team be motivated is to hire self-motivated people.
But isn’t that just the luck of the draw? No. There is
much you can do to create this kind of team. Let’s start
with the hiring interview.
As you conduct your hiring interview, know in advance
the kinds of questions that are likely to have been anticipated by the interviewee, and therefore will only get you a
role-played answer. Minimize those questions.
Instead, ask questions that are original and designed
to uncover the real person behind the role-player. Ask the
unexpected. Keep your interviewee pleasantly off-balance.
The good, motivated people will love it, and the undermotivated will become more and more uncomfortable.
Know that every interviewee is attempting to role-play.
Hire the Motivated / 75
They are playing the part of the person they think would
get this job. We all do it in an interview. But your job is to
not let it happen.
One way to find the true person across from you is
called layering. Layering is following up a question with an
open-ended, layered addition to the question. For example:
Question: Why did you leave Company X?
Answer: Not enough challenges.
Layered Question: Interesting, tell me more about
Company X. What was it like for you there?
Answer: It was pretty difficult. I wasn’t comfortable.
Layered Question: Why do you think it affected you
that way?
Answer: My manager was a micromanager.
Layered Question: This is very interesting; talk more
about that if you can.
Basically, “layering” is a request you make that your
interviewee go further and further beyond his pre-rehearsed
story. You ask him to “go on,” then “keep going,” then
“tell me more,” and then “go on.”
Layering uncovers the real person after a while. So do
questions that have not been anticipated and rehearsed
for a role-play. Here’s an example of a very open-ended
and curious exchange:
“Did you grow up here?”
“No, I grew up in Chicago.”
“Chicago! Did you go to high school there?”
“Yes I did, Maine East High.”
“What was that like, going to that school?”
Another example:
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“How was your weekend?”
“Great.”
“What is a typical weekend like for you?”
Or another:
“I see from your resume that you majored in engineering.”
“Yes.”
“If you had one thing to change about how they teach
engineering, what would you change?”
Or another:
“If you were asked to go back to run the company you
just came from, what’s the first thing you would do?”
Think of questions that you yourself like and are intrigued by, and keep your interviewee in uncharted waters
throughout the interview. That way you get the real person to talk to you so you’ll get a much better gut feeling
about the person and what he or she would be like to work
with.
The best way to create a highly motivated team is to
hire people who are already motivated people.
27. Stop Talking
One measure of leadership is the caliber of people
who choose to follow you.
—Dennis A. Peer, Management Consultant
Most job interviewers talk way too much, and they go
way too soon to the question, “Well, is there anything you
would like to know about us?”
Stop Talking / 77
Learn to stop doing that. That’s your ego being expressed, not a good interview technique. People who have
not done their homework and who are not masterful interviewers will always end up interviewing themselves and
talking about their company. Totally unproductive.
They get uncomfortable asking lots of questions so
they quickly start talking about the history of the company, their own history there, and many personal convictions and opinions. In this, they are wasting their time.
In five months, they will be wringing their hands and tearing their hair out because somehow they let a problem
employee and chronic complainer fly in under the radar.
And it will keep happening until you learn to interview.
Remember: no talking. Your job is to intuit the motivational level of the person across from you. You can only
do that by letting her answer question after question.
It takes more courage, imagination, and preparation
to ask a relentless number of questions than it does to
chat. Great leaders are great recruiters. In sports and in
life. As a leader, you’re only as good as your people. Hire
the best.
Dale Dauten, often called the Obi-Wan Kenobi of
business consultants, said, “When I did the research that
led to my book The Gifted Boss (William Morrow, First
Edition, 1999), I found that great bosses spend little time
trying to mold employees into greatness, but instead devote
extraordinary efforts to spotting and courting exceptionally
capable employees. Turns out that the best management
is finding employees that don’t need managing.”
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28. Refuse to Buy
Their Limitation
Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.
—Tom Peters, Author/Business Consultant
Your people limit themselves all the time. They put up
false barriers and struggle with imaginary problems.
One of your skills as a leader will be to show your
people that they can accomplish more than they think they
can. In fact, they may someday be a leader like you are.
One of the reasons your people will wind up admiring you
is that you always see their potential. You always see the
best side of them, and you tell them about it.
It could be that you are the first person in that
employee’s life to ever believe in him. And because of you,
he becomes more capable than he thought he was, and he
loves you for that, even though your belief in him sometimes makes him uncomfortable. That discomfort may
return every time you ask him to stretch. But you don’t
care. You press on with your belief in him, stretching him,
growing him.
One of the greatest leadership gurus of American business was Robert Greenleaf. He developed the concept of
“servant leadership.” A leader is one who serves those following, serving them every step of the way, especially by
bringing out the best in them, and refusing to buy their
limitations as achievers.
Your people may be flawed as people, but as achievers, they are certainly not.
Play Both Good Cop and Bad Cop / 79
Greenleaf said, “Anybody could lead perfect people—
if there were any. But there aren’t any perfect people. And
parents who try to raise perfect children are certain to
raise neurotics.
“It is part of the enigma of human nature that the ‘typical’ person—immature, stumbling, inept, lazy—is capable
of great dedication and heroism if wisely led. The secret
of team-building is to be able to weld a team of such people
by lifting them up to grow taller than they would otherwise be.”
29. Play Both Good Cop
and Bad Cop
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more,
and become more, you are a leader.
—John Quincy Adams
If you are an effective motivator of others, then you
know how to play “good cop, bad cop.” And you know
that you don’t need two people to play it. A true motivator
plays both roles.
Good Cop: Nurturing, mentoring, coaching, serving,
and supporting your people all the way. Keeping your word
every time. Removing obstacles to success. Praising and
acknowledging all the way. Leading through positive reinforcement of desired behavior, because you’re a true leader
who knows that you get what you reward.
Bad Cop: Bad to the bone. No compromise about
people keeping their promises to you, even promises about
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performance. No room for complaints and excuses as substitutions for conversations about promises not being kept.
No respect for whiners and people who do not make their
numbers. No “wiggle room” for the lazy. Clarity, conviction, determination. All cards on the table. No covert messages. In your face: “I believe in you. I know what you can
do. When you don’t do it, you let yourself and the team
down. I won’t allow that. Time to wake up.”
Obviously you don’t call on Bad Cop every day. Only
after every Good Cop approach is exhausted. But Bad Cop
can be a great wake-up call to someone who has never
been challenged in life to be the best she can be. And once
the Bad Cop session is over, and the person is back in the
game, giving it a good effort, bring Good Cop back right
away to complete the process.
30. Don’t Go Crazy
The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of
taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most
complex human problem to a manageable proportion.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
When I’m thinking about seven things rather than one,
I’m trying to keep them in my head while I’m trying to
listen to you, but I really can’t because I just thought of
three more things that I need to attend to when you leave,
which I hope will be soon.
So I look at my watch a couple of times while you’re
talking to me, because mentally I’m on the run, and I’m a
type-A go-go-guy, doing a million things! But what I’m
Don’t Go Crazy / 81
not seeing is that my very fragile relationship with you is
being destroyed by this approach. It’s being destroyed a
little bit at a time, because the main message I’m sending
to you and everyone else on my team is that I’m really
stressed, and it’s crazy here inside my head.
I even tell my family, “It’s crazy at work. I want to
spend more time with you, but it’s crazy right now. Just
crazy at the office.”
Well, it’s not crazy. You’re crazy. You need to be honest about it. It’s not crazy; it’s just work. It’s just a business.
“It’s-crazy-around-here” managers keep throwing up
their hands, saying, “What? She’s leaving us? Why? She’s
quitting? Oh no, you can’t trust anybody these days. Get
her in here, we need to save this. Cancel my meetings,
cancel my calls, I want to find out why she’s leaving.”
Well, she’s leaving for this reason: You only spoke to
her for a maximum of three minutes in any single conversation over the past year. You may have spoken to her 365
times, but it was only for three minutes. This is not a professional relationship. It’s drive-by management.
And whether the go-go manager likes it or not, creating great relationships is how careers are built, how businesses are built, and how great teams are built.
Usually, people who think they admire or in a certain,
frightened, way “respect” their multitasking managers,
admit that they feel less secure because of all that is
“crazy.”
When they meet with that manager, the manager says
to them, “Okay, come on in, I know you need to see me.
Get in here, I have to take this call. It’s crazy. I’ve got to
be in a meeting in two minutes, and there’s an e-mail I’m
waiting for, so you’ll forgive me if I jump on that when it
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comes in, but just step in here for a second. I know you
had something on your mind. So please, ah, talk to me...oh,
excuse me.”
When we can get a manager to experiment with slowing down and becoming focused on each conversation as a
way to approach his or her day, they’re really amazed. If
they do it for a week, they call back and say, “Unbelievably, I got more understanding of my people this week
than in all my previous weeks on this job.”
Yet it could be different. Life could slow down and
become excellent. Because often, when they do slow down
and look at the next urgent task in front of them, it occurs
to them that someone else would love to do this task. Not
only that, but someone else would be flattered to do this.
“They would enjoy hearing of the trust I have in them by
asking them to take this over and get it done, and done
well, because I like the way they do things.”
There are so many things that can be delegated and
passed on to others, but only if you regain your sanity and
slow down. One of the best ways to motivate others is to
give them more interesting things to do. Especially things
that free up your own time. That’s time you can use to
build a motivated team. It doesn’t have to be crazy around
here. You can put an end to that.
31. Stop Cuddling Up
I never gave them hell. I just tell the truth
and they think it’s hell.
—Harry S. Truman
Stop Cuddling Up / 83
Unconsciously, managers without leadership habits will
often seek, above all else, to be liked. Rather than holding
people accountable, they let them off the hook. They give
non-performers the uneasy feeling that everything’s fine.
They are managers who seek approval rather than success.
But this habit has a severe consequence. It leads to a
lack of trust in the workplace. Lack of trust: the most
common problem “issue” on employee surveys.
A true leader does not focus on trying to be liked. A
true leader focuses on the practices and communications
that lead to being respected.
It’s a completely different goal that leads to completely
different results. (I am not motivated by you because I like
you; I am motivated by you because I respect you.)
The core internal question that the leader returns to
is, “If I were being managed by me, what would I most
need from my leader right now?”
The answer to that question varies, but most often is:
1. The truth, as soon as you know the truth.
2. Full and complete communication about
what’s going on with me and with us.
3. Keeping all promises, especially the small
ones (“I’ll get back to you by tomorrow
with that”) consistently, even fanatically.
Not some promises, not a high percentage
of promises, not a good college try, but all
promises. When a promise cannot be kept
(especially a small one), an immediate
apology, update, and a new and better
promise is issued.
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A true leader does not try to become everybody’s big
buddy, although he or she values being upbeat and cheerful in communication.
A true leader is not overly concerned with always being liked, and is even willing to engage in very uncomfortable conversations in the name of being straight and
thorough. A true leader sees this aspect of leadership in
very serious, adult terms, and does not try to downplay
responsibility for leadership. True leaders do not try to
form inappropriate private friendships with members of
the team they are paid to lead. A true leader enjoys all the
elements of accountability and responsibility and transforms performance measurement and management into
an above-board business adventure.
32. Do the Worst First
The best way out is always through.
—Robert Frost
The number-one topic that leaders ask us to speak
about these days is: How do you motivate others when
you have poor time-management? This was true of Carlos,
who headed up a team of brokers.
“With everything that’s flying at me, everything that’s
coming in, all the calls that I get, all the obligations that I
have, I could really use another 10 hours in my day,” Carlos
said.
We laughed: “This is true of everyone, Carlos. Stop
thinking you are unique. Re-program and bring yourself
into focus. Reboot your mind. Start over.”
Do the Worst First / 85
All talented people in this global market have more to
do than they have time to do. That’s not really a problem.
It’s an exciting fact of life.
“But it’s very, very tempting to cave in to a sense of
being overwhelmed,” Carlos said. “It’s tempting to get into
that victim mindset of being ‘swamped.’”
“True enough. So regroup and get the view from 30,000
feet. Rise up. Lift yourself up!”
“But the truth is, I am swamped,” Carlos almost yelled
out. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m overwhelmed. How
can anyone manage this team when you’ve got all this stuff
going on? And right when you think you’re getting ahead
of it, you get a call, you get an e-mail, you get another
request, there’s another program that has to be implemented, there’s another form that has to be filled out, and
I’m about to throw up my hands and say, ‘How do I do
this?’”
“Carlos, listen. Get a grip for now. The simplest system that you can come up with for time management will
serve you as a leader. Keep it simple.”
“Why does it have to be simple?” Carlos asked. “It
seems like I need a more complex solution to a complex
set of challenges.”
“Because no matter what you do, you can’t stop this
one truth about leadership: You are going to be hounded,
you’re going to be barraged, and you’re going to be interrupted. And there are two reactions you can choose between to address this leadership fact of life.”
Carlos said nothing.
“You could just become a victim and say, ‘I can’t handle
it, there’s just too much to do.’ That takes no imagination,
it takes no courage, and it’s simply the easiest way to go—
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to complain about your situation. Maybe even complain
to other people, other leaders, other managers, other family members; they will all sympathize with you and might
even say, ‘You’ve got to get out of that business.’”
Carlos started nodding in agreement.
“That happens,” Carlos said. “But that doesn’t help
me enjoy my job: to have friends and family feeding back
to me that I ought to get out of the business. That makes it
twice as hard.”
“Right! So there’s another way to go, and this is by
keeping the simplest time-management system possible in
your life. This is the one that we recommend, and it’s the
one that most leaders have had the most luck with. It’s so
simple, you can boil it down to two words, if you have to.
The words are these: worst first!”
“Worst first?”
“Exactly. Write it down!”
We worked with Carlos for a long time to get him to
see that the best way to manage his time was not to think
of it as managing time, but to think of it as managing priorities. Because he can’t really “manage time.” He can’t
add any more time to his day.
But he can manage the priorities and the things that
he chooses to do.
“Worst first,” Carlos said. “Explain it again. What does
it mean?”
“Write down on a piece of paper all the things you’d
like to do in the upcoming day, Carlos. Maybe you were
jotting them down last night, but these are all things that
you know that you would like to do. The list doesn’t have
to be perfect. It can be all kinds of shorthand, and little
Do the Worst First / 87
pictures and drawings, all over a scratched-up piece of
paper. Then you choose, among all these things, the one
thing that’s the most challenging and important. The one
thing you wish you didn’t have to do.”
“How do I know for sure what that is? And how will
this, in the long run, improve the motivation of my people?
Isn’t that your area of specialty?”
“Yes it is, but until you get this down, you won’t motivate anyone. You have to have a secure place to come
from. An organized place inside yourself.”
“Okay, okay, I know that, but how do I choose the
one thing to focus on?”
“What is that one thing that you’re most likely to put
off? What’s your most important thing to do, the thing
that really needs to be done; not necessarily the most urgent thing, but the most important?”
“Oh,” said Carlos, “I think I’m seeing this. That thing
that pains me most to think of. That’s what I select to do
first.”
“That’s it.”
Most managers are like Carlos. They don’t have a
simple system. They just respond to whatever’s most urgent. All day they wonder, “What has to be addressed right
now?” And a lot of time, the urgent little things that come
up as an answer to that question are really small. They’re
nitpicky things, just hassles.
“But don’t the little things have to be done?” Carlos
asked.
“Yeah, they have to be done, but in the meantime
you’re leaving important things behind. Many times, it is
even more effective to turn off your phones, get away from
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your e-mail, select something that’s important, and do that
until it’s complete, and let the urgent go hang.”
“I do know that there’s always something that eats at
the back of my mind,” Carlos said. “It keeps coming up, I
keep thinking about it. It gets in the way of the things I’m
doing.”
“Now you’re on the right track, Carlos! You can’t focus in a relaxed and cheerful way on the things you are
doing because in the back of your mind, this important
thing is there. When you go home at night, the thing that
makes you the most weary, the most under-the-weather,
and most gives you the sense of not having had a good day,
is that one thing you didn’t do, but wish you had.”
“Right. Boy do I know.”
“So this is what you want to get into the category of
Worst First: You want to pick that one thing that’s hardest to do, that you would love to have finished and behind
you. You want to make it number one. First priority. Nothing gets done until that gets done.”
Weeks went by, and Carlos struggled with the system,
but finally warmed up to it after a lot of practice. After
Carlos had finally made the “worst first” system into a
habit, he felt a freedom he never felt before. People around
him were inspired by how liberated he was becoming every day from having done the hardest thing first. Carlos
would handle his biggest thing as his first thing, and then
live like the rest of the day was a piece of cake. His energy
soared. Soon he was teaching others the same system.
He called a few months later to give an update on his
newly centered life in leadership.
“I am really freed up by this,” Carlos said. “If someone says to me, ‘Will you sit down and talk to me about
Learn to Experiment / 89
this issue?’ and I have done my worst thing already, I can
say ‘Sure, how much time do you need? Let’s talk.’”
33. Learn to Experiment
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an
experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the most common complaints of today’s executives is this: The people that they supervise hate to
make changes though they are constantly being required
to in this highly competitive business environment. The
executives then tear out their hair trying to get the needed
changes accomplished.
The way we respond is that it may feel difficult to encourage people to change. But try this possibility: People
may not like to change, but they do love to experiment!
As business consultant and journalist Dale Dauten has
observed, “Experimentation never fails. When you try
something and it turns out to be a lousy idea, you never
really go back to where you started. You learned something. If nothing else, it makes you appreciate what you
were doing before. So I think it’s true that experiments
never fail.”
So in the businesses that we coach, there are never
any changes. However, our clients’ businesses are constantly experimenting to find what works better for the
employees, the business, and the customer. The executives simply tell their teams, “This is an experiment to see
if it works better for you and our customers. If it does,
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great, we are going to continue doing it. If it doesn’t, then
we will modify it or get rid of it.”
And as long as you monitor it and get feedback, you’ll
find that the old-fashioned resistance to change melts away
because your employees really do enjoy a good experiment.
34. Communicate Consciously
Drowning in data, yet starved of information.
—Ruth Stanat, Global Business Consultant
We live in the information age. Your people use their
minds creatively and productively throughout the day. They
aren’t just digging tunnels; they all communicate for a living.
Now, more than ever before, communication is their
lifeblood. It is the lifeblood of every organization. Yet many
organizations leave most of their communication to chance,
to “common sense,” or to old traditions that no longer
function to keep everyone informed and included.
Communication is the source of trust and respect
within each organization, so let’s put all our cards on the
table as often as possible.
When we increase our awareness of communication, communication is enhanced. When we take full responsibility
for how we communicate, the organization is enhanced.
Leadership authority Warren Bennis says, “Good leaders make their people see they are at the very heart of things,
not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a
difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.”
Score the Performance / 91
35. Score the Performance
Performance is your reality. Forget everything else.
—Harold Geneen, CEO, ITT
Can you imagine playing a game in which you don’t
know how it’s scored? Or competing in front of judges
when you don’t know their criteria? And the judges are
not going to tell you for a long time how you did? That
would be an athlete’s nightmare.
We sat in a meeting run by Megan who was having a
hard time motivating her team to hit the company’s expected goals.
“Exactly how are we doing right now?” her team member Clarence asked Megan from the end of the round table
around which we were all sitting for the team meeting.
“Oh, I don’t know, Clarence,” said Megan. “I haven’t
looked at the printout yet. I have a sense that we are doing
pretty well this month, but I haven’t gotten to the numbers yet.”
You could see the look on Clarence’s face. It was a
cross between disappointment and pain.
Later, we met with Megan alone and explained to her
why she needed to change her approach immediately if
she had any hope of motivating Clarence and his teammates. She had to know the score.
“I just don’t enjoy numbers,” Megan said. “I never
have. I’m not a numbers kind of person.”
“Whether you enjoy numbers or not, if you’re in a
leadership position, it is imperative to be the numbers person for your team. There’s no way you’re going to have a
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motivated team here, Megan, until you do your homework,
put the numbers in front of you, and talk about those numbers when you talk to your people. If you’re their coach,
and you are, then you talk about the game and the score.”
“Well, I played a little basketball in high school,” Megan
said. “Maybe I can relate it to that.”
“Imagine your basketball coach during a game. Your
team comes to the sideline, it’s late in the game, and your
coach says, ‘Now I haven’t looked at the scoreboard for a
while, so I don’t know how many points we’re down, or
are we up? Anyway, here are some plays that I think we
ought to run after the time-out.’”
Megan smiled and said, “That would be a coach that I
wouldn’t have any confidence in whatsoever!”
“Why not, Megan?”
Megan said nothing.
“Aren’t you that coach, Megan?”
Megan said, “I think I see what you mean. My best
coaches were people who rewarded numbers and got
excited.”
“Right! Great leaders are the same. They are leaders
who call team members and say, ‘Hey, I just got your numbers for last week. Wow, that’s better than you’ve done all
year!’ These are the leaders people love to follow, because
they always know whether they are winning or losing. They
always know the score.”
We reminded Megan that earlier in her team meeting
she had said to her group, “Well, you guys are really trying hard and I know you are making the effort. I drove by
last night and I saw your lights on late, so I really admire
what you guys are doing. You’re really giving it the old
Score the Performance / 93
college try.” We told her that she might be on the wrong
course with that approach.
“What was wrong with saying that?” Megan asked.
“It’s wrong because respect for achievement is replaced
by respect for ‘trying.’ Megan, listen, we have a phrase in
our society’s language that sums it up. When someone is
willfully obtuse and ineffective, we say that person doesn’t
‘know the score.’ Why? Because ‘knowing the score’ is
the first step in all achievement.”
What we wanted Megan to see was that this mistake
of hers was immediately correctable. It was only the mistake of not looking over some numbers before sending
an e-mail or making a call.
But that one little mistake will give her team the impression that they’re here for reasons other than winning
and achieving precise goals.
The coach has to be the one to explain to the team
with tremendous precision exactly what the score is, exactly how much time is left, and exactly how the strategy is
based on those numbers. When you have a numbers-based
team, you know when you are winning, you know when
you’ve had a good day, you know when you’re having a
good run, and you know when you are not.
That creates a wonderful sense that there is no hidden
agenda from this leader. So look for ways, as you communicate with your people, to improve and increase the way
they are measured and, especially, to increase the consciousness of that measurement.
But it has to come from you. You can’t wait around
for the company policy to shift. That’s what most people
do. They wait for their own management to come up with
some kind of new system, new scorebooks, new posters,
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something like that. But don’t do that. Don’t wait. Have it
come from you.
It has to be your personal innovation to find more ways
to keep score. That way, people will link it to you and
know how much it means to you. Is there anything that
you want improved? Find ways to track it, to keep score.
The love of games that is in every human being is something that you can tap into. The more you measure things,
the more motivated your people are to win those games.
36. Manage the
Fundamentals First
Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I’ll show
you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.
—Lawrence D. Bell, Founder, Bell Aircraft
The Rodney Mercado motivational methods are not
only the most effective methods for teaching music, but
for anything else.
Professor Mercado was a genius in 10 different fields,
including mathematics, economics, sociology, anthropology, and music history.
Scott recalls: Once, I was surprised to be getting an
economics lesson inside my music lesson. Mercado turned
to me and said, “Well, Scott, you know, math is very, very
simple. It’s all based on addition. But most people lose
sight of that. So if you learn how to do one plus one equals
two, everything in math flows from that. Everything.”
He was always focusing on fundamentals.
Manage the Fundamentals First / 95
Like the time he came to assist our chamber group in
preparing to perform a piece. Under his guidance, we
spent the entire hour working on the first two measures
of this piece. We kept going over and over them, and
each time he would ask us to explore a new possibility.
“How would you like to create more sound here?” he
would ask. And then he would give us ideas on how we
could possibly do that. And by the end of the hour, all we
had done was work on two measures of a piece that probably had 80 measures of music. Then, at the very end, he
said, “Okay, now let’s play the whole thing.”
The entire performance and our entire group were
transformed. We played the whole thing beautifully!
That showed me the power of fundamentals. Don’t
gloss over them. Slow your people down and do things
step by step, getting the basics right, getting the fundamentals in place.
We were coaching a client recently in his companywide managers’ meeting, and two people didn’t show up
on time for the meeting. The CEO wanted to rush through
the meeting and “talk to the people who didn’t show up”
later.
But we slowed him down and had the whole group
focus, slowly and fundamentally, on how to handle this
tardiness and absenteeism and lack of commitment from
these two managers. In the process, we had a number of
breakthrough moments for other managers on the nature of commitment, and a newer, more creative policy
emerged.
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37. Motivate by Doing
People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do
something, and those people who sit still and inquire,
why wasn’t it done the other way?
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Most managers don’t do things according to priority—
they do things according to feelings. That’s how their day
is run. (This, by the way, is exactly how infants live. They
live from feeling to feeling. Do they feel like crying? Do
they feel like laughing? Do they feel like drooling? That’s
an infant’s life.)
Professional managers fall into two categories: doers
and feelers.
Doers do what needs to be done to reach a goal that
they themselves have set. They come to work having already planned out what needs to be done.
Feelers, on the other hand, do what they feel like doing. Feelers take their emotional temperature throughout the day, checking in on themselves, figuring out what
they feel like doing right now. Their lives, their outcomes,
their financial security are all dictated by the fluctuation of their feelings. Their feelings will change constantly, of course, so it’s hard for a feeler to follow anything
through to a successful conclusion. Their feelings are
changed by many things: biorhythms, gastric upset, a strong
cup of coffee, an annoying call from home, a rude waitress
at lunch, a cold, a bit of a headache, a thought. Those are
the dictating forces, the commanders, of a feeler’s life.
Motivate by Doing / 97
A doer already knows in advance how much time will
be spent on the phone, how much in the field, what employees will be cultivated that day, what relationships will
be strengthened, what communications need to be made.
Doers use a three-step system to guarantee success:
1. They figure out what they want to achieve.
2. They figure out what needs to be done to
achieve it.
3. They do it.
This is not a theory, this is the actual observed system
used by all super achievers without fail.
A feeler is adrift in a mysterious life of unexpected
consequences and depressing problems. A feeler asks, “Do
I feel like making my phone calls now?” “Do I feel like
writing that thank you note?” “Do I feel like dropping in
on that person right now?” If the answer is no, then the
feeler keeps going down the list, asking, “Do I feel like
doing something else?”
A feeler lives inside that line of inquiry all day long.
By contrast, a doer has high self-esteem. A doer enjoys many satisfactions throughout the day, even though
some of them were preceded by discomfort.
A feeler is almost always trying to be comfortable, but
never really satisfied.
A doer knows the true, deep joy that only life’s super
achievers know.
A feeler believes that joy is for children, and that life
for an adult is an ongoing hassle.
A doer experiences more and more power every year
of life.
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A feeler feels less and less powerful as the years go on.
Your ability to motivate others increases exponentially
as your reputation as a doer increases. You also get more
and more clarity about who the doers and feelers are on
your own team. Then, as you model and reward the doing,
you also begin to inspire the feelers on your team to become doers.
38. Know Your People’s Strengths
Those few who use their strengths to incorporate
their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves,
those people are very rare. In any generation there
are a few and they lead their generation.
—Moshe Feldenkrais, Psychologist
Know your people’s strengths.
It’s the fundamental business insight that inspired the
book Good to Great by Jim Collins (HarperBusiness, 2001).
And this idea of going from good to great also applies to
the people you motivate. It’s far more effective to build
on their strengths than to worry too much about their
weaknesses. The first step is to really know their strengths
so you can help them to express them even more.
Most managers spend way too much time, especially
in the world of sales, trying to fix what’s wrong.
Your people may identify negative things and say, “Oh,
I’m not good at this. I need to change that. And I’m not
very good on the phone. I need to fix that....” But listen to
their voice tones when they say these things! They’ll always
sound depressed and world-weary.
Know Your People’s Strengths / 99
Here’s the simple formula (and once we recognize this
formula, we can do some wonderful things): If people focus on what’s wrong with them, just focusing on that puts
them in a bad mood. People grimly, glumly, confront with
a kind of morbid honesty, what’s wrong. And the voice
tones go down, because the enthusiasm goes down, and
the dreariness sets in. And pretty soon, they’re putting off
activities. They’re procrastinating. They’re saying, “This
makes me uncomfortable. I don’t even like thinking about
this right now. For some reason (I don’t know why, I was
in a good mood before I started...), I’m not in the mood to
work on this. I can tell that I can’t work on this problem
until I feel a little more energy. I mean, you can’t work on
something when there’s no energy to work.”
We went into a computer company and listened as the
manager, Matt, talked about his team.
“I wish my salespeople would do more research before their sales calls,” Matt said.
And then when we sat down with one of Matt’s salespeople, Byron, he said, “Yeah, that’s something I’m not
very good at.”
“Okay, you’re not very good at that. So let’s move on.”
“No, no, I need to fix that,” said Byron. “That’s something that needs to be fixed. I need to get better. Why
don’t you coach me? How do I get better at that?”
And we could hear his low voice tone. We knew Byron
would never get better at that because of the negative
mindset the very subject put him in.
To really take something on and to grow and strengthen
it, people need to be in an upbeat, positive mood. People
need to have energy. That’s when they’re at their best.
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“So, when will my people have energy?” manager Matt
asked us after we explained the concept of moods to him.
“They get energy when they think about the things
they’re really good at in sales. Have them ask themselves,
‘What am I really good at? What are my strengths?’ The
minute they start focusing on those things, their energy
will pick up. Their self-esteem will pick up. Their enthusiasm will pick up.”
That’s where the fastest infusion of productivity always comes from. First, you find what this person is good
at, and then you move good to great.
When we worked with Matt’s salesperson Byron, we
said, “Okay, Byron, forget about your weaknesses, forget
about what you’re not good at. That’s probably all you’ve
been thinking about for a few months, right?”
“Right,” said Byron. “You know, my manager counsels me on it. I’ve had things written up about it. I’ve been
given activities to do to correct it. But the problem is, I
just go deeper, and I don’t produce.”
“Listen, Byron, set those activities aside. Forget about
all the problems that need to be fixed. We’re not going to
fix anything for now. We want an infusion, we want a stimulus. We want a burst of sales to take you out of the cellar
and put you up there where you belong in the upper
rankings of the salespeople. Later, when we have the luxury,
and we’re bored, and we can’t figure out what to do in
coaching sessions, we may take a weakness and play around
with it, for the pure fun of it. But for now, we’re not going
to do it. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to
acknowledge one thing: You’re not going to be great at anything until you enjoy it. We want to find out what you’re
already good at, and we want to build on that.”
Know Your People’s Strengths / 101
“Well, one of my strengths is in-person,” said Byron.
“I love to be in-person. I’m bad on the phone, I’m bad
with faxes, I’m bad with e-mail. But in-person, I can just
close deals, I can talk, I can expand, I can upsell, I can
cross-sell....”
“Okay, great. So rather than fix the phone thing and
fix the e-mail thing, let’s leave those aside for the moment.
Only use them if you must to get an appointment. Don’t
use them to sell anything. We want to increase what you’re
good at. Get out there, sit with people. Keep increasing
that and get even better at it. Don’t say ‘I’m already good
at it, and that’s that.’ Of course you’re good at it. But the
way you’re going to be really tremendous in this field is to
turn good into great, to get great at that thing, because
you’re more than two-thirds of the way there. Because
you’re already good at it.”
What we wanted to steer Byron away from is this
thought: “Well, I’m already good at it, that’s sort of natural, that comes easy to me. That’s sort of cheating when I
do a lot of that. What I really need to do is work at what
I’m bad at.”
To be great motivators, we need to look at human behavior differently. We’ve been taught the wrong way since
we were young! If we got an A in science, but we flunked
English, our parents said, “Hey, I don’t care about your
other grades, what you really need to do is work hard on
your English, because you flunked it. So you’re going to
focus your life on English for a while.”
All of our lives, we’ve been taught that the way to succeed is to take something that you’re not good at and
change it. Take your weaknesses and spend time with them
so that you can bring your weaknesses up to “normal.”
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Do you know how little an effect it has on someone’s
productivity if they take their weaknesses and work hard
and finally bring them from “subnormal” to “normal”?
All throughout life we’ve been taught that when we’re
good at something, it just means it’s innate. Our parents
say, “Oh, he’s really good at the piano. He must have gotten that from his grandfather, he must have inherited that,
he’s got a natural talent at that.” So we’re taught not to
focus on it. We’re taught that that will be okay by itself.
People tell us, “You really need to put your attention on
all the things you’re bad at!”
Jennifer was on a sales staff we were coaching, and
she was kind of intimidated because the sales staff had a
lot of flashy, good-looking, well-dressed fraternity-type
guys and sorority-type girls on it. Jennifer was more of a
shy person. She was very bright and very compassionate,
but she just couldn’t make herself do things the way the
other salespeople did. And so she was frustrated, and all
she tried to do was work on her weaknesses, and whenever we met her, she would bring in this long list of things
she wasn’t any good at.
“These are the things I want to talk about,” Jennifer
said. “These are the top seven things I’m terrible at.”
“Throw that list out.”
“What?”
“We don’t care about that list. We really don’t. You
wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have the basic skills to be
here. So stop it. Here’s what we’d like you to do. Think
back for a little while. Think about your life. When were
you really happy? If you can look back and get in touch
with moments in your life when you were really happy, it’s
going to give us some clues about where to go from here.”
Know Your People’s Strengths / 103
“Well, I was a waitress not too long ago, before I came
here,” Jennifer said. “There was a restaurant that I worked
in that, originally, I didn’t like, but finally just loved. I
really enjoyed it. It was like I was in heaven, I just got so
good at it. I was serving customers and I was taking their
orders and I got the biggest tips of anybody there. It was
just wonderful. It felt like a dance, it felt like a musical.
And also, the money coming in to me was greater than
anyone else there.”
“We’ve hit on something here!”
“Well, I can’t do that,” Jennifer said. “I’ve got bills to
pay, I’ve got kids. I can’t go back to that. There’s not
enough money there, no matter how good you are. I’ve
got to do this. I’ve got to get the big accounts. I’ve got to
get the big commissions I know I can make.”
“So we’re going to do that. But we’re not going to do it
from being a back-slapping, flashy salesperson. We’re going to go with your strength.”
“Well, my strength is waiting on tables and serving
people.”
“Yes! So that’s what you’re going to do. That’s who
you’re going to be. You’re going to serve. You’re going
to take orders. You’re going to present menus. You’re
going to explain what the dishes are like. You’re going
to ask clients what they like. You’re going to give them
options, and that same person you were in the restaurant, you’re going to be in this selling situation. You’re
going to tap into that same love of serving and presenting options, and fulfilling orders. That’s going to be who
you are, but you’re going to do it in this context, selling
this product. And when you get on the phone, you’re
going to be that way, you’re going to be the person who
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wants to know how you can help. Not a salesperson.
Not a salesperson at all. You will use all the words you
used when you were a happy waitress. ‘You’re not quite
ready? I’d be glad to come back. Take your time. I want
you to know what’s here. I want you to know what the
specials are, so you can make your decision.’ And come
from that point of view. That’s who you are. That’s a
way of being that you loved being. And you can be that
here. You can serve rather than sell, and it will work
for you.”
Two or three months later, Jennifer was doing extremely well. She had made a remarkable breakthrough.
She came at the whole job from a completely different
place. She took what she loved to do the most, and she did
that all day. She took what she already knew she was good
at, she took a strength, and she moved it from good to
great.
39. Debate Yourself
I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an
army of 100 lions led by a sheep.
—Talleyrand
All it might take is half a day to catch everything up,
sort everything out, clean everything away, and be ready
to begin next week with a whole new lease on life, staying
organized as you go.
But still you resist.
Debate Yourself / 105
You know you will never “find time” to do that half a
day of reorganization. Therefore, you must make time.
Winners make time to do what’s really beneficial and important to them. Losers keep trying to “find time.”
When you hear a pessimistic manager say, “I’m sorry
I didn’t get back to you, Dave. I was swamped yesterday,”
that swamped feeling has become reality.
But being “swamped” is just an interpretation. If that
manager was locked in solitary confinement for five years,
and somebody offered him this job where they had a lot of
phone calls and things to do, would they call it “being
swamped”? They would call it being wonderfully busy. They
would call it absolute heaven.
So which is it? Swamped or busy?
A woman in one of our workshops a year ago said,
“My job is a total nightmare. It is hell on earth. The fact
that I even show up for it is surprising to me—it is an
absolute nightmare.”
“What is the nightmare?”
“Well, I’ve got people calling in, I’ve got two different
bosses telling me what to do. I’ve got an in-box stacked
like this high, and I go home from work stressed out.”
“Okay, what if we were to introduce you to a woman
from Rwanda whose husband has been dead for two years
and who has had to eat out of garbage cans to live, do you
think you could persuade her that your job is a nightmare?
Would she like trading lives with you? Would your job be
a nightmare to that woman?”
“Oh, no, not to her it wouldn’t be a nightmare. It would
be the greatest blessing.”
“So, is your job a nightmare? A nightmare is only a
nightmare in your own thinking. It’s a perception. You
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can choose another if you want. You can choose another
job, or you can choose another perception. You are free.”
Be willing to teach your people how to debate themselves. Forget that it’s supposed to be a sign of insanity to
be talking to yourself. Because the truth is that when we
question our own thinking, we start to elevate to new levels of thinking. We start to really accomplish things if we
have enough courage to question our own thinking. Here
are some questions we might want to ask ourselves, for
beginners: “Is that really true? Is my manager really out
to get me? Is this really happening? Is this really a bad
opportunity? It might be, but is it really? What else could
I say about it? What would be a more useful way to interpret it?” We can teach people to question everything they
have labeled as negative.
Be ruthless with yourself, too, as you debate the chaos
that builds up in your life. Simplify your life to feel your
full power. When Vince Lombardi was asked why his
world-champion football team had the simplest offensive
system in all of football, his response was, “It’s hard to be
aggressive when you’re confused.”
40. Lead With Language
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.
—Max DePree, Business Consultant/Author
We once worked with a group of managers who managed various teams in a company plagued with low morale. The teams were grumbling, and exulting in victim
language.
Lead With Language / 107
But once we suggested different words and language
for the managers to use in team meetings, everything began to change. Their people became more self-motivated.
As the psychological turnaround advanced, the managers began to open their meetings by asking who had an
acknowledgment—“Who would like to acknowledge someone else right now?”—and the talk began to swing to appreciation, instead of to complaint and criticism. And all
of a sudden, the mood of the meetings changed.
Instead of focusing on problems, and getting stuck there,
the leaders would learn to say, “What opportunities do you
see?” And just by saying that enough times, a different kind
of energy would emerge. Different than the low-morale days
when the leaders used to say, “What are the problems? What
do we have to get through? Who’s to blame?”
When managers asked, “What can we get from this?”
results changed faster.
“We had a tough week last week. Let’s go around the
table. What can we learn from that? What are some new
systems we might put in? If that comes up again, what
would be a great way of dealing with it? How can we have
fun with this in the future?”
The managers got the victim language out of their systems. They got stronger by using, “What do we want?
What’s our intention? What’s our goal? What outcome
would we love to see?” Every time victim language was
replaced by the language of intention, different results
occurred. Some of the most dramatic results:
1. Turnover decreased.
2. Absenteeism decreased.
3. Spirit and morale improved.
4. Productivity increased.
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And all that happened with language.
Words mean things. Words that form thoughts create
things. Ancient scriptures say, “In the beginning, there
was the word.” And there’s a lot of modern-day truth to
that. Words start things going. Change a single word in
what you say, and you can scare a child. One scary word
can make a child shake and cry. Change that word back,
and the child is fine. Words communicate pictures, energy, emotions, possibilities, and fears.
Words can scare an employee, too.
Sometimes victims try to be leaders, but can’t. That’s
because they think they ought to do it. But the leadership
spirit is not accessed that way. It’s a graceful spirit, not a
heavy burden.
This type of language won’t get you there: “I should
be more of a leader.”
Any time a victim finds out about leadership language,
and then says, “You know, I really should be more of a
leader,” that’s simply more victim language! That drives
the person deeper down into victim feelings.
Why should you be more of a leader?
“Well, I guess people would like me more. They would
approve of me more.”
Who cares what other people think? What do you want?
Leadership is based on personal, internal intention.
It’s living a life that has clarity of purpose at the center of
it. Victimization is not based on intention. Victimization
is based on being a victim of circumstance and other
people’s opinion. The victim is constantly obsessed with
what other people think.
Use Positive Reinforcement / 109
“Well, what would my wife think if I did that? What
would my kids think? What would my boss think? What
would the people think if they saw me singing in my car? If
a person pulls up next to me, what’s he gonna think?”
Obsessing about what other people think throughout
the day is the fastest way to lose your enthusiasm for life.
It’s the fastest way to lose that basic energy that gets everything done that you’ve ever been proud of. You notice
that children don’t seem to have that worry. Most children, when they’re in the middle of something they really
love, seem to forget that anybody is watching them, and
even forget that there’s a world out there. They just get
swept away. Good leaders do the same thing.
41. Use Positive
Reinforcement
The first duty of a leader is optimism. How does your
subordinate feel after meeting with you? Does he feel uplifted?
If not, you are not a leader.
—Field Marshall Montgomery
Nobody remembers it. Everybody seems to forget it.
But positive reinforcement trumps negative criticism every time.
It doesn’t matter if you are training dolphins or motivating your team members, positive reinforcement is the
way to go. You don’t see trainers at Sea World beating the
dolphins with baseball bats when they don’t jump through
the right hoops. You see them, instead, giving them little
fish when they do jump through.
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Why can’t we remember that?
We’re too busy chasing down problems and then criticizing the problematic people who created the problems.
That’s how most managers “lead.”
But that’s a habit trap. And like any other habit trap,
there are certain small behaviors that will remove you from
that trap. For example, you will want to pause a moment
before e-mailing or calling any one of your team players.
You will want to take a moment. You want to decide what
small appreciation you can communicate to them.
You will want to always realize that positive reinforcement is powerful when it comes to guiding and shaping
human performance. This revelation continues to surprise
us, because we have been trained by our society to identify what’s wrong and fix it.
There’s a better way: Find out what’s right and reward it.
A very surprised Napoleon once said, “The most amazing thing I have learned about war is that men will die for
ribbons.”
42. Teach Your People
“No” Power
As we look ahead into the next century,
leaders will be those who empower others.
—Bill Gates
The tragedy of a disempowered, weak-willed life extends to all aspects of work.
Teach Your People “No” Power / 111
Unless you change it.
Tina reports to you. And one of the things she reports
to you is that she is stressed out and incapable of doing all
of her work.
After a long talk about her life on the job, it becomes
clear that Tina has no goals, plans, or commitments. It is
no wonder, therefore, that Tina allows people to waste
her time. People that Tina doesn’t even care about keep
taking up her time. She can’t say no to them only because
she hasn’t said yes to anything else.
You talk to her.
“The greatest value of planning and goal-setting is that
it gives you your own life to live. It puts you back in charge.
It allows you to focus on what’s most important to you. So
you won’t walk around all week singing the Broadway song,
‘I’m Just A Girl Who Can’t Say No.’”
You begin to sing that song to her. She begs you to
stop.
“Okay, how do I turn it around?” Tina asks you. “How
do I learn to say no?”
“Ask yourself these questions: ‘What goals are most
important to me? And how much time do I give them?
What people are most important to me? And how much
time do I give them?’”
We hear many complaints from people in business who
are going through the same kind of scattered lives. It’s as
if they’re dying from a thousand tiny distractions. They
report a life of being constantly drained by other people’s
requests. People poking their heads in all day saying, “Gotta
minute? Gotta minute?”
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Slam the door on those poking heads. Those incessant
talking heads give you a life in which you have not learned
to say no.
Once you learn it, teach it to your people, too. Make it
an honorable thing.
Your people’s access to focused work will depend on
their willingness to develop a little-used muscle that we
call the No Muscle. If they never use this muscle, it won’t
perform for them when the chips are down. It will be too
weak to work. Any request by any coworker or relative
will pull them from the mission.
The key to teaching your people to develop the No
Muscle is to first develop their Yes Muscle. If they will
say yes to the things that are important to them, then saying no to what’s not important will get easier and easier.
Help them verbalize what they want. Make them say it out
loud.
“Tina, you need to know what you want, know it in
advance, and chances are you’ll get it. It’s easy to say no to
something if you’ve already said yes to something better.”
43. Keep Your People
Thinking Friendly
Customer Thoughts
There is only one boss: the customer.
—Sam Walton
Our customers are the origin, the originating source,
of all the money we have and all the things we own. It’s not
Keep Your People Thinking Friendly...Thoughts / 113
the company that pays us, it’s the customer. The company
just passes the customer’s money along to us.
When we take a vacation, it’s important to realize that
the customer has paid for it. When we send a child to college, it’s with our customer’s money!
Sam Walton built his Wal-Mart empire knowing that
there was always only one boss: the customer. He believes
that the customer has the power to fire everyone in the
company simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Why not begin motivating our people accordingly? Why
not show our people the joy of treating that customer relationship as a real and genuine friendship? It could be, in
the end, our ultimate competitive advantage.
Without our encouragement as leaders, the customer
tends to fall off the radar screen. Without our asking the
provocative and respectfully encouraging questions of our
people, the customer can even become a “hassle,” or a
“necessary evil” in our lives.
In our zeal to bond with the people who report to us,
we all too often commiserate and sympathize with their
horror stories about how hard it is to please customers,
how customers take advantage of us, why the phone ringing all day is such a problem for time management...and
we agree, and by agreeing, we unknowingly plant the seeds
that allow customers to be treated coldly, stupidly, and in
a very unfriendly way.
And this defeats the whole purpose of business! We’re
even willing to go farther: poor customer relations becomes
the root cause of every business problem we have.
Notice, if you will, how you are treated by the airlines
that are having the biggest financial difficulties and how
you are (almost always—no one’s perfect, yet) treated by
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the people at Southwest Airlines, the only highly profitable airline. It is no accident that Southwest is the only
airline that devotes all its thinking to the problems of the
customer while the other airlines devote all of their thinking to the problems of the airline.
The whole purpose of your business is to take such
good care of the customer that the customer makes it a
habit of returning to your business and buying more and
more every time.
But this will only happen when your people consciously
build relationships with your customers. When they actively, consciously, creatively, cleverly, strategically, artfully, and gently build the relationship with the customer.
Building the relationship does not come easy. It goes against
our deepest habits.
And it will never happen if your people see the customer as “a hassle...someone on the phone checking out
prices...just an annoyance...someone interrupting me when
I was just about to go to lunch...just a problem in my
day...someone trying to return something...someone trying to challenge my years of expertise...some jerk...some
idiot....”
The reason this kind of disrespect and even contempt
for the customer sinks into the psyche of our people is a
lack of ongoing encouragement to think any other way. In
other words, a lack of leadership. In other words, you and
me. A bad attitude toward the customer always comes, in
some subtle way, from the top.
A fish rots from the head down.
We as leaders set the tone. We either ask the right
questions that start the ball rolling in our employees’ minds,
or we do not. If I am a leader, I want to ask questions that
Keep Your People Thinking Friendly...Thoughts / 115
respect my people’s intelligence. I want to treat them as if
they are master psychologists, as if they are experts in customer behavior and customer thinking patterns—because
they are. I want to ask how we can build more trust with
the customer. I want to ask how we can convert a seemingly simple phone call into a warm relationship that leads
to the customer liking us and wanting to buy from us no
matter what the price is. I want to ask how we can get the
sales force to win the customer’s trust and repeat business. I want to ask for advice and help with the psychology
of the customer. I want to ask the questions that will motivate my own managers to start thinking in terms of lifetime customers instead of single transactions.
I might start a meeting with my team by saying, “Let’s
say you’re a potential customer and you’re calling my store.
Let’s say you’re new in town and have no buying habits yet
in this category of product. I’m the third store you have
called. If I’m stressed and grumpy, and I simply give you
the price you wanted for a product you’re curious about
and hang up, I may have lost you forever. What does that
matter? A loss of a $69 won’t kill us!
“But consider the lifetime impact—or even just the
next 10 years. What if that customer spends even just $400
a year in this category but has, because of this bad original
call with us, formed a buying habit with a competitor?
(Most people go to certain stores because it feels comfortable to go there.) In 10 years, that customer would
have spent $4,000. That’s $4,000 lost in less than a minute
on a bad phone call. If someone lost $4,000 in one minute
from the cash register, would they still be working for us?”
Finally, in the end, I don’t want to be too macho or
too “professional” or too afraid of what people would think
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of me if I even used the word “friend” once in a while in
my questions about how we can treat customers better.
How would we treat that customer if that person were a
dear friend?
Why is the word friend so rarely heard in the world of
business relations? Are friends really “better” than customers? Does your best friend regularly come by and give
you money to help with the mortgage payment? Does your
friend pull out his checkbook after having a beer with you
and say, “Here’s a little something for your daughter’s
dental bill”? No?
Our customers do.
44. Use Your Best Time for Your
Biggest Challenge
It’s so hard when contemplated in advance,
and so easy when you do it.
—Robert Pirsig, Philosopher/Author
It’s so important to use your best time for your biggest challenge.
Of course you can’t always do this. Sometimes challenges have a way of blowing out their own hole in your
timetable. But whenever possible, see if you can match up
your prime biological (emotional, physical, mental) time
with the big job or big communications you have to do.
Many leaders are at their best in the first hours of the
morning; others hit their prime in the late morning; others
still, in the late afternoon. Whichever is your best time to
Use 10 Minutes Well / 117
shine, don’t waste it on trivia and low-return activities.
Invest that energy and peak attention into the big challenge you’ve been procrastinating about.
Most of us confuse pleasure with happiness. We find
great pleasure in spending our highest-energy state on small
tasks, taking them out with relish and flair, blowing away
all these minor, little must-do’s with great bursts of energy and good cheer. But all the while, that big thing is
lurking, waiting until we’re tired and cranky to be fully
contemplated, which is why it gets put off so often.
Know ahead of time what your biggest challenge is.
Set it up to be taken out with massive, unstoppable action
while you are at your most resourceful and energetic. You
do have a best time of day, mentally. Know when it is.
Then use it! The ultimate source of a leader’s professional
happiness is the feeling of accomplishment you get when
you take out the big thing!
The look on your face alone will motivate others to
follow you.
45. Use 10 Minutes Well
Man must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the
fact that each moment of his life is a miracle and a mystery.
—H.G. Wells
Contemporary philosopher William Irwin was asked
what he thought the secret of effective leadership was. His
answer was, “Learn to use 10 minutes intelligently. It will
pay you huge dividends.”
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Often what separates a great leader from a lousy manager is just that: the ability to use 10 minutes well.
The Irwin quote is one that we have on our office wall,
reminding us that it really helps to have short, motivating
quotations posted in plain view. It is a way to wake yourself up to your potential. Especially when you only have 10
minutes before your next appointment. Will you use it well?
Or will you kill time?
Our recent visit to a very successful leader’s office
was enhanced by our noticing these words posted on the
wall behind his desk—also a great guideline for using 10
minutes well:
The Most Important Words in the English Language
5 most important words: I am proud of you!
4 most important words: What is your opinion?
3 most important words: If you please.
2 most important words: Thank you.
1 most important word: You.
Here’s another quotation put up there on the office
wall. This one’s from Charles Buxton, the famous lawyer
and member of Parliament in the 1800s: “You will never
‘find’ time for anything, if you want time you must make it.”
And sometimes that powerful leadership item we have
not found time to do can be made to fit into the next 10minute window.
46. Know What You Want to Grow
Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.
—Jim Rohn, Business Philosopher
Know What You Want to Grow / 119
Most managers, especially those who struggle with
“making plan,” place the plan’s numbers down around sixth
on their daily priority list.
Most struggling managers place these things above the
“plan” in their priority hierarchy:
1. Not upsetting other people’s feelings.
2. The commitment to looking extremely busy.
3. Fire-fighting and problem-solving.
4. Explaining and justifying other people’s
performances, both up and down the
ladder.
5. Being liked.
A few years ago we saw the brilliant business consultant Steve Hardison come into a struggling, financially failing company and turn everything around. He did it by
altering priorities.
The first thing he did was put HUGE whiteboards up
all over the company meeting room to record and reflect
daily sales numbers and activity.
In the company’s past, numbers had been an embarrassment. They were whispered about at the end of the
month. If people weren’t hitting good numbers, the management spent all its time listening to the reasons.
The salespeople became good salespeople, but what
they were learning to sell was their excuses, not their product. All management meetings focused on “Circumstances,
Issues, and Situations that Prevent Us from Succeeding.”
The other day, we spoke to an operations manager at a
company that was falling far short of its business projections.
“We’re not making plan,” he said.
“Why not?”
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“The economy. The weather. The war. The way kids
are brought up today. The lack of good candidates for
positions here. Company dysfunction. Industry decline.
Government regulations. Competition moving in. No budget for sales training.”
“Other than that, what’s in your way?”
As we sat in on their company meetings, we observed
that all the management meetings were about those subjects. All their meetings focused on the obstacles to success.
What you focus on grows.
Focus on numbers, and they, too, will grow.
Huge.
47. Soften Your Heart
He is only advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, his blood
warmer, his brain quicker, and his spirit entering into living peace.
—John Ruskin, Art and Social Critic
People who really succeed in leadership and in sales
transform the entire activity away from the concept of
managing and selling (even though they have high respect for that) into the day-to-day concept of building
relationships.
They always think in terms of their relationship with
the other person: How can I make it better? How can I
serve her? How can I contribute to her life today? How
can I show him a demonstration of my commitment? How
can I make her happier? How can I make it easier for
him to access this information?
Coach Your People to Complete / 121
There is a continual expansion of the friendly side of
the relationship. A leader knows that communication solves
almost all problems. Avoidance worsens all problems.
No leadership agreement was ever made outside of a
conversation. So have your conversations be vital.
Have a lot of conversations today and make them warm
and comfortable. Have them all lead you to your ultimate
goal.
Master teacher Lance Secretan has written 13 books
on leadership, and sums up his findings this way: “Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is
about opening the heart. Leadership is about inspiration—
of oneself and of others. Great leadership is about human
experiences, not processes. Leadership is not a formula
or a program, it is a human activity that comes from the
heart and considers the hearts of others.”
48. Coach Your People
to Complete
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging
on of an uncompleted task.
—William James, Psychologist/Philosopher
If your people become more and more burned out and
fatigued, it’s up to you to help them redirect a course of action that leads them to the completion of previous projects.
Once, long ago, we went to hear Cheryl Richardson
give a presentation to “Coach U” over in Phoenix, and it
was the first time we went to one of her meetings. We
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didn’t know her or anything about Coach U, but we settled
in for the talk.
Richardson stood up and said to all of us, “Can you
come up with a list of the top 10 things that are incomplete, that need to get done in your life? Can you come up
with that list?”
Of course, everyone could. So we did. We all wrote 10
things down! And then she told us a story to illustrate how
she coaches her clients. She said she had a massage therapist who came in to see her, and she said to him, “What’s
the issue?”
And the client said, “I need more business.”
She said, “Okay, I want you to write down the top 10
unfinished things that you need to complete in your life.”
And the client wrote them down.
Then she said, “Now, I want you to make a commitment that you will get those complete.”
And the massage therapist said, “Okay, but that’s not
why I’m here to see you. I’m here because I need more
business.”
Cheryl Richardson said, “I know that. Get this done,
and you’ll get more business.”
And her coaching client said, “What? This doesn’t have
anything to do with getting more business.”
Cheryl explained, “Actually, everything that is incomplete in your life is what I call an energy drain. And that is
stopping you from creating more business.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Cheryl said, “I only do this for a living! I counsel lots
of clients, who all have this same thing. Are you willing to
try it? If not, let’s forget this relationship.”
Do the Math on Your Approach / 123
“Well, okay, I guess, yeah. I need to get those things
done anyway.” So he made a commitment to get three of
the 10 done by the next meeting.
The following week, he reported back in and said, “I
completed my assignment.”
And Cheryl asked, “What happened?”
“Amazing! Even before the first week was over, three
new people have called me out of the blue, and filled up
my calendar.”
And Cheryl says, “That’s how it works.”
We never forgot that lesson, and have re-taught it ever
since. It’s not just that your people have got all those
incompletes out there, but the underlying thought of it,
the subconscious knowledge is the energy drain.
It’s draining their productivity, imagination, and vitality away. Help them clean up those incompletes and their
motivation will surprise you.
49. Do the Math on
Your Approach
We make a living by what we get,
but we make a life by what we give.
—Winston Churchill
You will really enjoy motivating others if you start
thinking of your life as a mathematical equation.
We first saw the fun and benefit of this when our good
friend and company CEO Duane Black solved the equation
on two flip charts in front of a grateful gathering of managers.
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Here it is: When you are positive (picturing the math
sign: +), you add something to any conversation or meeting you are part of. That’s what being positive does, it
adds.
When you are negative (–), you subtract something
from the conversation, the meeting, or the relationship
you are part of. If you are negative enough times, you subtract so much from the relationship that there is no more
relationship left. It’s simple math. It’s the law of the universe up there on the flip chart of life: positive adds, negative subtracts.
As in math, when you add a negative, it diminishes the
total. Add a negative person to the team, and the morale
and spirit (and, therefore, productivity and profit) of the
team is diminished.
When you are a positive leader with positive thoughts
about the future and the people you lead, you add something to every person you talk to. You bring something of
value to every communication. Even every e-mail and
voice mail (that’s positive) adds something to the life of
the person who receives it. Because positive (+) always
adds something.
It’s a definite plus.
It even runs deeper than that. If you think positive
thoughts throughout the day, you are adding to your own
deep inner experience of living. You are bringing a plus to
your own spirit and energy with each positive thought.
Your negative thoughts take away from the experience
of being alive. They rob you of your energy.
Say this to yourself: “I like this math. I like its simplicity. I can now do this math throughout my day. When I
am experiencing negative thoughts about my team or my
Count Yourself In / 125
to-do list, I know it’s time to take a break and regroup and
refresh. It’s time to call a time-out, close my eyes, and
relax into my purpose and my mission. It’s time to slow
down and breathe into it. I take a lot of quick breaks like
that during the day, and this practice is changing my life
for the better. It is making me stronger and more energetic than ever before.”
Your own strength and energy motivates others.
Or, as Carlos Castaneda said, “We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount
of work is the same.”
50. Count Yourself In
To decide to be at the level of choice, is to take responsibility
for your life and to be in control of your life.
—Arbie M. Dale, Psychologist/Author
Leaders who take ownership motivate more effectively
than leaders who pass themselves off as victims of the “corporate” structure or “upper management.”
That’s because they have made a conscious decision
to live at the level of choice.
Throughout their day, their people hear them talk of
“buying in.” They are always heard saying, “Count me in.
I’m in on that.”
The reason leaders living at the level of choice say,
“Count me in,” is not because they’re apple-polishing,
bootlicking “company” people. As a matter of fact, they don’t
much care who their company is! They’re going to play full
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out for the company because it makes life more interesting,
it makes work a better experience, and it’s more fun. Whether
it’s a volleyball game on a picnic or the company’s latest big
project, it is more fun to buy in and play hard.
Let’s say the company orders everyone to break up
into experimental teams. The manager with the victim’s
mind may say, “I’ll wait and see if this is a good idea. Why
are they throwing new stuff at us now? It’s not enough that
I have to work for a living; I’ve got to play all these games.
What’s this woo-woo, touchy-feely team stuff? I’m not going to buy into it yet; I’ll wait and see. I’ll give it five months.”
Meanwhile the owner-leader is saying, “Hey, I’m not
going to judge this thing. That’s a waste of mental energy.
I’m buying in. Why? Because it deserves to be bought in
to? No. I don’t care if it deserves to be bought in to. I am
buying in because it gives me more energy, it makes working more fun, I deserve to be happy at work, and I know
from experience that buying into things works.”
True leadership inspires a spirit of buy-in. It’s a spirit
that has no relationship to whether the company “deserves”
being bought in to—no relationship at all. The source of
the buy-in is a personal commitment to have a great experience of life. That’s where it comes from. It doesn’t come
from whether the company has “earned it.” True leaders
don’t negatively personalize their companies. That habit
is a form of mental illness.
You stand for mental health. And when other people
see that spirit in you, they are motivated to live by positive
example too. They can see that it works.
In sports, it’s sometimes easier to see the value of this
spirit. It seems obviously smart for an athlete to say, “I
don’t care if I’m playing for a minor league team or a major
To Motivate Your People, First Just Relax / 127
league team, it’s in my self-interest to play full-out when I
play.”
In companies, though, that would be a rare position to
take.
But true leaders are rare. They don’t wait for the company to catch up to their lead. They take the lead. They
don’t wait for the company to give them something good
to follow.
No company will ever catch up with a great individual.
A great individual will always be more creative than the
company as a whole.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Even if a man is called to
be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michelangelo
painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare
wrote poetry.”
51. To Motivate Your People,
First Just Relax
A frightened captain makes a frightened crew.
—Lister Sinclair, Playwright/Broadcaster
The great music teacher and motivator of artists
Rodney Mercado had a simple recipe for success. He said,
“There are only two principles that you need to get to play
great music or to live a great life: concentration and relaxation. And that’s it. That is it.”
Scott recalls this remark and what he said back to
Professor Mercado: “What? That doesn’t have anything
to do with music!”
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“It has everything to do with music.”
And the way he taught relaxation was to say, “You
need to have the maximum relaxation. For instance, if you
want to play faster, Scott, you need to relax more. If you
want to play louder, you need to relax more. If you want
more sound coming out, you need to relax more.”
Up to this point in my life, it sounded like someone
saying, “Well, if you want to become a cowboy, go to
Harvard.” It didn’t make any sense. It seemed like a
contradiction.
Doesn’t it sound like a contradiction? If you’re going
to be louder, stronger, and motivate people, don’t you want
to get them all hyped up and worked up? That’s what I
had always thought: light a fire! Get the lead out of your
pants!
So up to this point in my life, if I wanted to play faster,
I would get hyped and tense up. And I would try harder.
In any aspect of my life where I was trying to get more of
something, I would become more tense from trying.
But Mercado said, “I’m going to play a passage of music
and I want you to just listen for a moment.”
I did. I don’t remember the passage played at the time,
but he almost ripped the strings off the violin. It was a
virtuoso passage, but it sounded like he was going to make
the strings just fly apart, there was so much sound and
motion being produced. And I was awed.
“Now, Scott, I want you to put your arm on top of my
forearm while I play this passage, and feel what’s going on
while I’m doing this.”
When I put my arm on top of his forearm and he played
this passage (and by the way, I’m trying to hang on for dear
life, because his arm was flying), I was stunned, because his
To Motivate Your People, First Just Relax / 129
arm was almost totally relaxed. There was no tension in
the muscles!
And all of a sudden, I got it.
Getting it changed my entire concept of playing the
violin, but it also changed my concept of what I was doing
in life. I had been tensing and straining for success instead
of relaxing for it.
The same formula works for a sprinter in track and
field. What most sprinters do when they try to run faster
is to put more effort into it. And they don’t realize it but
they tense up their muscles and their times actually drop.
Trying harder slows them down! The sprinters don’t realize that they’re at their peak state of relaxation during
their fastest times.
I saw this firsthand while on the Brigham Young University track team when I was in a physical education class.
I thought I was pretty tough stuff, so I raced one guy who
wasn’t on the track team. The guy barely beat me, but he
was straining and out of control, and he just stumbled over
the finish line.
Then I met another guy who was one of the top sprinters on the BYU track team, and I challenged him to a
race.
We took off and he beat me by a wide margin. But
there he was—Mercado’s theory in motion—totally relaxed, totally fluid, and he just flew by me.
So that principle is something that I have now adopted
anytime I’m doing anything. If I’m in front of a jury, or my
company, or any other group while I’m speaking, I know
that the secret is relaxation, counterintuitive as that may
seem.
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Because what do most people do? They get nervous,
they get tense, and their performance drops. But because
of the training Mercado gave me, anytime I feel any tension at all, I slow down and relax all the more.
His words always come back to me: “If you start shaking, there’s only one way you can shake. You have to be
tense. If you relax, you cannot shake. If you start shaking,
that’s a sign that you’re not relaxing.”
Many team leaders get up in front of their teams or
their company and are so nervous about speaking that they
lose all ability to motivate anyone!
We have attended countless conventions and retreats
where the CEO totally blows an opportunity to motivate
his people by stepping up to the podium and reading nervously from a script, or making a brief and tense talk that
leaves everyone flat.
A vice president of a large bank said to us of his CEO
after the CEO had addressed 200 senior managers at a
yearly conference:
“Did you hear him? Did you see him? I mean, we wait
all year to hear his words to us and he gives this nervous,
brief, memorized talk! Like he couldn’t be bothered to
really talk to us!”
“He was obviously nervous about his talk.”
“That’s my point! To him, it was something he had to
do. He obviously didn’t want to do it. So his whole focus
was on himself and what little he could get away with doing.”
“What do you want? He’s not a public speaker.”
“Well, if he’s going to lead a large company and ask us
to hit the goals he’s asking us to, he darn well better learn
to be a public speaker! Because it’s not about him, it’s
about us. We deserve better. We deserve someone talking
Don’t Throw the Quit Switch / 131
to us, and I mean really talking to us. From the heart. Loud
and strong and with passion and without a darn script!”
“So, how do you really feel about his talk?”
“That he came across as a pathetic little ball of ego
who doesn’t deserve to lead this company because he refuses to put himself on the line. We would have been more
motivated if he had called in sick.”
If you’re in a situation where you have to give a talk to
your people and you feel tense, like it’s not coming from
the heart, practice relaxing on the spot. If your legs start
to shake, don’t worry. It’s just feedback time, and the feedback from your body is that you’re not relaxed. If you’re
relaxed, you cannot shake; it’s physically impossible. Once
you relax, you become a much better speaker. So don’t
just practice the talk you’re going to give. Practice relaxing, too.
52. Don’t Throw the
Quit Switch
Most people succeed because they are determined to. People
of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success
because they don’t know when to quit.
—George Allen, Football Coach
Every Olympic athlete, every leader, and every human
being has a certain little-known brain part in common: a
Quit Switch.
Some people, out of lifelong habit, throw the Quit
Switch at the first sign of frustration. Their workout gets
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difficult, so they throw the switch and go home. Their day
of phone calls gets frustrating, so they throw the switch
and go for coffee with a coworker for two hours of sympathetic negativity.
Everyone has a Quit Switch. Not everyone knows it.
Get to know it. Notice yourself flipping the switch.
You can’t quit and you won’t quit until you throw the switch.
A human being is built like any animal to persist until a
goal is reached. Watch children get what they want and
you’ll see the natural, built-in persistence.
Somewhere along the way, though, we learn about this
little switch. Soon, we start flipping the switch. Some of us
begin by flipping it after a severe frustration, and then
start flipping it after medium frustrations, and until finally
it is thrown in the face of any discomfort at all. We quit.
If you weren’t in the habit of throwing the switch too
early, you would achieve virtually any goal you ever set.
You would never give up on your team. You’d make every
month’s sales goal. You’d even lose all the weight you ever
wanted to lose. You would achieve anything you wanted
because you would not throw the switch.
The Quit Switch is something you can focus on, learn
about, and make work for you instead of against you.
Whether you flip it early or late is only habit. The switchflipping habit is misinterpreted as lack of willpower, courage, drive, or desire, but that’s nonsense. It’s a habit. And
like any habit, it can be replaced with another habit.
Make it your habit not to throw the Quit Switch early
in any process. Do not quit on yourself as a leader or on
your team as producers. The less of a quitter you are, the
more of a motivator you become.
Lead With Enthusiasm / 133
53. Lead With Enthusiasm
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
All the world’s a stage.
You are a great actor on that stage.
So, when it is your turn to appear in a scene, be enthusiastic! Especially if you have something about which you
need to fire up your team. If you have something to convince them of, try being really enthusiastic about what you
have to say, simply as a place to come from.
When your employee speaks in return, be enthusiastic. Glow. Sparkle. Radiate leadership and solutions. Pump
yourself up. Take it to an even higher level.
When you’re ready to get the team involved, don’t fade
out—remember you are acting enthusiastic. You are an
actor, and a good one. Finish strong. Enthusiasm is contagious. People love to be around it. It makes them smile
and shake their heads; it can even make them laugh with
pleasure at the dynamo that is you.
Most managers make the mistake of not doing this.
They act reserved, cool, and “professional.” They don’t
act “professional” because they are professional; they do
it because they’re scared (about how they’re coming
across), and they think if they act cool they will be safe.
We spoke with Jeremy about a talk we had him give to
his team.
“You seemed a little less than enthusiastic about this
new commission system, Jeremy.”
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“Really? I didn’t realize that.”
“That’s the point.”
“What do you mean?” Jeremy asked.
“You aren’t realizing your lack of enthusiasm in front
of your team because you are choosing not to be conscious
of it.”
“How is it a choice?”
“You are choosing to be less than enthusiastic.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel like I’m making
any kind of choice.” Jeremy said.
“You speak Spanish, don’t you Jeremy?”
“Yes, I do. I’m bilingual. It helps with certain customers.”
“Did you realize that you gave your talk to your team
in English? Were you aware of that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Did you choose that?”
“Of course I chose it! The team all speaks English.
What are you driving at here?” Jeremy asked.
“Your choice to speak in English was as clear and definite a choice as your choice to be unenthusiastic. You have
an equally clear choice about enthusiasm (or no enthusiasm)
as you do about choosing between English and Spanish.
We recommend you stop choosing to be unenthusiastic
with your people.”
Jeremy said nothing.
“Because being calm and professional doesn’t motivate. A chilly demeanor doesn’t make much of an impression. It is immediately forgotten, along with the idea you
are promoting.”
Enthusiasm comes from the Greek words en theos,
which translate to “the God within,” the most spirited and
Encourage Your People to Concentrate / 135
spiritual you. You times 10. Like the you when you were a
little kid riding your bike with no hands.
Enthusiasm is contagious. If you are excited about your
idea, everyone else will be excited. That’s how it works.
Always remember Emerson’s observation, “Nothing great
was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
You can lead with enthusiasm, or you can lead without
enthusiasm. Those are your choices. One choice leads to a
highly motivated team; the other leads to long-term problems.
“But how can I be enthusiastic when I’m not?” Jeremy
finally said.
We have managers ask that question all the time. The
answer is easy. The way to be enthusiastic is to act enthusiastic. There isn’t a person in the world who can tell the
difference if you put your heart and soul into your acting.
And about a minute and a half into your acting, the funniest thing starts to happen: the enthusiasm becomes real.
You do feel it. And so does your team.
54. Encourage Your People
to Concentrate
The first law of success is concentration, to bend all the
energies to one point, and to go directly to that point,
looking neither to the right, nor to the left.
—William Matthews, Journalist
The other principle that Professor Mercado believed
in was concentration, or focus. And to drive it home to his
students, he had a bizarre system.
136 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Scott recalls: Professor Mercado had us play music
recitals, as most teachers do. But at these recitals, he would
have us play our pieces twice. The first time we would play
them like at any standard recital. We would all play “Mary
Had A Little Lamb” on the violin and the audience would
politely clap. And then, after that performance was done
and everybody had a chance to play the traditional way,
Mercado would say, “Okay, now we’re going to play it
again. Everyone’s going to have a chance to perform their
piece again.”
But this time, while the performers were performing,
Mercado would pass out slips of paper to the audience.
The slips would have instructions written on them, such
as, “Go up to the performer and tickle his ear.” “Sing ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’” Mercado would even say to the
performer’s accompanist, “Speed up.” “Slow down.”
“Stop.”
Mercado would then physically come up to us while
we were playing and he would do things even more radical
than that! He would take our bow away. He would untune
our strings so you couldn’t get any sound out of the string.
Then, he would start tuning the instrument back up. Basically, all hell would break loose during these second
performances.
And when it was over, he would ask each one of us,
“Which performance was better? The first, normal one,
or the second one, where all hell was breaking loose?”
When I ask people nowadays what they think the answer was, most people guess it was the first, normal way.
But invariably, the second performance was better. The
one in which we were most distracted! And we all admitted that. And then he would ask us the question, “Why?”
Inspire Inner Stability / 137
And the answer was pretty obvious to the musicians
who had lived through it, and that was because we were
“forced” to totally concentrate and focus on our music
internally. We had been compelled to exclude every other
environmental impact or influence and just wipe it out. If
we had paid any attention to what was going on around us,
we would have become hopelessly lost.
And so by that total internal focus on what we were
attempting to produce—the music—and excluding everything else, including our accompanist, we performed fantastically in the face of extraordinary odds. You can’t
imagine anything that difficult.
The lesson was huge. And I use the lesson this way:
the next time I’m upset by the chaos and problems swirling all around me, I use it to focus myself even more.
If you want your people to be truly inspired by your
example, show them how to use distractions to focus them
even more, not less. Show them how it’s done.
The great Igor Stravinsky once said, “My freedom will
be so much the greater and more meaningful the more
narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one
imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that
shackle the spirit.”
55. Inspire Inner Stability
Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is
precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.
—Warren Bennis
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People look so hard for stability. All the leaders we
coach and work with on some level or another are secretly
trying to find more stability in their work, in their careers,
and especially in their companies.
But the key to stability is not to look outside yourself
for it. It’s useless to try to find it from your company or
from your industry. It only works to look inside. You need
to turn the mirror around so you can see yourself. You
need to find it inside your own enthusiasm for work. And
sometimes that inner enthusiasm must be built from
scratch, from improvisation.
Psychologist Nathaniel Branden puts it this way: “Chances
are, when you were young, you were told, in effect, ‘Listen,
kid, here is the news: life is not about you. Life is not about
what you want. What you want is not important. Life is
about doing what others expect of you.’ If you accepted
this idea, later on you wondered what had happened to
your fire. Where had your enthusiasm for living gone?”
Ask yourself the following questions: Do I feel good
about myself at the end of the day? Am I proud of my
leadership today? Do I feel that wonderful, little feeling
that I get when we’ve had a good day and we feel like we’ve
really nailed it? If so, that opinion is vital (and visible) to
the people I want to motivate.
If you can consciously build that level of confidence in
yourself as a leader, then you can put stability into your
career. That’s where real stability comes from, especially
in this era of rapid-fire external changes.
The marketplace changes, each industry changes, the
whole world changes. Every morning as we open up the newspaper or turn on the news, something radical is different.
Something important will never be the same.
Give Up Being Right / 139
This rapid change is terrifying to unstable people.
Unstable people wish things would just stay the same.
Even if the company comes up with a new compensation plan, new pricing for customers, new ways of hiring,
or anything that might look like future stability, I still can’t
go to sleep. Change happens.
Does anything motivate people more than to be in the
presence of a leader with inner stability and self-esteem?
We build self-esteem in small increments just like athletes build strength. They don’t do it overnight. They do it
day by day, adding a little more weight to the bar, adding a
little more distance to the run. Pretty soon, they are magnificent, powerful, wonderful athletes.
The same is true with leadership; it happens the same
way. A little bit every day—a little better at communication, a little better at delegation, a little better at servant
leadership, a little bit better at listening to people and executing plans. Getting 2 percent, maybe 4 percent, better.
No more than that.
But it’s conscious and it is inspiring to be around.
56. Give Up Being Right
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
—Benjamin Disraeli
When people are promoted to a management position,
they often feel that it’s very important that everybody sees
that they know what they’re doing.
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So they twist that into a drive to be right. They think
people will only admire them if they’re right about things,
and by doing this, they make it really hard for themselves
to be human with their people. They make it hard for themselves to admit that they’re wrong and to say to other
people, “You know what? You’re right about that.”
A really strong, motivational leader who is admired
and respected is one who does not have to be right about
anything. Ever.
It is much more powerful to say to someone, “You
know, now that I’ve listened to you, one thing I’ve realized is that you are right about that. And I’m going to take
some steps to get that done.” That’s a person who will
eventually motivate others.
Because being right is never going to matter in the
long run. What’s going to matter in the long run is achieving something. I can be wrong about absolutely everything
day in, day out, and still be a wonderfully great leader.
Why? Because I brought out the best in my people. I’ve
taught them to make their own decisions. I have drawn
out their strengths, their loyalties, their high performance,
and all the numbers have tumbled in my direction.
57. Wake Yourself Up
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.
They seem to be more afraid of life than death.
—James F. Bymes, former Secretary of State
Change will scare my people to the degree that it
scares me.
Wake Yourself Up / 141
So another way to consciously build my inner strength
as a leader is to increase my awareness of what life is like,
what the world is like, and what the business community is
like. As I become more aware of that, I become a better
leader.
I don’t want to just put my head into the sand, and say,
“But we’ve been doing it this way for 20 years.”
I don’t want to always be heard saying, “I don’t want
to think about it, I don’t want to be aware that anything’s
changed. I just want everything to be like it used to be; I
want people to be the way they used to be.”
But if I don’t want to have a real understanding of
what people are like today, especially younger people, and
how they’re perceiving life, my leadership skills will decline over the years, and pretty soon I’ll become almost
irrelevant.
As Nathaniel Branden writes in Self-Esteem at Work:
We now live in a global economy characterized
by rapid change, accelerating scientific and technological breakthroughs, and an unprecedented
level of competitiveness. These developments
create demands for higher levels of education
and training than were required from previous
generations. ... What is not understood is that
these developments also create new demands on
our psychological resources. Specifically, these
developments ask for greater capacity for innovation, number one, self-management, number
two, personal responsibility, number three, and
self-direction.
It used to be that leaders were led by other leaders,
managers were managed by other managers, and there
142 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
wasn’t that much wiggle room in between. We were told
what to do, then we told other people what to do, and it
was basically a hierarchical, military-type system. A topdown silo.
But now, things are so complex and ever-changing—
it’s like calling audible plays at the line of scrimmage every single time, instead of running regular plays. That’s
what global business life is like right now. Life has changed
profoundly. And it will continue to change even faster as
time goes on. That’s good news for a leader committed to
being more and more awake to it.
58. Always Show Them
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
—Confucius
A lot of great sports players go into coaching, but it
just doesn’t quite work. Sometimes, it turns out, they’re
just not very good at it.
And there’s a reason. It’s not mysterious. They are
simply not totally conscious of what it was that made them
great players. A lot of what they did as players was intuitive and subconscious. It was the feel of the thing. And so
they have a very hard time teaching it to others and communicating it because they didn’t even know what it was.
The best batting coach of all time was Charlie Lau. He
taught a baseball player by the name of George Brett how
to hit. And, as you may know, George Brett was one of the
greatest hitters of all time, hitting in the high .300s all the
Always Show Them / 143
time. But Charlie Lau—his coach, his instructor, his
teacher—had a lifetime batting average of .255! Charlie
Lau was a mediocre hitter at best.
But because Lau had to struggle so hard just to stay in
the majors, just to keep his job, he learned hitting inside
and out. He became extremely conscious of how it was
done. Therefore, he was great at teaching it.
So when you figure something out, anything, that your
people are not doing up to the level that you’d like them to
be doing, show them what to do. Take the bat in your own
hands and show them how to hit.
Christina wanted our opinion of a problem she was
having with her team.
“My people aren’t great with customers,” Christina
said. “I believe they leave a lot of business on the table.”
“Tell us how you’d like your people to be different.”
“Well, here’s what I think,” said Christina. “I bet if
my people talked to customers a little differently, asked
them more questions, got more interested in their lives,
that they’d find out a few other areas in which they could
help them out. They’d find out areas where we might have
a product or a service that would help the customer. Instead, my people just sell people things, they’re just ordertakers, and our sales aren’t as high as they could be if my
team took a greater interest in the customer.”
“What have you done about that?”
“First, I sent that opinion around in an e-mail, and
that didn’t go over very well,” said Christina.
“Of course it wouldn’t.”
“Right,” she said. “Then I called some of my managers
and said, ‘I want you to get your people to do more of this!’”
144 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
“Did that go well?”
“No.”
“What else did you do?”
“I called HR,” said Christina. “I told HR we really
needed training in this. Relationships. The upsell.”
“How did the training go?”
“Still waiting,” said Christina. “I’m still waiting for an
answer to my request for it.”
“Christina, do this yourself! A true leader, a really
powerful leader, who’s consciously motivating others to
great performance, will show them how to do it. A true
leader will figure out what it is that she wants her people
to do and then will go in and demonstrate it.”
We watched Christina later as she talked to her team.
“Here, let me work with you today,” she told them. “I
want to talk to customers who come in. All I’d like you to
do is be with me and watch me do it, be there, help out,
ask questions if you can think of them. But let me do the
work.”
Christina learned to show people the way she wished
they would do it. She realized that the best way to communicate that was to do it herself. That was her new leverage
point, and by doing it that way her people got excited and
understood quickly.
If you just tell your people, “I want you to do more of
that, you’ve got to get better at that,” it falls on deaf ears,
and sometimes even worse. Sometimes it causes people to
defend how they’re doing it. Or it causes people to tell
you, “I don’t have time to do that.”
To really motivate, talk less and demonstrate more.
Focus Like a Camera / 145
59. Focus Like a Camera
Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do
more listening than talking.
—Bernard Baruch
We want to introduce a kind of leadership that we find
in only one out of every 10 leaders we work with.
We call it focused leadership. It’s the ability on the
part of a leader to be absolutely focused. And what we
mean by focused is not hard-core, intense concentration,
as if you’re forcing something. It’s really the opposite. It’s
a much more relaxed sense of focus.
So what we’d like you to do is picture a camera focusing: you’re looking through the camera and it looks fuzzy,
and as you turn the focus dial or knob, you don’t have to
jam it or whack it or slam it. All you have to do is move it
very gently one way or the other, and, all of a sudden, the
whole picture comes into focus. That same thing can happen with your outlook as a leader.
Someone will walk into your office and sit down. Notice that you are beginning to focus on him like a camera,
because there’s that internal dial in you that is very slowly
moving until the person across the way comes into a gentle,
relaxed, absolute focus.
And now, you may breathe a sigh (go ahead), and take
a deep breath, and say, “Tell me what’s on your mind.
How’re you doing? Let’s talk about this issue here.”
Your employee will pick up on this gentle, relaxed sense
of focus, and be honored by it. They will be thinking this
about you: It’s as if we’re the only two people in the world
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right now. It feels like we’re on a desert island and we’ve got
all the time in the world.
You will be thinking, And I’m listening to you, and
you and I are going to get to the bottom of this. But not in
a rushed way, and not because we have to. But because
that’s where the conversation will take us in an open way.
In a way that honors you and acknowledges you, and hears
you, and we just talk. We’re going to exchange some ideas,
I’m going to ask you some questions, and we’re going to find
out what the two of us think about this. I’m not going to tell
you what to do. And I’m not someone who’s got an agenda
that’s hidden that I’m going to reveal to you bit by bit as I
talk to you. I’m wide open. I’m like a camera.
And you are a great leader.
You already know the other kind of leader, the not so
great one; the leader who comes into meetings carrying
his electronic organizer, and while he’s sitting in the meeting, he’ll be returning e-mails, picking up his vibrating cell
phone every two or three minutes to see who it is, and also
trying to be in the meeting.
He’s thinking he’s multitasking, but really, he’s just
not focused. And everyone who runs into that leader feels
diminished by the exchange.
We talked to Richie about a leader of his who behaves
that way.
“I always feel about him that he’s someone who has no
time for me,” Richie said. “That’s someone who’d really
rather not be talking to me right now. The minute I sit
down he rattles off a list of ideas he has. He doesn’t care
what I think.”
Focus Like a Camera / 147
That “leader” doesn’t know that of the hundred people
he communicated with that week in some form—some by
e-mail, some by PDA, some by fax, some by phone, some
in person, some in the hallway—all 100 people have been
distanced by this behavior.
And maybe, deep down, this dysfunctional manager
senses the distancing that’s happening. And so he has an
uneasy feeling. He must fix this sense of things not going
right. But rather than slowing down, he speeds up even
more!
Once we told a manager who behaved this way that he
ought to wear a sign around his neck.
“What do you mean a sign around my neck?”
“You ought to wear a sign, like people do in treatment
centers when they’re trying to solve a personal issue, and
the sign should say, ‘I HAVE NO TIME FOR YOU.’”
He said nothing.
“You also might want to have your e-mail send an automatic reply to people saying, ‘I HAVE NO TIME FOR
YOU.’”
“Why would I do that? I could never do that,” he said.
“You’re doing it now. You’re sending that message
now. This way, you’d just be more up front about it.”
When we coach managers to open up and focus on
their people, like a camera, it actually saves them time in
the long run. Because it takes a lot less time to manage a
motivated, trusting team than it does to work with a demoralized, upset team.
148 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
60. Think of Management
as Easy
Always think of what you have to do as easy and it will be.
—Émile Coué, Psychologist
A thought is more than a thought, it creates your reality.
The role of thought in managing people and results
cannot be overestimated. What you think about how hard
your work is more important than any so-called interpreted “reality” about your work.
If you think motivating people is hard, it is hard.
There’s no difference. As Shakespeare said, “There is nothing bad nor good, but thinking makes it so.”
If you think it’s hard and uncomfortable to get on the
telephone, then it is. If you think you’re happy and relaxed picking up the phone, then you are.
It’s important to see the power that thought has in the
world of leadership. If you’re thinking thoughts that bring
you down, you’re not going to have a very good “people”
day. Leadership requires high levels of humanity. To be
great leaders, we need to share our humanity and receive
our people’s humanity all day.
You can be a leader who is successful at motivating
others. Thought is the key.
When Napoleon Hill wrote Think and Grow Rich
(Ballantine Books, Reissue Ed., 1990) his point was that
you can think yourself into a perfect position to become
successful. Many people have followed his instructions and
done it. We can also do it. Is it easy? Actually it can be.
For as the great and celebrated psychologist Coué said,
Cultivate the Power of Reassurance / 149
“Always think of what you have to do as easy and it will be.”
One thing’s for sure: It can’t be harder than you think it is.
61. Cultivate the Power of
Reassurance
In organizations, real power and energy is generated
through relationships. The patterns of relationships
and the capacities to form them are more important than
tasks, functions, roles, and positions.
—Margaret Wheatly, Management Consultant
One of the most valuable additions to a person’s life
that a leader can provide is reassurance.
You won’t hear about it in any management seminars,
and that’s a shame, because there’s nothing more motivating than a healthy dose of reassurance.
How many leadership books focus on it? None. How
important is it as a management tool? It’s the most important tool.
How many times during the day do you ask yourself,
“How reassuring was I in that conversation?” How many
times before a conversation do you ask yourself, “Now,
how can I be really reassuring to this person, so that they
leave reassured that everything’s going to be all right, and
that they’ve got the skills to do this job?”
If you integrate reassurance into your personal system
and managerial approach, things will change on your team.
The state of mind of your people will be altered for the
better.
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People look to their leaders for reassurance. Period.
Truth is, they don’t get that reassurance most of the time.
They get the opposite. They get the impression that the
team is racing and behind the gun. Their manager’s demeanor and language cries out, “We’ve got to go, go, go.
I’m late, I’m sorry I’m late for my meeting with you.” “I’m
on the phone and it’s rush, rush, and we’re behind the
eight ball, and it’s crazy around here.”
The problem with that message is that it’s not reassuring. When you do the chaos act and convey a crisis mentality, it undermines productivity. The last thing you
wanted.
The concept that counters all of that and cures it forever is the concept of reassurance. Once you’got the concept, make it a practice. Watch the results.
62. Phase Out Disagreement
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
—Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize–Scientist
When you listen to another person during a meeting
or in a one-on-one, one of the best things you can do is to
stop disagreeing.
In other words, listen for the value in what someone
has to say; don’t listen for whether you agree with them,
because every time you disagree with one of your employees, you throw them off balance and put them in a worse
mood than they were before.
Phase Out Disagreement / 151
If I disagree with you, what will you do? You will defend
yourself. Won’t you? All humans do. And you are human. So
you go on the defensive. You don’t just say, “Oh, okay,
yeah, I see your point of view. Yes sir, you’re right, and I
was wrong, and so that’s good. I’m in a better mood now.
What else do you disagree with?” That won’t happen.
If you’re going to disagree with someone, accept the
consequences.
The main consequence: you’ve lowered that person’s
mood. And the consequence of putting someone in a low
mood? That person’s not going to do a very motivated
job. People do not do well when they’re in a low mood.
Their energy goes away.
However, if you were to start listening for the value in
what people had to say, instead of whether you disagreed
with them, their moods would still be good as you talked.
In fact, by listening for the value in everyone in the team
meeting instead of listening for whether you agree, the mood
of the whole room will rise. You can influence an entire
team meeting by having it be your personal policy as a leader
to always listen for the value in what someone has to say.
Most managers don’t do that. Most managers let someone talk, and then say, “No, that’s not right. I don’t agree
with that.”
Then they wonder why their employees now feel undervalued. But it was the manager’s obsession with disagreement that made the employee feel undervalued.
How does making someone feel stupid make someone
ready to be more motivated? Does anyone ever think,
“Okay, you’ve made me feel stupid, I’m really ready to
work hard now. I’m feelin’ stupid, let’s go!”
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Most managers tell us, “Well, if I disagree, I disagree.
All I’m doing is disagreeing.”
Okay, but every time you disagree, you’re going to
challenge somebody and make them feel stupid, and that’s
the consequence. Sometimes you have to disagree. But
the less you do, the better the team will be for you. The
more motivated your people will be.
63. Keep Learning
Leaders grow; they are not made.
—Peter F. Drucker
Stay on your learning curve. And let your people see
you learning. Don’t show them a “know-it-all” attitude all
the time.
Let them know that you are a work in progress. That
will make it easier for them to approach you with good ideas.
Most managers are so insecure in their role that they
continuously try to look like they know more than everyone else. They never go to seminars. They scorn the latest
book on management theory. But this attitude is actually
demoralizing to their followers.
We all can learn something new about our profession
every day. Little by little, we can add to our knowledge
base, and that increases our professional strength and capacity to help others.
Learn What Leadership Is Not / 153
64. Learn What Leadership Is Not
The great leaders are like the best conductors—they reach beyond
the notes to reach the magic in the players.
—Blaine Lee, Management Consultant
Managers make a big mistake when they get bossy. It
is a sure sign of insecurity when you push the point that
you’re the boss.
You can be decisive and courageous, and hold people
accountable without ever being pushy and bossy about it.
Dee Hock, founder and CEO emeritus of VISA
International, put it this way: “Control is not leadership;
management is not leadership; leadership is leadership is
leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50 percent
of your time leading yourself—your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20
percent leading those with authority over you and 15 percent leading your peers. If you don’t understand that you
work for your mislabeled ‘subordinates,’ then you know
nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.”
Those are strong words for the bossy. But the bossy
are clueless about human nature, especially in these times.
All of our people are thinkers. They aren’t just robots.
The old style of militaristic leadership is no longer appropriate. It’s no longer leadership.
Today’s leaders find the magic in their players.
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65. Hear Your People Out
I have more fun, and enjoy more financial success,
when I stop trying to get what I want and start
helping other people get what they want.
—Spencer Johnson, Business Author
How would we know what kind of a leader you are?
There is one very fast way: We would ask the people
who follow you. They know. And what they say is true.
You are who they say you are.
So listen to them! Understand them. People are highly
motivated by listeners, listeners like you “who get” what
their problems are. Always be mindful.
In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh:
When we are mindful, we notice that another
person suffers. If one person suffers, that person needs to talk to someone in order to get
relief. We have to offer our presence, and we
have to listen deeply to the other person who is
suffering. That is the practice of love—deep listening. But if we are full of anger, irritation, and
prejudices, we don’t have the capacity to listen
deeply to the people we love. If people we love
cannot communicate with us, then they will suffer more. Learning how to listen deeply is our
responsibility. We are motivated by the desire
to relieve suffering. That is why we listen. We
need to listen with all our heart, without intention to judge, condemn, or criticize. And if we
listen in that way for one hour, we are practicing
Play It Lightly / 155
true love. We don’t have to say anything; we
just need to listen.
To help your people get what they want, be mindful of
them and listen to them until you find out what they really
want. Then, make their goals fit inside the team objectives. Show them the link. That’s how long-lasting motivation finally happens.
66. Play It Lightly
The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. Then
you develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.
—Elaine Agather, CEO, JPMorgan Bank
The most motivated people we work with are not taking themselves all that seriously.
The ones who struggle the most view the company’s
next success as their own mortgage payment or what holds
their marriage together.
The managers who are the most creative, productive,
and innovative see business as a chess game, played for
fun and challenge. They conceive of all kinds of lovely
moves and counterstrategies. And when they “lose,” they
just set up the pieces again even more excitedly.
The worst failures and most miserable people at work
are the ones who take everything too seriously. They are grim,
discouraged, and bitter. They use only 10 percent of their
brains all day. Their brains, once so huge in childhood, are
now hardened and contracted into resentment and worry.
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Here’s what the overly serious people miss: the fun,
the creativity, the lighthearted ideas, the intuition, the good
spirits, the easy energy, and the quick laughter that brings
people close to each other. They miss that. So no wonder
they fail at what they’re doing.
Anytime we take something that seriously, we will find
ways to subtly and subconsciously run away from it all
day. Secretly, we are like children. We resist the serious.
America’s most respected scholar on organizational leadership today is Warren Bennis. In his book On Becoming a
Leader, Revised Ed. (Perseus Publishing, 2003), he stresses
the difference between a leader and a manager: “The leader
innovates; the manager administrates. The leader focuses
on people; the manager focuses on systems and structure.
The leader inspires; the manager controls. The leader is his
own person; the manager is a good soldier. The leader sees
the long-term; the manager sees the short-term.”
G.K. Chesterton once said that angels can fly only
because they take themselves lightly.
We say the same of leaders.
67. Keep All Your
Smallest Promises
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a
series of small things brought together.
—Vincent van Gogh
People are motivated by people they trust.
Keep All Your Smallest Promises / 157
The trust of your people is not difficult to obtain. You
can win it. And because it’s so important to motivating
them, you must win it.
So you must never ever be late to your own meetings.
Ever. Such a thing will destroy all trust you’ve built up
with seven out of 10 people, because it means to them that
you cannot be counted on to keep your word.
We explained this to Jeff after working with his team
for a while and noticing that he was not keeping any of his
“small” promises.
“Hey, it’s no biggie!” Jeff would say. “I’m a little late,
or I forget to get somebody a parking pass, so what? I’m a
big-picture guy. I’m not all that anal.”
“It’s your word, Jeff. If you can’t keep it in the small
things, no one will trust it in any of the big things.”
“Well,” said Jeff, “what should I do? Become someone I’m not? Get a personality transplant? Get some good
drugs that keep me focused?”
“You must do everything you say you’re going to do
for your people, when you say you’re going to do it. If
you say you’ll call tomorrow, you must. If you say you’ll
get them the documents by Friday, you must move heaven
and earth to do that. It’s everything. Trust is earned, not
just by the big things, but even more so by the little things.
Even more so.”
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68. Give Power to the
Other Person
When I’m getting ready to persuade a person, I spend one-third of
the time thinking about myself, what I’m going to say, and twothirds of the time thinking about him and what he is going to say.
—Abraham Lincoln
When I’m in a leadership position, there’s always a
hidden fear inside the person I’m leading and about to
talk to.
If I don’t understand that fear, I’m going to have a
very hard time creating agreements with that person. And
long-lasting motivation is all about creating agreements.
My goal is to get my people to agree to work with me.
I may want them to agree with me to perform at a higher
level, or to get some work done that I think needs to be
done, or to communicate with me differently, or to treat
the customer differently. In all these cases, it’s an agreement that I need.
But there’s a reason (you know what it is by now—
here’s a hint: it’s fear) why the person on the other side
will push back at me and try not to agree with me. And
once we understand that reason, we have the ability to
create agreements much faster.
The focus of my understanding must always be: How
do I remove the fear?
Top hypnotists will tell you that they can’t even begin
to work with a subject whom they can’t relax. When a
person is not relaxed, they are not open to suggestion,
hypnotic or otherwise.
Give Power to the Other Person / 159
Most managers who try to create agreements with
other people actually cause the fear in the other person to
get worse as the conversation goes on.
So how do you create an agreement in such a way that
the employee’s fear buttons are not being pushed, and
they’re not pushing back in self-defense?
By asking questions. Because questions honor the
employee’s thoughts and feelings.
When people fear losing power and balance and push
back (with objections, defensiveness, etc.), it looks like
strength! It looks like, “Well, there’s a feisty person!
There’s a person who knows his own mind. There’s a person who’s not going to get pushed around.”
Not true. That’s a scared person!
People don’t want you to sell them on your idea, they
want to sell themselves. They want it to be their idea to do the
thing, not yours. That’s the secret to motivation, right there.
Let’s say you want one of your employees to get forms
turned back to you in a more timely manner. If you talk to
that employee in an assertive way and say, “You know
what, I need to talk to you. I didn’t get those forms from
you on time.” You know what happens?
Defensiveness and fear: “There’s no way I could get
them back to you on time because our computer system
was down for two days. Actually, our people did pretty
well given what was going on here at this office. We did
very well, as a matter of fact, and we’re doing better than
can be expected down here.”
Your employee is defending what went on, because
your employee is afraid that he will be judged poorly, that
he might even be asked to leave the company because he
can’t get his forms in on time. And all you’ve done—the
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only mistake you have made—is you’ve put something aggressively out there that pushed his button, so you’ve awakened the fear, and caused him to push back.
And if you are clueless about fear and don’t know what
is going on, you are liable to push even more buttons in
response to the fear. You might say, “Well you know, that
computer system was down at another division across town
and they got theirs in on time.”
And now your employee is more frightened, even more
anxious.
“Yeah, but they’ve got a bigger staff than we do. We’re
understaffed here. Always have been.”
The more you push, the more he pushes back. The more
offensive you are, the more defensive he is. And, the more
defensive he is, the less likely he is to turn those forms in on
time next week, which is all you wanted in the first place. It
was all you wanted, but it was what you yourself made unlikely.
This very human push–push back dynamic challenges
marriages, it slows down careers, and it makes a manager’s
life miserable.
What a manager can do is ask gentle questions and let
the people they lead think and speak and make their own
fresh commitments. That’s how motivation happens.
69. Don’t Forget to Breathe
In war, as in peace, a man needs all the brains he can get. Nobody
ever had too many brains. Brains come from oxygen. Oxygen
comes from the lungs where the air goes when we breathe.
The oxygen in the air gets into the blood and travels to the brain.
Any fool can double the size of his lungs.
—George Patton
Don’t Forget to Breathe / 161
Scott Richardson recalls the role breathing plays in
achieving success as a leader. Yes, breathing, as in, “Don’t
forget to breathe.”
Scott recalls: My first mentor and music coach, Rodney
Mercado, never actually mentioned it. We never spoke
about it, and yet I noticed it, and I copied him and modeled him.
Because when Mercado played an instrument, he was
taking some of the most extraordinarily deep breaths that
I’d ever heard a human being take. And so even though
he never mentioned it, I figured, if it works for him, I’m
going to do the same thing. And since then, I’ve learned
how important breath is to our energy, our focus, and
our concentration.
So, I would take a deep breath inward right before I
started to play the violin, and then I would breathe out as
I was bowing. And then as I changed the bow stroke, I
would take another breath, and so I would breathe in unison with the music I was performing. I still do this to this
day.
Putting so much energy and intensity (Mercado’s favorite word) into the performance was what produced the
result that would move people who heard it.
As leaders, our own energy and intensity are monitored by our people. They take many of their own subtle
psychological cues from how we look—our movements
and expressions (or lack of them).
This is why we must learn to breathe deeply and lead.
To really get out there and lead with enthusiasm. To generate excitement, and then breathe again, even more deeply.
The word inspire literally means “to breathe in.”
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We don’t want to stagnate all day breathing shallowly
behind our desk or in front of our computer. That won’t
inspire anyone.
70. Know You’ve Got the Time
Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and
suddenly you are doing the impossible.
—St. Francis
Most managers do small things all day long. They start
the day by doing all the easy things. They go through
their e-mail over and over again. They ask themselves
subconsciously: What are some little tasks that I can do
that aren’t difficult? What are things to do that will make it
look like I’m being a manager while I figure out what really
needs to be done? If anybody were watching me, would
they say I am just doing what a manager needs to do? I’m
doing what I need to do; these things need to be done sooner
or later.
But a motivational leader has the ability and the opportunity to live life differently, to take the time to live by
rational choice of priority instead of feelings, to leave the
infantile behind.
The key is taking the time.
And what works against this is the sense that time is
getting away, there’s really not enough time in the day.
But you can learn to stay grounded in this fact: we all have
24 hours. It doesn’t matter how rich or powerful you are,
you still only have 24 hours—not a minute more.
Use the Power of Deadlines / 163
The sun rises and sets for everyone the same way. And
so there’s no sense in saying, “I don’t have as much time
as other people. I’d love to do that but I don’t have the
time.” That’s just not true.
Only you can slow your own sense of time down to the
speed of life by choosing what you choose to do. And once
you do, it becomes that much easier to motivate and teach
others to do the same.
71. Use the Power of Deadlines
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
—Peter F. Drucker
Put your requests into a time frame. If there is no real
time frame, make one up.
If you want a report from someone, finish your request by asking, “And may I have this by the end of our
business day Thursday?”
Various dictionaries describe a deadline as a time
by which something must be done; originally meaning
“a line that does not move,” and “a line around a military prison beyond which an escaping prisoner could be
shot.”
Literally, it is a line over which the person or project
becomes dead! Deadlines propel action. So when you want
to get people into action, give them a deadline.
If you make a request without including a date or
time, then you don’t have anything specific that you can
check in on. You have a “wished for” and “hoped for”
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action hanging out there in space with no time involved.
People are only motivated when we use both space and
time. The space-time continuum is a motivator’s best
friend.
Once, we were leisurely writing a book when the publisher called back to impose a month-away deadline to
make the fall catalog for the big Christmas sales season.
Then, all of a sudden, we swung into gear, writing and
editing 10 hours a day, until we delivered the finished
manuscript to our publisher. It turned out to be the bestwritten book we’d ever done.
Without a deadline, there is no goal, just a nebulous
request that adds to the general confusion at work. You
will be doing a person a favor by putting your request into
a time frame. And if the time is too short, he or she can
negotiate it. Let your people participate. It isn’t a matter
of who gets to set the deadline, it’s a matter of having one.
Either way, it is settled, clear, and complete.
Most managers don’t do this. They have hundreds of
unfulfilled requests floating around the workplace, because they aren’t prioritized. Those requests keep getting put off.
Don’t they?
Deadlines will fix all of that.
Translate Worry Into Concern / 165
72. Translate Worry
Into Concern
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.
—William Ellery Channing, Minister/Psychologist
Leaders don’t help anyone by worrying.
Worry is a misuse of their imagination.
Practice upgrading your worry to concern. Then, once
you state your concern, create your action plan to address it.
If we respond to our problems in life by worrying about
them, we will reduce our mood and energy, and lower our
self-esteem. Being a worrier is hardly a powerful self-concept.
It also is not inspiring to others when they see their leader
worrying.
Instead of worrying, imagine some action you could
take now, something bold and beautiful inspired by the
current so-called “problem.” Getting into that habit raises
self-esteem and increases energy levels and concurrent love
of life.
People are more motivated by people in love with life
than by people who worry about life.
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73. Let Your Mind Rule
Your Heart
If you don’t think about the future, you won’t have one.
—Henry Ford
Managers who approach life as if they’re still children,
or as adults who are living out their unresolved childhood
issues, will not be able to focus on their employees, their
customers, or the hunt for great prosperity.
Leadership requires that your logical, problem-solving
left brain be in charge of your right brain. It requires a
fierce intellect willing to hang in there against all your
people’s complaints (real and imaginary). It requires a thrill
in finding a new route to solutions.
Leadership requires that the chess master in you be in
charge of the thinking and decision-making processes
throughout the day.
Leadership is about making clear, smart decisions about
where and how you spend your time. Leading people is
about getting smarter with your time every day. The great
chess master Kasparov lived by his motto: “Think seven
moves ahead.”
Intellectually, motivating others is about reverse engineering. You decide what you want, and then you think
backwards from that. You begin at the end and engineer
backwards to this fresh moment right now. Always have
the end in mind when you approach your team or when
you make that phone call.
Those people best at motivating others are the ones
who are the most conscious of what they’re doing. They
Build a Culture of Acknowledgment / 167
are the continuous thinkers, and their people appreciate
them for it.
As you drive around today, think things through. Think
about what you would appreciate most if you were a member of your own team. Think about ways to connect and
gain trust. Think. Think about that nice extra touch, that
nice little piece of communication you want to make. Think
about the questions you want to ask.
Think like a brilliant detective. It’s a crime that your
employee is not performing at her full potential. It’s a crime
that she is considering leaving the company.
Solve that crime.
74. Build a Culture of
Acknowledgment
I have always said that if I were a rich man
I’d hire a professional praiser.
—Sir Osbert Sitwell, Poet
One way to motivate others better is to change the
question you ask yourself each day.
Instead of, “How do I get them to do less of what bothers me,” I might want to change that to, “What is the best
thing I can do to get my team to do more of what I want
them to do?”
Most managers find out what’s wrong, and then criticize that. They look for the problems, and then they say,
“We really can’t have this! You’ve got to fix this; this is
really not good enough.”
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But that approach causes resentment on the part of
the person who’s being criticized. What works better is
recognition, acknowledgment, and appreciation.
So, when I’m driving in to work, I might tell myself:
“I’m deliberately going to build a culture of acknowledgment here—where people feel recognized for every little
thing they do. They will feel visible, and they will feel as if
they’re appreciated and acknowledged. I want them to
know that what they do is being seen, is being thought
about, and is being celebrated. That is the culture that I
will create to grow productivity.”
Whenever possible, recognize those people in front of
other people. And if possible, recognize them in front of
their families, somehow. You can always send an award or
a note from the company president to the person’s home.
You’ll want to let that person’s family see that he or she is
really appreciated.
75. Seize Responsibility
Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people
who have a habit of making excuses.
—George Washington Carver
“I sure wish people would take responsibility around
here!” one of the attorneys in Scott Richardson’s law firm
said to him. “It seems like the people I’m managing are
‘pass the buck’ artists.”
“Well, have you talked to them about what responsibility is?” Scott replied.
“Not really,” the attorney said.
Seize Responsibility / 169
“Play a little word game with me for a second. I will
say a word, and you tell me the first word that pops into
your head. Fair enough?”
“Oh boy, here we go.”
“No, this will be useful. I promise.”
“Okay, shoot. What’s the word?”
“What’s the first word that comes to mind when you
hear the word responsibility?”
“Obligation,” said the attorney.
“Great,” said Scott. “Now let’s break down the word
responsibility into its component parts. It literally is response ability or the ability to respond. The ability to do
something! Responsible is response-able or being able to
respond. That’s all responsibility is. Nothing more and
nothing less. Responsibility doesn’t have anything to do
with obligation or the host of other negative words that
are associated with it, words that have an intimidating connotation, such as obligation, burden, debt, guilt, fault, and
so on. If you want your people to take responsibility, you
need to be clear yourself and with them that responsibility
doesn’t have anything to do with those other words. It is
simply the ability to respond, the ability to do something.
Just tell your people you believe in them. That you know
they have the ability to respond to this challenge, and you
support them in doing so.”
Steve Hardison is a life coach extraordinaire we’ve
worked with and written about extensively in previous
books (visit him at: www.theultimatecoach.net). One time
Hardison was invited to attend a board meeting of a company he was considering coaching. The first item on the agenda
was “Whose fault is it that we have a $100,000 computer
system that is a piece of junk?”
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The president turned to one of the vice presidents and
said, “Joe, this is all your fault!”
Joe quickly responded, “No, it’s not. I didn’t draw up
the specs. John did!”
John quickly responded, “Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t
choose the vendor. Rose did.”
Rose said, “Hey, that wasn’t really my decision, I just
gave my recommendation to you!”
And so the people at the board meeting just kept passing the buck around and around the boardroom.
Finally, coach Hardison motioned to the CEO and interrupted the conversation.
“Can I say something?” he asked the CEO.
“Sure, what?”
“I am responsible for the computer system,” announced Hardison.
“What?” shot back the CEO. “We barely even know
who you are! Why would you say anything so crazy?”
“Someone needs to be responsible!” said Hardison.
“Oh, yeah,” replied the CEO.
Once Hardison had taken responsibility for the computer system, he was able to lead the discussion on how to
move forward and solve the problem. This is true response
ability rather than responsibility = blame. Hardison wanted
to have the ability to move the problem into a solution
mode.
Another one of our affiliate coaches started as a salesperson at a high-tech company. In less than two years, he
was the CEO. When he was asked how he did it, he said,
“I considered it my company from day one. If I saw a
piece of paper on the floor, I either picked it up or got
Get Some Coaching Yourself / 171
someone to do it. If there were a division of the company
that was not working, I got involved and got it running
better, even though technically it had nothing to do with
my job. After a while, they asked me to be the CEO, but
I had already taken responsibility for the entire company
long before.”
So if you would like to be the CEO someday, start
from this moment taking 100-percent responsibility for the
entire company. Nothing will motivate your people more
than that.
76. Get Some Coaching Yourself
A teacher affects eternity.
He can never tell where his influence stops.
—Henry B. Adams, American Historian
Great coaches always cite the coaches from whom they
themselves have learned.
In today’s environment, most of today’s top business leaders (surveys show more than 70 percent) have
coaches—personal success coaches or life coaches—who
take them to higher levels of success than they ever could
have attained on their own.
The object of the coaching process is to allow the leader
to discover his or her hidden strengths and to bring them
to the forefront in the daily life of the business.
Every great actor, dancer, and athlete credits most of
their career progress to a coach who gave them support and
teaching along the way. In the past, our society celebrated
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the concept of coaching in sports and show business, because those were fields where excellence was always expected. On the other hand, business was just business.
But now because of the growth of coaching, today’s
business leader has the same opportunity to explore the
upper limits of his or her excellence as does a sports star
or an actor. Coaching makes that opportunity a conscious
part of the leader’s career.
“I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never
reach their maximum capabilities,” said Bob Nardelli,
former CEO of Home Depot.
If you’re a leader, be open to being coached. There’s
no value in going it alone just to prove you can.
77. Make It Happen Today
What would be the use of immortality to a person who
cannot use well a half an hour?
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ability to motivate others well flows from the importance that we attach to the concept of today.
What can we do today?
John Wooden was the most successful college basketball coach of all time. His UCLA teams won 10 national
championships in a 12-year time span. Wooden created a
major portion of his coaching and living philosophy from
one thought—a single sentence passed on to him by his
father when Wooden was a little boy: “Make each day your
masterpiece.”
Learn the Inner Thing / 173
While other coaches would try to focus their players
on important games in the future, Wooden always focused on today. His practice sessions at UCLA were every bit as important as any championship game. In his
philosophy, there was no reason not to make today the
proudest day of your life. There was no reason not to
play as well in practice as you do in a game. He wanted
every player to go to bed each night thinking, “Today, I
was at my best.”
Most of us, however, don’t want to live this way. The
future is where our happiness lies. So we project things
into the future. The past is where the problem began, so
we also spend lots of time in the past. But every good thing
that has ever happened, happened now, right now. Leadership takes place now, too.
Today is your whole life in miniature. You were “born”
when you woke up, and you’ll “die” when you go to sleep.
It was designed this way so that you could live your whole
life in a day. Do you still want to walk around telling your
team you’re having a bad day?
When your people see you making each day your masterpiece, they will pick it up as a way to live and work.
78. Learn the Inner Thing
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into
your own heart. Whoever looks outside only dreams,
whoever looks inside also awakens.
—Carl Jung
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Most managers and leaders in this country subconsciously use a Western model of macho warfare for leadership. It is an ineffective model.
Scott studied kung fu in Taiwan, and his instructor
taught him about inner forces in every human being that
can be called on to achieve great things. As Scott rose to
prominence as an attorney and a consultant, he credited
his martial arts training for much of his insight.
Scott recalls: I saw demonstrations when I was in
Taiwan and the United States of kung fu masters who, for
instance, set up three candles. They had a piece of clear
glass in between their face and the candles, so they couldn’t
blow on the candles. And they proceeded to, in what looked
like slow motion, move their fist toward the flame, and
from a distance of at least 12 inches, put out these flames.
One of my friends, a black belt in karate, watched the
demonstration with me. He turned to me and said, “Scott,
you’ve studied kung fu, haven’t you?”
I said, “A little bit.”
And he said, “How do they do that? I’m a black belt in
karate and one of our tests is we have to be able to put out
a candle flame with our strongest kick. We can come as
close to the candle flame as we can, and I had to train
hours and hours to do that. It’s physically impossible to
do it from 12 inches away with the strongest kick I have. I
could never do it with a slow-motion punch. How do those
guys do it?”
I replied, “Well, actually it’s based on something called
‘ki.’”
In this conversation, in this moment, now that I think
about it, I can now extend ki, and change my body posture
Learn the Inner Thing / 175
slightly and be practicing the advanced martial art of aikido,
which I’m just doing as I became aware of it.
So with any activity involving a physical body, you can
be practicing a version of this martial art aikido. The basic
principles of extending ki include focusing on your one
point and thinking about that. In aikido, they teach you
that if you focus your attention on your one point, which
is a point 2 inches below your navel, you automatically are
centered.
That’s all you have to do. You can do it in a team
meeting. You can do it during a one-on-one performance
review. There’s no great mystery about it.
The aikido instructor does a demonstration where he
says, “Okay, focus on your one point,” and while you’re
focused on your ki point below the navel, he presses on
your chest but you don’t fall over. You’re very centered
and strong. Then if he lightly slaps you on the top of your
head with one hand (to change your focus) then pushes on
your chest with the other, you do immediately fall over
backwards.
And he says, “What just happened? You had your
awareness on your one point and, when you did, I couldn’t
push you over. And then as soon as I slapped you on the
top of your head, what happened? Your awareness went
up there to your head and I pushed you over without even
trying.”
I did this simple demonstration to my father, the
doctor—the world’s biggest skeptic—and he said, “There
must be a physical explanation for it.” But there was not. He
hadn’t moved a muscle in his body! Nothing physical. Just
his focus. And that was the difference between his being
grounded and centered and strong, and then losing focus.
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Most people in the workplace are not centered. They
live off the top of their heads where, basically, anything
that comes up in life is going to tip them over. Tip them
off center.
As their leader, you can model being centered. You
can radiate the immovable life force, the ki inside you. In
your next managerial challenge, try relaxing and allowing a
force greater than yourself to flow through you and then
out into the situation. And it won’t be long before you, too,
are a legend in your organization, for simply being centered.
79. Forget About Failure
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable
but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.
—George Bernard Shaw
Managers, especially at the beginning of their careers,
often obsess about failure. They take a bad conversation
with a problem employee very personally. They get hurt.
They get depressed. They get angry and start hating their
profession.
But soon they see that failure is just an outcome. It is
not bad or good, just neutral. It can be turned into something good if it’s studied for the wisdom to be gained from
it. And it can be turned into something bad if it is made
into something personal.
The great professor of linguistics S.I. Hayakawa used
to say that there were basically two kinds of people: the
kind of person who fails at something and says, “I failed at
Follow Consulting With Action / 177
that” and the person who fails at something and says, “I’m
a failure.”
The first person is in touch with the truth, and the
second person is not.
“I’m a failure!”
That claim doesn’t always appear to the outsider to be
a lie. It can look like a sad form of self-acceptance. In
fact, we can even associate such exaggerating with truthful confession: “Why not admit it? I’m a failure.”
But in psychological terms, what we’re hearing is the
voice of fear. It’s the opposite of a voice of purpose; it is a
voice of surrender, of internal defeat, of quitting before I
begin. (Defeat and failure on the external can actually be
refreshing and rejuvenating. The great football coach Woody
Hayes used to say after his team lost a game, “Nothing
cleanses the soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.”)
As you lead people today, always keep in mind this
one true fact: there is nothing wrong with them. They have
it inside themselves to prosper and excel as professionals.
Get connected to that truth and show your people how to
leave all their “I’m a failure” thoughts in the trash where
they belong.
80. Follow Consulting With Action
Action is eloquence.
—Shakespeare
Scott has been practicing law for more than 20 years,
had his own law firm for 17 years, and even owned another
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law firm, which he sold during that time. Right now, he
has 15 employees and he coaches other lawyers as well.
He states: There’s no question in my mind that it is
one thing to be a coach, another thing to be in the role of
the CEO. I think the perspective of being the one in the
hot seat, so to speak, is extremely valuable. Having been
both roles, I have coached and been coached, I know a coach
can be absolutely invaluable to the person in the hot seat.
But you can bring in the world’s greatest coach, and if
the person in the hot seat still chooses, for whatever reason, not to take the coaching, then the effort is lost.
That’s the reason leaders are the most important people
in the organization, because they can choose not to make
things happen as well as to make things happen.
A coach is not going to wave a magic wand and cause
things to change regardless of that decision. It can’t work
that way. In the end, a coach can only shine a light and
assist. It’s always the willingness of the leader to generate
the action that makes a true difference. So if you are getting coaching, follow it up with action. Massive action. To
do so will be eloquent.
81. Create a Vision
The reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our
time doing second things first.
—Robert J. McKain, Management Consultant
Without creating a vision for my team, my team will
live according to its problems.
Stop Looking Over Your Shoulder / 179
Without goals (the subsets of vision), my team will
just fight fires, work through emotional upsets, and worry
about the dysfunctional behavior of other people. I, myself, as their leader, will have attracted a problem-based
existence. Soon, I will only end up doing what I feel like
doing, which will sell me short and draw on the smallest of
my own brain’s resources.
But when we humans begin to create, we use more of
the brain. We rise up to our highest functioning as humans. So it’s my primary job as a motivator to create a
vision of who we want to be, and then live in that picture
as if it were already happening in this very moment.
And it has to be a vision I can talk about every day. It
can’t be a framed statement on the wall that no one can
relate to after some company retreat is over. It is not surprising that one of the biggest complaints about leaders
that show up on employee surveys is, “He had no idea
where we were headed. He had no vision of our future
that he could tell us about.”
Create a vision. Live the vision.
82. Stop Looking Over
Your Shoulder
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that
something else is more important than fear.
—Ambrose Redmoon, American Philosopher
There’s no one less motivational to be around than someone who is always trying to anticipate other people’s criticisms.
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The worst trap for you as a leader is to begin anticipating what your own leaders think of you from moment
to moment, to do superficial things to impress them, rather
than doing real things to encourage your own people.
Great leadership by example (such a great motivator
of others) comes from getting independently better at what
you do, and not living in anticipation of other people’s
opinion of you.
It allows you to increase your leadership strength every day, and to build your self-esteem.
Paradoxically, the more you focus on doing your own
best work and staying in action to fulfill your personal and
professional goals, the more help you are to others.
83. Lead by Selling
Everyone lives by selling something.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Dan Kennedy is a local marketing expert who has done
a lot of direct sales in his lifetime. He has made the observation that the most successful doctors, lawyers, teachers,
and businesspeople that he works with invariably have some
sales experience in their background.
Scott recalls: I was wondering, before, why I’ve never
had a problem enrolling people in projects. It’s just been
very easy for me, always. And then I heard Dan Kennedy’s
observation: You know, he’s right! Before I had had some
direct sales experience, I was very poor at enrolling people
in projects and ideas. Afterward, I was great. So let me tell
you how I experienced that transformation in my life.
Lead by Selling / 181
Before I went to college, I decided to spend a summer
selling books door-to-door in Pennsylvania. I attended a
week-long sales training school put on by a company called
Southwestern, the largest door-to-door book sales company in the United States. (They primarily use college students to work during the summer.)
During this week, we learned our basics. It was the
old-style selling: You learned your sales pitch and memorized it. Then you learned about door approaches, how to
inspire confidences and get in and make your presentation, and how to close (gracefully asking for the order).
Just classic selling.
The very first house I called on, I actually sold something. And I thought, Man, this stuff really works. This is a
piece of cake.
And that was the last sale I had for two weeks. And so
my sales manager decided to start working with me to see
what wasn’t working. He gave me a diagnosis, “Scott, you’re
not closing. You’re not even asking for the sale.”
“What do you mean I’m not closing? Of course I’m
closing.”
“No, you’re not. You didn’t close once.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. Look, I know we taught you to close at least three
times, but for you there’s no limit. Just start off showing
them a little bit about the books, then you close. And if
they say, ‘No, I’m not interested,’ you say, ‘I know just
what you mean,’ and you show them a little bit more, and
you close again.”
So I said, “That’s crazy. They’re going to throw me
out on my butt!”
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“Just try it.”
Well, I figured the other way wasn’t working, so what
the heck?
So the next house we called on, I presented the books
a little bit and asked the lady for the order. She said, “Well,
I’m really not interested.”
“That’s fine, I know exactly what you mean,” I said.
Then I showed her a little bit more and asked her again.
And she said, “Well, I don’t know, I don’t have the money.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said.
And I showed her a little bit more and closed her again.
I closed her at least five times and I thought, Man, how
long is this going to take? I guess she hasn’t kicked me out,
so I’ll keep going.
And finally, I think on the sixth close, she said, “Okay!”
I was shocked.
Later on, something very surprising happened.
It turned out that this nice lady worked in a bank right
there in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. One day, when I went
to the bank to bring all my checks from my sales to deposit, I saw her there. She was working as a teller. I put
my checks in to deposit, and she seemed very embarrassed
to see me. So I thought, Oh my gosh, maybe I just
ramrodded her into buying and now she feels bad. But oh
well, we always tell them they can cancel the order.
So I shoved my checks toward her and said, “I want to
deposit these checks.”
And she said, “You know, Scott, I hope you didn’t
mind that I took so long to decide, but I just wanted to
make sure that I really wanted those books. Now I’m so
glad I bought them.”
Hold On to Principle / 183
What a lesson. So from then on, I’ve never been afraid
to ask. And then ask again! In terms of leadership, this
simply means asking for what you want, being very direct
with your requests, and having your communication centered on requests and promises.
You can go up the ladder to the people who lead you
and make bold requests on behalf of you and your team.
You can do the same with major customers. Also, with
your own direct reports, figure out what you want your
people to buy in to, and then sell them on the idea. But
don’t forget to close them. Don’t forget to make a strong,
specific request (the close), and then receive a strong, specific promise in return.
84. Hold On to Principle
In matters of style, swim with the current;
in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
—Thomas Jefferson
“Discipline yourself, and others won’t need to,” Coach
John Wooden would tell his players. “Never lie. Never
cheat. Never steal,” and “Earn the right to be proud and
confident.”
We’re starting to learn why John Wooden was the most
successful college basketball coach of all time. No one has
ever even come close. No one has ever motivated his athletes so superbly as Wooden.
Rick Reilly, the talented sportswriter, recalls (“A Paradigm Rising above the Madness,” Sports Illustrated, March
20, 2000): “If you played for him, you played by his rules:
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Never score without acknowledging a teammate. One word
of profanity, and you’re done for the day. Treat your opponent with respect. Coach Wooden believed in hopelessly
out-of-date stuff that never did anything but win championships.” Reilly writes that Coach Wooden’s rule that his
players could not have long hair or facial hair particularly
drove them crazy. When Bill Walton, an All-American
center, showed up with a full beard, he said, “It’s my right.”
Reilly goes on: “Coach Wooden asked if he believed that
strongly. Walton said he did. ‘That’s good, Bill,’ Coach
said. ‘I admire people who have strong beliefs and stick by
them, I really do. We’re going to miss you.’ Walton shaved
it right then and there. Now Walton calls once a week to
tell Coach he loves him.”
You have two ways to go as a motivator of others. You
can seek to be liked or you can, like John Wooden, earn
their respect. Respect is stronger. And, when their respect
runs deep enough, you may end up being loved.
85. Create Your
Relationships
A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually.
One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.
—Rita Mae Brown, Mystery Author
When we are coaching leaders who are having a tough
time motivating others, it always becomes apparent that
their basic problem is that they’re reacting to their people
all day long.
Create Your Relationships / 185
They’re wallowing in their own negative emotional reaction to people. After a while, in listening to these types
of managers, we get a funny impression that we’re listening to the words of country music. You know those country songs we’re talking about. The themes are: “I’ve been
hurt so many times, I’m never going to reach out again,”
or “I don’t trust women,” or “You can’t trust men.” Actual songs have titles such as “Is It Cold in Here or Is It
You?” and “My Wife Ran Away With My Best Friend and
I Miss Him.”
Country music in and of itself is great, and the really sad
songs—the ones that express the poetry of victimization—
are beautiful in their own way, but their basic philosophy
is not an effective way to create the motivated team we
want.
Managers who go through their days reacting emotionally to the behavior of their people truly are miserable.
What those managers need is a gentle shift. Not a huge
change, but a shift, just like the gentle shift of gears in a finely
tuned car. They need to shift from reacting to creating.
All of this reacting they do has become a habit, and
because it’s only a habit, it’s completely open to a shift.
Business coach Dan Sullivan nails it when he says, “The
difficulty in changing habits lies in the fact that we are
changing something that feels completely natural to us.
Good habits feel natural; bad habits feel natural. That is
the nature of a habit. When you change a bad habit that
feels natural to a good habit that feels natural, you feel
exactly the same. It is just that you get completely different results.”
One of the first steps on the path out of the habit of
reacting to the people we manage is to ask ourselves a
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simple question. It’s a question first asked by Ralph Waldo
Emerson many years ago: “Why should my happiness depend on the thoughts going on in someone else’s head?”
This question, no matter how we answer it in any given
moment, gives us the mental perspective we need to start
seeing the possibilities for creatively relating to others instead of just reacting to them.
86. Don’t Be Afraid to
Make Requests
As you enter positions of trust and power,
dream a little before you think.
—Toni Morrison, Author
Don’t you wish you could just ask your superiors to
help your team do certain things? It would make leadership much simpler if it could become a matter of requests
and promises and follow-through action. It can.
It will help you to know, before you ask, that everyone
(your superiors, your customers, your employees) really
wants to say yes.
We once took a seminar on communication, and one
of the exercises they gave us was designed to dramatize
the fact that most people really want to say yes.
So they gave us an assignment over a long dinner break
to go out and make three unreasonable requests to see if
we could get people to say no. That was the assignment:
you had to get three “no” responses before you came back.
Don’t Be Afraid to Make Requests / 187
And we thought it would be simple. After Scott finished dinner, he went over to a lady at the next table and
said, “You know, ma’am, I’m completely out of money,
would you mind paying for my meal?”
He figured that was a pretty unreasonable request and
he was sure she’d say, “Get lost.”
And he was stunned when she didn’t say that.
“Well, I’m not sure I have enough money to cover
that right now,” she said, so Scott began coaching her to
say no.
“Oh that’s okay, just asking. You can say no.”
And she wouldn’t say no! She said, “Well, I’m not
sure....”
“In other words, ‘no’?”
“Well, I guess not. No.”
“Thanks!”
Scott had to work very hard just to get her to say no.
Then when Scott walked over to the cashier to pay for the
meal, there was a man who was waiting there and Scott
thought, No problem. I’ll get a quick “No” from him.
“You know, I’m a little short on cash,” Scott said.
“Would you just have the restaurant cover my bill?”
“Well, I’m not sure. What’s this about?”
“Well, you can say no.”
It took him quite awhile (soon Scott was begging him
for a no), but he finally got him to say no.
Two down, one to go. So Scott turned to the lady right
next to him and said, “How about you? Would you pick
up my bill?”
She had just heard what went on, so it didn’t look like
it would be too hard! But it was. And after a very long
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negotiation, after she was quite willing to pay for his meal,
she said no.
That one exercise taught us a lot. People all want to
say yes.
So now, whenever we have a project that we want to
create, we feel free inside to go out there and start asking
people for a “yes.” We don’t have any fear or hesitancy in
making what most people would call “unreasonable requests.” Because we know from experience (after having
it verified many times over) that people’s natural tendency
is to want to say yes.
So ask for what you want, both up and down the pecking order. If your team needs something from the higherups, go ask for it. When you get their yes answers, bring in
good news for your team about what the top people are
agreeing to do to move things forward. You’ll be teaching
them the power of requests.
87. Don’t Change Yourself
It takes a tremendous act of courage to admit to yourself that you
are not defective in any way whatsoever.
—Cheri Huber, Author/Zen Philosopher
You don’t need to change!
A lot of people who hear our talks or read our books
contact us for coaching, saying, “I really need to make a
change. I need to totally change my life. I have been an
unconscious, bossy, paranoid manager and I’m ready to
learn to be a leader.”
Don’t Change Yourself / 189
We tell them what we tell everyone: You don’t need to
totally “change.”
All you need is a gentle shift.
To get your sports car to send itself into a smoother,
faster gear, do you need to take out the gearbox and put in
a new one? Or do you simply need to shift gears? When
you do shift gears, is it hard to do? Hard, like changing a
tire? Or do you just slide into it?
For your mind to take you to the next level of leadership performance, all you need to do is shift gears. You
don’t need to replace your gearbox.
Just shift. And then zoom. Zoom. Just like that.
Do you need to change your attitude? How? Why?
What is an attitude anyway? How do you change it?
Attitude is a word that old people use to intimidate
young people. It’s the ultimate shaming device: “You better change your attitude, Son!”
“How, Dad?”
“Don’t mess with me, Son.”
“What is attitude, Dad? How do I access it? How do I
even identify it, much less change it?”
“It’s poor, I can tell you that.”
If you were ever part of such a conversation, you got
off on the wrong track in this whole concept of change.
Reinventing yourself happens. But it happens as a result
of a series of gentle shifts. It’s a path, not a revolution. It
becomes a way of life.
Just begin.
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88. Pump Up Your E-mails
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to
an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
—Helen Keller
Every e-mail communication you send to your team is
an opportunity. It’s a fresh chance to energize that team
and spread the optimism you want to fuel the contagious
enthusiasm your next project needs.
But nine managers out of 10 ignore this opportunity.
Instead, they often send neutral e-mails; short, terse e-mails;
or sometimes even angry e-mails.
Those are all mistakes. Because your first job, even
before your job of informing others, is to motivate others.
So let’s begin here: realize that e-mail is a cold medium anyway. There is no voice tone in it. There is no
twinkle in the eye, or warmth of expression. It’s just cold
electronic type.
Therefore, even a neutral e-mail feels chilly to the recipient. Even a simple transfer of information feels icy
and negative, unless you seize the opportunity to pump it
up. Always pump it up.
Every communication from a manager to an employee
is an opportunity to instill optimism. Don’t waste that opportunity. A true leader never does.
Look at your e-mail before you send it. Is it uplifting?
Does it contain an acknowledgment or an appreciation of
the recipient? Does it praise the recipient? Does it inspire?
Is it going to make someone happy?
Stop Pushing / 191
If not, take the extra minute to go back over it. Change
the negative tone to a positive one. Brighten it up. Ask
yourself: Would you be happy to get this e-mail? Would
you feel honored and appreciated if you received it?
Behavioral studies continue to show that positive
reinforcement works more than seven times better than
negative criticism to change behavior.
Negative criticism causes resentment, depression, anger, and sabotage. People will sabotage your leadership if
they feel alienated and underappreciated.
Pump things up and watch what happens. Don’t take
this on faith; use trial and error. Send half of your people
a neutral e-mail and half a positive one, and see which gets
the best results.
You will be able to test this concept by doing it. You
will be delighted with the results you get.
89. Stop Pushing
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and
it will go nowhere at all.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
Thomas Crum gives seminars on how to use aikido
philosophy in daily business life. He calls what he teaches
“The magic of conflict.”
Scott remembers being there during one of Crum’s
demonstrations. Crum had someone come to the front of
the room and stand up in front of him.
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“Put out your hand like this,” said Crum as he put his
hand up as if taking an oath, touching the student’s upraised hand. Crum pushed on the student’s upraised hand,
and the student just naturally, automatically reacted by
pushing back.
Crum said, “That’s the natural way of human beings. I
push, you give me resistance. You push back.”
Then, he asked the student to extend his hand in the
form of a fist. He did, and then Crum put his hand in a
closed fist in front of him and they both pushed against
each other. Each fist pushing the other.
“This is the way we experience life a lot,” said Crum.
“Just like this. A stalemate or struggle, where I’m trying to
win or you’re trying to win. In aikido, we don’t ever resist.”
Right at that moment Crum dropped his fist down,
and instantly the volunteer pushed right by him (and, in
aikido, you turn in the direction of the person going by
you). Crum turned with the volunteer and guided him
quickly and gently to the floor.
Crum said, “Now, this is aikido. I no longer resist, so
we’re no longer fighting. And guess what? We’re in perfect alignment so it’s very easy for me to direct this person
wherever I choose him to go. And that’s how aikido works.”
In fact, the characters ai, ki, and do mean blending
our inner forces, not force against force. And every move
in aikido comes to that point, where both the aggressor’s
ki and your own ki are blended. Right at that point, when
the two are in alignment, I have control over the other
person and what happens to him and his body. Totally. It
takes no effort. Because we’re in complete alignment.
The application to motivating others is profound, because I don’t really want to resist what my people are doing
Become Conscious / 193
or saying. I want to guide their natural inner energy toward a mutual goal, theirs and mine. I want to receive and
guide my people’s natural energy. I don’t want to oppose
it or make it wrong.
90. Become Conscious
A boss creates fear, a leader, confidence. A boss fixes blame, a
leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions.
A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting.
—Russell H. Ewing, Author
If I’m an unconscious manager, can I be taught to be a
true leader?
Of course I can. If you are going to turn me into a true
leader, you begin by making what is unconscious (my commitments and operating principles as a leader) become
conscious and clear. That’s step one. That process is as
simple as teaching me how to use a computer program.
Perhaps you hold a leadership meeting and state very
clearly why and how you intend to lead. You make everything clear. If there are other leaders in the room, even
leaders whom you lead, you invite them to do the same.
The more open we all are about how we intend to lead, the
more motivated our people will be.
One of the exercises we like to do in our leadership
seminars is to ask people to write down the name of someone in their lives whom they admired and respected as a
leader. It may be their grandmother, an old platoon leader,
or a former teacher or manager. Some people write down
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a leader in history who had an influence on them, such as
John F. Kennedy or Winston Churchill.
You might want to do this exercise right now. Think
of someone in your own life you respected as a leader. Jot
the name down. Now, write three qualities about that person that you admired the most. Don’t read on until you do.
Okay, now look at those three qualities. They may be
anything—honesty, openness, a total belief in you, creativity, nonjudgmental teaching style—whatever the three qualities are, look at them. More than likely, and more than nine
times out of 10, these qualities are now in you as a leader.
And these are the three things your people would say about
you! Look at them. Is it not true? Are they not who you are?
This is a powerful exercise because it shows you how
you have already internalized and modeled yourself after
the leaders you admired. But until now, it has been subconscious. The trick is to make it conscious, and be very
awake to it every day.
There is nothing so disheartening as a leader having a
perceived hidden agenda, which comes from overly unconscious values at play. It discourages your people when
they have to guess where you’re coming from every day.
Far better to have both you and your people fully conscious of what you stand for.
91. Come From the Future
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision.
You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
—Theodore M. Hesburgh, Former President, Notre Dame
Come From the Future / 195
Managers often, quite unconsciously, allow team meetings and one-on-one conferences to focus excessively on
the past. But the constant refrain of how things used to be
and why things were “better back then” demoralizes the
team. The team also sits through unnecessarily long periods of time spent hashing out, venting, and reviewing breakdowns and mistakes.
This is done at the expense of the future. It is also
done at the expense of optimism, morale, and a sense of
good, orderly direction.
A good motivator will not make the mistake of obsessive focus on the past. A good motivator will use the past
as a springboard that immediately leads to a discussion of
the future: “What can we learn from that mistake that will
serve us in the future? And if this happens again, how might
we handle it better?”
To a good motivator, the past really has only one purpose: to provide building material for creating the future.
The past is not used as something to get hung up on, or an
excuse for regret, placing blame, nostalgia, personal attacks, and having a defeated attitude. A leader knows that
leadership means leading people into the future. Just as a
scout leader leads scouts into the woods, a true leader
leads team members into the future.
Your shift to better leadership might include learning
to make an ever-increasing percentage of your communication focus on the future: discussing your next week, planning your next month, designing your goals for next year,
and looking at the opportunities that will be there two years
from now. Be thorough and well-prepared when it comes
to discussing the future. If the details are not always known,
the commitments, vision, and strategies are.
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Unmotivational managers will unconsciously disown
and spread fear about the future. They will say how unpredictable and dangerous the future is. They will exaggerate potential problems and stress the unpredictability
of everything. They will attempt to come across as realists
when, in fact, it’s much more truthful to say that they simply haven’t done their homework.
You’ll be motivating others to the degree that you are
a constant source of information and interesting communication about the future of the team.
92. Teach Them to Teach
Themselves
If you want a man to be for you, never let him feel he is dependent
on you. Make him feel you are in some way dependent on him.
—General George C. Marshall
Scott remembers a story that Mr. Mercado told him
about the musical virtuoso Jascha Heifetz and the always
unplayable Tchaikovsky violin concerto.
Heifetz’s teacher was the great German violinist
Leopold Auer. Mercado said, “Auer himself could not play
the Tchaikovsky violin concerto up to speed. It’d never
been performed up to speed before Heifetz.”
Heifetz was the first one to perform this piece up to
speed! And if Auer, his teacher, could not perform it up
to speed, and he was teaching Heifetz, how then was
Heifetz able to do it?
Some people might say, “Well, he was just a talent.”
Stop Apologizing for Change / 197
But that wasn’t the explanation according to Mr. Mercado.
He said, “Scott, if Auer was only teaching Heifetz how to
play like Auer, then Heifetz would have never performed
that Tchaikovsky violin concerto up to speed. But that
isn’t what Auer was doing. He was teaching him how to
teach himself how to play the instrument. And that’s how
he learned to become better than his teacher.”
This is a very powerful distinction. And that really is
why Auer was such an extraordinary teacher.
Your goal is to teach like Leopold Auer taught, absolutely unafraid of the people you lead being better than
you are. Because that’s what a great coach and leader does.
They don’t teach us how to have a great career. They teach
us how to teach ourselves how to have a great career.
93. Stop Apologizing
for Change
If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of
change on the inside, the end is near.
—Jack Welch
Managers who apologize for any and all changes the
team must accommodate are sowing the seeds of low morale and discouragement.
Every time they introduce a new policy, product, system, rule, or project, they apologize for it. They imply
that change is harmful to the well-being of the team and
that change is something we would hope someday to not
have to suffer so much of. This is done with the unconscious
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motive of seeming compassionate, and being liked, but it
results in creating a team of victims, and it dramatically
lengthens the time it takes for the team to assimilate and
become comfortable with a change.
A true leader does not apologize for change. A true
leader does not feed into the fear that so easily accompanies change. Instead, the leader is an advocate for the
change. A leader continuously communicates the benefits
of having an ever-changing organization. A leader endorses
an organization that is continuously reinventing itself to
higher and higher levels of productivity and innovation.
Every change is made for a reason. Every change was
decided upon because the positives of the change outweigh
the negatives. So, if you wish to be a highly motivational
leader, you simply learn the positives, through and through.
You find out everything there is to know about the upside
of the change, because that’s what leadership is. Leadership is communication of the upside.
Unconscious managers are often as uncomfortable with
changes as their own people are, so they constantly apologize for them, which furthers the impression that this little
team is not in alignment with the mission of the company.
But not you. You are a leader, and so you will always
reconnect the team to the mission of the company.
Change will not be apologized for. Why apologize for
something that will improve the strength of the organization? Every change is made (every last one of them)
for the sole purpose of strengthening the ultimate viability of the organization.
That’s why you advocate the change. That’s how you
sell it to your team.
Let People Find It / 199
94. Let People Find It
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss.
The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert.
The leader leads and the boss drives.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Scott again recalls coach and teacher Rodney Mercado
and his master key to getting remarkable performances
out of the people he taught and motivated:
If you heard any two students of Mercado play side by
side, you would absolutely swear that they did not have
the same teacher. You would say it was physically impossible because their playing styles were so radically different. Most people who take music lessons are aware that
listeners can identify who a student’s teacher is by how
the student plays.
But with Mercado, not only could you not do that, you
would absolutely swear that they couldn’t have the same
teacher, that it just couldn’t be possible.
So how did he accomplish that? For one thing, he never
told us “don’t,” he never said no, and he never told us how
to play the instrument.
A typical example, a very fundamental thing, was how
to hold the bow. He would say, “Okay, Scott, what I’d like
you to do is to try holding your hand this way,” and he’d
have me adopt an extreme position, like holding my hand
as far to the right as I possibly could while still being able
to use my bow. He’d have me play some music that way,
and then say, “Okay, fine. Now I’d like you to do the opposite,” and he’d have me put my hand all the way to the
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left, as far as I could possibly put it—a very uncomfortable position—and then he’d say, “Play this passage.”
He would then ask, “Now, if you had to choose one of
those two extremes, which one would you choose?”
“Well, all the way to the right, because it’s a little less
cumbersome than all the way to the left.”
“So what that’s telling you, Scott, is that you probably
want to hold your hand position somewhere between all
the way to the right and all the way to the left, and it’s
probably going to be more to the right than to the left. So
find the way that works the best for you.”
And if I said, “Well, what about if other people say
you have to hold your hand a certain way?”
Mercado would then reel off a number of examples of
professional violinists who did it differently. He’d ask me
to reason it out.
“So what is that telling you, Scott?”
“Well, that there isn’t one right way to do it.”
“Right, so find what works for you.”
And that was his teaching method.
So, I learned from that, and in motivating people I
adapted it to mean that there is never one right way to do
something. Rather than showing my people the “right way”
to make a phone call, or gather information from a client,
I will let them develop their own ways. The lesson learned
for me way back in music class was that people will motivate themselves in their own way if you gently guide them
toward the outcome you want.
Be a Ruthless Optimist / 201
95. Be a Ruthless Optimist
A leader is a dealer in hope.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
Pessimism is the most fundamental of all the mistakes
we managers can make. It is a position, a pose, taken by
the manager of not being optimistic about the future of
the organization and, therefore, the future of the team.
It is a refusal to prepare for team meetings by learning
the rationale behind the latest company decisions. It is a
refusal to take a stand for the success of the enterprise. It
is a refusal to be an advocate for the organization’s ongoing strategy.
It is also an exaggerated tendency to acknowledge and
agree with every issue’s downside without standing up for
the upside. Sometimes optimism is a lonely and courageous position to take, which is why most managers don’t
do it. The sad thing is, it is what the team wants and needs
the most from its leader.
While the unconscious manager doesn’t realize what
he or she is doing by being so pessimistic all the time, a
true leader knows exactly what optimism is and what it is
for: Optimism is the practice of focusing on opportunities
and possibilities rather than complaints and fears.
A true optimist is not a brainless Pollyanna, wearing
rose-colored glasses. A true optimist is more realistic than
that. A true optimist is unafraid of confronting and understanding the problems in the organization. But once a problem is fully identified and understood, the optimist returns
the thinking to opportunity and possibility.
202 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Optimistic leaders acknowledge the downside of every situation, then focus the majority of their thinking on
the upside. They also focus the majority of their communication on the upside. They know that the downside is
always well-known throughout the team. But the upside is
never as well-known. Who wants to look like an idiotic
optimist? It is far more popular and easy to be a clever
and witty pessimist. But it is not leadership.
Optimism in the face of a grumbling and pessimistic
team takes courage and energy. It is something most team
members would never be willing to do. It is the heart and
soul of leadership. And while you may be questioned about
it now and then, in the end, the very end, when your work
is almost through, it is what your team members will love
you for the most.
96. Pay Attention
Do not hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed
them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix
your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with
company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
—Samuel Johnson
Anything you pay attention to expands. It grows.
Pay attention to your house plants and they grow. Pay
attention to your favorite cause, and your passion and
knowledge will grow the success of that cause. Attention
is like that. Anywhere you direct it, the object of that attention grows.
Pay Attention / 203
When you talk to members of your team, keep paying
attention to the end results you want, not the effort to
achieve them. When you praise your managers, pay attention to results they achieved that you wanted, not the trying, the effort, or the attempt to do it.
Most managers miss this vital point; they keep rewarding the “trying,” not realizing that doing so sends the subconscious message that “trying” is always enough. Their
people soon think that if they can show they’re making
efforts, if they can show activity, then there won’t be so
much focus on end results.
Make sure you reward end results more than anything
else.
If you do so, you’ll get better end results. You have to
be the one who keeps talking numbers if you want that
one person to hit his numbers.
If, instead, you commiserate with how hard everything
is, and you acknowledge how hard everyone is trying, then
that’s what you’ll get: fewer results and more trying. Whatever you praise, grows. Always. It’s the law of the harvest.
Attention is powerful. Yet most people allow their attention to be pushed and pulled around all day long by
outside forces. A chance phone call. Some annoying e-mail.
Somebody walking by their desk and asking a loaded question. Attention gets spread too thinly this way.
But your attention is like money. It is a precious treasure. It is paid in to things. We say pay attention for a
reason. It is invested. It gets paid in to whatever you choose
to pay it in to. If you pay it in to the things you want (measurable, numerical outcomes and specific results), you will
get more and more of what you want.
204 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
97. Create a Routine
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which
difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
—John Quincy Adams
Leadership success is not easy, but it is not all that
hard, either.
It is not nearly as hard as we often make it for ourselves.
The major psychological obstacle to motivational success is the myth of permanent characteristics. It is people
who think that their habits of action are not habits, but
permanent traits. Believing in that totally false myth traps
managers in a prison, an iron web of limitation. And it’s
all unnecessary!
The repeated action patterns that you and I demonstrate throughout the day are a result of habit, not the
result of permanent characteristics, or character defects,
or hard-wired personality traits.
If we don’t like a certain tendency someone has (let’s
say to procrastinate having that important talk with a coworker), then the first step in correcting the tendency is
to see it for what it is: a habit. A habit is a pattern of
behavior woven into seeming permanence by repetition.
If I repeatedly and consistently put off doing the tough
tasks in favor of the easy ones, it will become a habit. It’s
the law of the human neurological system.
So, what do we do?
All we have to do to build a new habit is to create a
routine. That’s right, a routine! Please repeat to yourself,
“I don’t need self-discipline for this, I don’t need a new
Create a Routine / 205
personality, I don’t need fresh strength of character or
even more willpower. All I Need Is a Routine.”
Lyndon Duke, one of our top mentors and business
productivity coaches, once said that he had spent many
years lowering his self-esteem by bemoaning the condition of his chaotic apartment. He lived alone and was a
highly active business genius who worked many long and
joyful hours, but couldn’t keep his place clean. He told
himself that he was an undisciplined and disorganized person. Soon, in his own mind, he was a slob. That is a permanent characteristic: slob.
Finally it dawned on him that the only thing missing
was a routine. That’s all he lacked! He didn’t lack willpower, good character, or self-control. Not at all! He simply lacked a routine.
So he made up a routine: “I will straighten things up for
20 minutes every morning.” Mondays, while coffee was brewing, for just a few short and quick minutes, he would do his
living room. Tuesdays, his kitchen. Wednesdays, the bedroom.
Thursdays, the hall and porch. Fridays, the home office and
den. And each Saturday morning, for 20 minutes, he would
do a deeper cleaning of his choice. That became his routine.
The beauty of a routine is that it eventually becomes habit.
“At first, it was awkward and weird,” he said. “And I
thought to myself that it was so unnatural and uncomfortable that I would probably never follow through, but I
promised myself a 90-day free trial. I’d be free to drop it if
my theory was incorrect. My theory was that I only needed
a routine, and that once my routine became routine, it would
be an effortless and natural part of my life.”
He was absolutely correct about all of it. When we
first visited him at his apartment, long after his routine
206 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
had become habit, we noticed how clean and orderly it
looked. We assumed he had someone come in to clean.
Then he told us about the power, the absolutely stunning
and amazing power, of making up a routine.
“I do it so naturally now that sometimes I don’t even
remember having done it,” he said. “So I’ll have to look
out at my living room to check, and lo and behold, it’s in
complete order. I had done it without thinking.”
If something isn’t happening in your professional life,
if you could be more productive if only you were “as disciplined as so and so,” then worry no longer. It isn’t about
you. It’s about your lack of a routine. Make up your routine, and follow your routine, and if you do this for 90
days, it will be so effortless and natural to you that you’ll
never have to think about it again.
Do you hate yourself because you don’t prepare for
your team meetings? There’s nothing wrong with you. You
just need a routine. Are you troubled by how your e-mail is
taking up your precious time and life as a leader? You aren’t
missing any kind of inner strength; you are missing a routine. Check your e-mail two specific times a day and tell
your people that’s what you do. Create a routine for yourself. Follow your routine for 90 days. Then you’re free.
98. Deliver the Reward
Love is always creative and fear is always destructive.
If you could only love enough, you would be the most
powerful person in the world.
—Emmet Fox, Author/Philosopher
Deliver the Reward / 207
The most important principle of motivation is this: You
get what you reward.
It’s true of every relationship. It’s true of pets, house
plants, children, and lovers. You get what you reward.
It’s especially true of team motivation.
Positive reinforcement of the desired behavior works
much faster and much more permanently than criticizing
poor behavior.
Love conquers fear every time.
Leaders who figure out, on their own, ways to reward
their people for good performance get more good performances than leaders who run around all day putting out
fires caused by their people’s poor performance.
The reason most people don’t maximize this reward
concept is that they wait too long to put it into effect.
They wait to decide whether to reward people, and soon,
before they know it, a big problem comes up to be dealt
with. By then it’s too late.
Dedicate a certain portion of each day to rewarding
people, even if it’s only a verbal reward. Ten minutes at the
end of the day. Get on the phone. Send out some e-mails.
Reward. Reward. (Sometimes verbal and written rewards,
rather than financial bonuses and prizes, are the ones that
go the farthest in inspiring a person to do more.)
Obtain a copy of Bob Nelson’s excellent study of how
companies reward their people, 1001 Ways to Reward
Employees, 2nd Edition (Workman Publishing Company,
2005), and read it with a yellow highlighter or a red pen in
hand. Everyone we know who does this increases their
team’s productivity. Everyone we know who does this underlines and highlights completely different parts of the
208 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
book and then translates the ideas into ideas that fit their
style. Most of the ideas don’t take any extra time, just
extra commitment to reward.
But you’ll get what you reward.
99. Slow Down
Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as
what he does from day to day to lead himself.
—Thomas J. Watson, Former CEO, IBM
You’ll lead better if you slow down. You’ll get more
done, too.
It doesn’t seem like it would be true. It doesn’t seem
like slowing down would get that much more done. But it
does. Every day you do it, you will get more done. Every
day you experiment with slowing down, you will understand the truth behind the legend of the tortoise and the
hare.
The most important element of slowing down is to know
that you’re always working on the right thing to be working on at any given time. Business consultant Chet Holmes
says that he and his clients accomplish that by making sure
each day has only six things on the Must Do list. That list
lets them slow down.
”Why only six things?” says Holmes. “Because with a
bigger list than that, generally you just try to trim the list.
You spend the day trimming the list. At the end of the day
you feel that most of the important things on the list did
not get completed. You just look down and say, ‘Oh, I
Decide to Be Great / 209
didn’t do the most important things.’ There’s a bad psychological impact in not finishing your list! And so only
list the six most important things…and then make sure
you get them done. You’ll be amazed at how much you’ve
accomplished.”
If I am on the wrong road, it doesn’t matter how good
I get at speeding down the road. It’s still the wrong road.
I need to remind myself to slow down and win. I need
to take my sweet, gentle time. I want this conversation
ahead of me to be relaxed and strong so that the relationship I have becomes relaxed and strong. So all day, it helps
to tell myself: Slow down. Even slower than that.
There you go.
100. Decide to Be Great
When life demands more of people than they demand of life—as
is ordinarily the case—what results is a resentment of life almost
as deep-seated as the fear of death.
—Tom Robbins, Author
Either now or on one’s deathbed, one realizes a strange
truth: There’s no excuse for not being great.
If you are a leader, a leader is what you are. If you are
still just a manager, just managing to manage, well, maybe
you’ll manage, but how fulfilling is that? How proud is your
subconscious mind of you? How proud is your family?
Someday you will just decide to be great at what you do.
You’ll never look back. You’ll never regret the decision. It
might not have seemed like a big deal at the moment you
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decided, but somehow you’ll know the decision is final. It
will never have to be revisited.
There’s a reason why it’s good to be great: people want
to follow you. People start to respect you. People want to
be more like you. People want to do things for you.
And if you are honest with yourself, you will someday realize the truth for yourself, either now, or on your deathbed:
There was no excuse for not being great.
M
101. Let Them See You
Change and Grow
Everyone thinks of changing the world,
but no one thinks of changing himself.
—Leo Tolstoy
There’s a reason why advertisers always look for ways
to use real people in “before and after” pictures. Nothing
motivates a buyer more! You as a leader can keep tapping
into that ultimate motivational tool—your own growth.
Your people will always remember what you used to be
like, and see what you’re like now.
Nothing inspires and motivates people as much as
watching someone else change for the better. When you
are willing to offer yourself up as a role model for personal change, you’ll motivate your people faster than anything else you can do. Watch what happens when your
team sees you evolve, change, and grow. It’s inspiring for
them to see that you yourself are not cast in stone, locked
in to your own hardened habits of leadership.
Let Them See You Change and Grow / 211
It’s exciting for people to witness your courageous
evolution. When your employee fills out a form that evaluates you as a leader, you want their most telling comment
about you to be how they admire your own “willingness to
grow.”
And this growth can take place in absolutely any category. So you never have to stop looking for areas that
have potential for you to demonstrate your own willingness to challenge yourself.
For example, let’s look at your physical condition. Why
not? Everyone else is. Does that make you uncomfortable? That they would even notice something like that?
They shouldn’t! How judgmental! How irrelevant!
Well, let’s just face up to it. Your physical condition
will always be observed by everyone who works for you.
Just as you always observe everyone else’s. Perhaps it
shouldn’t be so. Maybe it shouldn’t be a factor, but it is. If
you are in poor condition, or overweight, or easily out of
breath, you are less likely to be someone’s inspiration. But
that’s good! Because you now have an opportunity. By
taking up a new health program you can transform, physically, right before the eyes of your people. This is one of
the most dramatic ways to be a role model for discipline
and self-control ever.
Steve recalls: I once lost 16 pounds by doing an extensive outdoor walking program and using the diet we introduced in Two Guys Read Moby Dick (Robert D. Reed
Publishers, 2006). When I went back to do a workshop
with a large team I’d worked with six months before, I was
amazed at how many people came up and talked to me about
the change in my appearance. I didn’t think it mattered that
much. But when I realized how pale and overweight I had
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been when they saw me six months ago compared to now,
I got the picture. People care a lot whether you look healthy,
vibrant, and alive. They associate poor physical condition
with a kind of giving up inside…a depressed kind of caving in to last-ditch self-comforting.
Studies show that if you appear strong and fit, you’ll
be better able to motivate others. Their subconscious response to you has more respect in it. On a subtle, psychological level, they admire your own commitment to
excellence and discipline. (It’s much harder to work hard
for someone who does not take care of herself or himself.)
Even changes in attire can be motivational (on a very
subtle level, but it’s true). As you take more care dressing
well, it sends a message that life is good! It sends the message that this profession is important to you, so you want
to look your best. You’re a leader! So people notice when
you upgrade your appearance in any way.
Learning another language is a very challenging project,
and we’re not suggesting you take it on just to make an
impression. But if it’s something you were considering for
professional or personal reasons, don’t put it off. Because
it’s very inspiring to other people and often motivates them
to expand their own skills in some category. Scott speaks
fluent Spanish and Chinese, and the people at his law firm
who get to see those skills demonstrated are inspired to
use their own brains in new and powerful ways.
Being a better speaker and meeting facilitator is open
to anyone. Steve taught a class to graduate students at
the University of Santa Monica in presentation skills for
leaders.
He said, “It’s astonishing to me that even though many
top level leaders in an organization speak to groups of
Let Them See You Change and Grow / 213
people regularly, they very rarely enroll in a specific program to improve their skills.”
We’ve seen CEOs laugh off their own speaking skills
and say, “I just try to be brief. Limit the damage! I’m
not going to fool anyone. I’m not a pro. I’ll just read my
notes and be as brief as I can be. Thank goodness for
PowerPoint.”
And what a missed opportunity that is. What if
Churchill had taken that approach? There would have been
no rallying of the British people to stand up to Hitler. Sometimes the very things leaders dismiss or try to get out of
are what could turn the morale of the whole organization
around.
All human beings have the potential to speak well before a group. If you never dip into yours, you’re not going
to be much of an inspiration to anyone.
We recommend that you, as a leader, take the Dale
Carnegie classes (or some equivalent) in public presentation, and then let your people see the difference in your
speaking skills. As you get better and better in front of a
room of people, those same people will see the growth as
it occurs.
If speaking is already something you do well, you might
choose listening as your next growth skill. Listening, compromise, positive reinforcement, compassionate relationshipbuilding, and all the other skills that build trust and
understanding. There are books such as The Relationship
Handbook (Pransky and Associates, 2001) by George
Pransky and our own 50 Ways to Create Great Relationships
(Career Press, 2000) that give a dramatic crash course in
eliminating the sick ego in human communications. The
University of Santa Monica’s Spiritual Psychology program
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teaches leaders the deepest and most thoroughly generous listening skills on the planet. Many leaders we have
worked with have enrolled in that program with dramatic
turnarounds in team morale as a result. When you, as a
true leader, learn to listen, everything opens up.
You may choose customer relations as your next skill
to improve. You can read Darby Checketts’s Customer
Astonishment (Robert D. Reed Publishers, 2006) and Positive Conflict (Career Pres, 2006) and take those books to
heart. Your people will be astonished at how differently
you treat customers and how much new business comes in
as a result. They will remember you being rather brief and
“professional” in demeanor with customers before, but
now see you opening up to becoming a completely new
you with whom customers love to brainstorm.
When your people watch this, they get motivated like
no other system or “trick” for motivating others will do.
Why does it work so well? It’s the hardest thing to do, and
your people know it.
A lot of older managers think it’s cute or curmudgeonly to not want to learn any of the newer communication technologies. While the younger employees thrive on
all kinds of “cool” new ways to communicate by phone,
text, and videoconferencing, the stuck-in-the-past leader
refuses to learn the new ways.
A wonderful opportunity for personal growth is in the
technical field. Every leader should subscribe to WIRED
magazine and read it voraciously! You’ll surprise everyone (in the most pleasant way) if you challenge yourself
to stay current and continuously add new technical and
Internet skills to your repertoire. When a new IT system
comes in, you can be the first to learn it and embrace it.
Let Them See You Change and Grow / 215
No one is really motivated by a same-ol’, same-ol’,
stuck-in-the-past manager. If you think it’s always a good
thing to be falsely “consistent” as the same person you
always were (stuck in an outdated rut), you are simply
wrong.
Most managers believe they don’t have time to improve themselves by adding a new skill. They think they’d
never have time to take a Dale Carnegie speaking class at
night or fly into a weekend session at the University of
Santa Monica because that’s the time they reserve for
stressing out over e-mails, or studying the sales reports,
or being upset with their families.
But it isn’t a matter of time, it’s a matter of commitment. It’s a bold move to grow yourself in a new direction.
That’s why it’s so motivating for others to watch you do it.
When you pick your next category in which you improve yourself, make sure you really dive into it. Take it
on with a passion. If you have a leadership coach (and we
can recommend some good ones if you contact us at
www.stevechandler.com), use that coach! Let him or her
hold you accountable for dramatic change so that your
people can see it and think “wow.” Don’t go through your
life in leadership never tapping into that “wow” factor.
It’s always available to you. Not to mention the effect it
will have on you yourself. As the great poet-philosopher
William Butler Yeats said, “Happiness is neither this thing
nor that…it is simply growth. We are happy when we are
growing.”
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Introduction / 217
Recommended
Reading
The Secret of Transitions by Jim Manton
The Relationship Handbook by George Pransky
Loving What Is by Byron Katie
Self-Esteem at Work by Nathaniel Branden
The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss
The Laughing Warriors by Dale Dauten
The Game of Work by Charles Coonradt
The Hands-Off Manager
by Duane Black and Steve Chandler
Positive Conflict by Darby Checketts
217
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Index / 219
Index
A.R.T. of confrontation, 71-72
accelerate change, 33-35
Adams,
Henry B., 171
John Quincy, 79, 204
Agather, Elaine, 155-156
agreements, managing, 49-54
aikido, 192
Allen,
David, 67
George, 131
approach, do that math on
your, 123-125
attention and where to spend
it, 45
attention, paying, 202-203
Baruch, Bernard, 145
Bell, Lawrence D., 94
Bennis, Warren, 72, 137
birthright, self-esteem as our, 72
Black, Duane, 123
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 201
Boss, The Gifted, 77
Branden, Nathaniel, 141
breathe, don’t forget to, 160-162
Brett, George, 142
Bymes, James F., 140
camera, focus like a,
145-147
Campbell, David, 20
Carnegie, Dale, 45, 215
cause and effect, 24-25
challenge, use your best time
for you biggest, 116-117
change and grow, let them see
you, 210-215
change cycle, the, 33
change,
accelerate, 33-35
stop apologizing for,
197-198
changing yourself, 188-189
219
220 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Channing, William
Ellery, 165
Churchill, Winston, 123
coaching yourself, get some, 171
communicate consciously, 90
communication and managing
agreements, 52
complete, coach your people
to, 121-123
concentration, 135-137
concern, translate worry into, 165
conflict and
non-producers, 58
confrontation, the A.R.T. of,
71-72
conscious, become, 193-194
consciously,
communicate, 90
consulting with action, follow,
177-178
Coonradt, Charles, 29, 64
Coué, Émile, 148
crazy, don’t go, 80-82
cuddling up, stop, 82-84
culture of acknowledgement,
build a, 167
Customer Astonishment, 214
customer thoughts, keep your
people thinking friendly,
112-116
cycle, the change, 33
Dale, Arbie M., 125
Darby Checkett, 214
Dauten, Dale, 47, 49
debate yourself, 104-106
decide to be great, 209-210
Deficit Disorder, Intention, 57
DePree, Max, 106
depression and rain, 40
desire, production as a direct
result of, 60
Dictionary, Spanish/English, 21
disagreement, phase out,
150-152
Disorder, Intention Deficit, 57
Disraeli, Benjamin, 139
doers and feelers, 96
Drucker, Peter F. , 27, 33, 58,
66, 152, 163
ego, feed your healthy,
72-74
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 19,
80, 191
e-mails, pump up your, 190-191
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 24, 39,
89, 133, 172
emotions and personalities of
others, managers, 51
enthusiasm, lead with,
133-135
Ewing, Russell H., 193
experiment, learn to, 89-90
failure, forget about, 176-177
feed your healthy ego, 72-74
feedback, keep giving, 29-31
feelers and doers, 96
Index / 221
Feldenkrais, Moshe, 98
50 Ways to Create Great
Relationships, 213
focus and non-producers, 56
focus on results, 54-58
Ford, Henry, 166
Fox, Emmet, 206
Frost, Robert, 84
fundamentals first, manage the,
94-68
future, come from the, 194-196
Game of Work, The, 64
game, creating a, 63-66
Gandhi, 38
Gates, Bill, 110
Geneen, Harold, 91
Gifted Boss, The, 77l
giving feedback, keep, 29-31
go fish, time to play, 13-15
Gogh, Vincent van, 156
good cop and bad cop, playing
both, 79
Good to Great, 98
great, decide to be, 209-210
Greenleaf, Robert, 78
grow, know hat you want to,
118-120
Handbook, The Relationship, 213
Hardison, Steve, 169
Hayakawa, S.I., 176-177
hear your people out,
154-156
heard, being, 23-24
heart, soften your, 120-121
Hesburgh, Theodore M., 194
Hill, Napoleon, 148
hire the motivated, 74-76
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 96
Huber, Cheri, 188
inner thing, learn the,
173-176
innovation your personal, 94
input and getting it from your
people, 31-32
Intention Deficit
Disorder, 57
intention, language of, 107
James, William, 121
Jefferson, Thomas, 183
Johnson,
Samuel, 202
Johnson, Spencer, 154
Jung Carl, 173
Keller, Helen, 190
Kennedy, Dan, 180
language, lead with, 106-109
Lau, Charlie, 142
Laughing Warriors, The, 49
layering, 75
lead by selling, 180-183
leaders and
being everybody’s big
buddy, 84
222 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
being liked, 84
telling the truth, great, 42
leadership is not, learn what, 153
leadership,
servant, 78
three principles of, 38
leading from the front, 38
learning, keep, 152
Lee, Blaine, 153
level of choice, live at the, 125
liked, managers seeking to
be, 83
limitation, refuse to buy their,
78-79
Lincoln, Abraham, 42, 158
list of things, one thing versus
a, 27-29
Malraux, André, 71
manage the fundamentals first,
94-96
management as easy, think of,
148-149
management,
poor time, 50
stop criticizing upper, 25-26
managers
and taking the time to
raise their self-esteem, 73
and the emotions and
personalities of others, 51
as ineffective leaders, 47
into parents, converting, 56
seeking to be liked, 83
managing agreements and
communication, 52
Marshall, General George
C., 196
Matthews, William, 135
McKain, Robert J., 178
Mencius, 35
Mercado, Rodney, 68, 94, 135-137
messages damaging to morale
and motivation, 26
minutes, using 10 well, 117-118
mistakes, managers’, 50
Montgomery, Field Marshall, 109
morale and performance,
taking full responsibility for
your staff’s, 36
Morrison, Toni, 186
motivate by doing, 96-98
motivated, hire the, 74-76
motivating and learning from
those who have motivated
you, 68
motivation and stressing out, 44
motivation comes from, know
where, 19-20
non-producers and
conflict, 58
focus, 56
“no” power, teach your
people, 110
obsessing about what other
people think, 109
Index / 223
1001 Ways to Reward
Employees, 2nd edition, 207
optimist, be a ruthless, 201-202
outcome, coach to, 58-62
owners and victims, know your,
35-37
ownership, rewarding, 36
parent-child management, 52
parents, converting managers
into, 56
Patton, George S., 23, 160
Peer, Dennis A., 76
performance, score the, 91-94
Perot, H. Ross, 48
Peters, Tom, 78
picture of a good leader, revise
your, 49
play go fish, time to, 13-15
play it lightly, 155-156
Positive Conflict, 214
positive reinforcement, use,
109-110
possible, see what’s, 68-70
power and giving it to the other
person, 158-160
Principle, hold on to, 183-184
principles of leadership, 38
priority hierarchy, 119
Prisig, Robert, 116
production as a direct result of
desire, 60
promises, keep all your
smallest, 156-157
Purpose, know your, 66-68
question that lead to great sales
ideas, a great leader asks, 32
quit switch, don’t throw the,
131-132
rain and depression, 40
reassurance, cultivate the
power of, 149-150
Redmoon, Ambrose, 179
reinforcement, use positive,
109-110
Reinventing Yourself, Revised
Edition, 35
relationships,
building, 120
create your, 184-186
relaxing and motivation, 127-131
requests, don’t be afraid to
make, 186-188
responsibility, seize, 168-171
results, focusing on, 54-58
reward, deliver a, 206-208
Richardson, Scott, 68
right, giving up being,
139-140
Robbins, Tom, 209
Roosevelt, Theodore, 74, 199-200
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 49
routine, create a, 204-206
Ruskin, John, 120
ruthless with yourself, be, 106
Saint Francis, 162
Saks Fifth Avenue, 20
224 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Savant, Marilyn von, 41
score the performance,
91-94
self-discipline, 22
teach, 20-22
Self-Esteem at Work, 73, 141
Selye, Hans, 44
servant leadership, 78
Shakespeare, William, 177
Shaw, George Bernard, 176-177
Shinn, Florence Scovel, 63
shoulder, looking over your,
179-180
Sinclair, Lister, 127
Sitwell, Sir Osbert, 167
slowing down to get more done,
208-209
stability, inspire inner, 137-139
Stanat, Ruth, 90
strengths, know your people’s ,
98-104
stressing out versus caring, 44-45
superiors, manage your, 45-47
switch, don’t throw the quit,
131-132
talking stop, 76-79
Talleyrand, 104
thing, do the one, 27-29
Think and Grow Rich, 148
thought, preach the role of, 39-41
time management and
motivating others, poor, 84
time management, poor, 50
today as a concept, 172-173
Tolstoy, Leo, 210
Truman, Harry, 82
trust and motivation, 156
truth and telling it quickly, the,
42-44
tune in before you turn on, 23-24
upper management, stop
criticizing, 25-26
victim language, 107
victims, know your owners and,
35-37
vision, create a, 178-179
wake yourself up, 140-142
Walton, Sam, 68, 112
Watson, Thomas J., 208
Welch, Jack, 197
Wells, H.G., 117
Wheatley, Margaret, 149
Wilson, Woodrow, 31
WIRED, 214
Wooden, John, 183-184
Woods, Tiger, 22
words scaring an employee, 108
worst first, 84-89
Introduction / 225
About the
Authors
STEVE CHANDLER is a keynote speaker and corporate
leadership coach with a large number of Fortune 500 clients. He is also a popular convention speaker. (Arthur
Morey of Renaissance Media said, “Steve Chandler is the
most original and inspiring figure in the highly competitive field of motivational speaking.”) Chandler’s first book,
100 Ways to Motivate Yourself, was named Chicago
Tribune’s Audiobook of the Year in 1997. Chandler’s 16
books, now in more than a dozen languages, have also become best-sellers around the world. He can be reached at
www.stevechandler.com.
SCOTT RICHARDSON grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and
Tucson, Arizona. He graduated in 1980 from BYU with a
BA in English and a minor in Chinese. In 1983 he received
a law degree from The College of Law at Arizona State
University. He has practiced immigration law and injury
law for more than 20 years and has been coaching executives since 2000. This is his first of many books. He lives
with his family in Arizona.
225
226 / 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Also by Steve Chandler:
100 Ways to Motivate Yourself
Reinventing Yourself
50 Ways to Create Great Relationships
The Joy of Selling
17 Lies That are Holding You Back
RelationShift
Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
Sample Chapter 1:
“Taking Your Power Back” From
Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s
The Hands-Off Manager
In everyone’s life at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human
being. We should all be thankful for those
people who rekindle the human spirit.
—Albert Schweitzer
Most management activity today is what was alluded
to by the Peter Drucker quote at the beginning of this
book. Managers make it difficult for their people. They
unknowingly kill the human spirit by their old-school
micromanaging and critical judgments.
But there is a new kind of manager emerging in companies today, a manager devoted to rekindling the human
spirit by keeping their hands off their employees’ happiness, and allowing success to happen.
We’ll just call that enlightened person the “hands-off
manager.”
All managers have these two communication styles
from which to choose:
Hands-on: They can criticize and judge
their people.
Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s The Hands-Off Manager
Hands-off: They can mentor and coach
their people.
This choice presents itself many times throughout every day. Every communication with one of your people is
going to be a version of this choice.
If you choose judgment (and criticism, implied or otherwise), you will provoke defensiveness and withdrawal—
not creativity and not productivity.
When we judge our people and find them coming up
short, we then start to criticize and micromanage them. In
this age of the sensitive, knowledge-based worker, that’s a
self-destructive cycle. It engenders nothing but resentment
and push-back.
Also, when we judge and then hold a grudge, we are
giving our power away. When we resent a team member,
we are giving our power to that team member. We are
giving that power to the very person we are angry with by
allowing him or her to occupy and dominate our thinking.
Real power in leadership comes from partnering, not
criticizing.
The hands-off manager sets himself apart by retaining
all his power. His practice is to understand everyone he
meets. By doing this, he is reducing his own stress levels at
work. He is completely aware that every time he judges
someone he alters his own well-being.
So he refuses to assign the responsibility for negative
feelings to the person he is tempted to judge. He assigns
the responsibility for his low feeling to the thought he is
believing about that person.
Only thoughts cause stress; people do not. People can not.
But for the old-school micromanager the stress never
quits, and the harmony in the organization never holds.
Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
If you are micromanaging in the old style of shame
and blame, you will recognize this example: You’re coming into the company parking garage and suddenly have to
slow down because there’s an old person in front of you
going slower than molasses. If you then decide you don’t
like older people who drive slow, you start to suffer. And
you will suffer every time this “happens to” you. Even
though it’s not really happening to you, it is being caused
by you—the stress comes directly from your thought. The
old person has no power to stress you out. You think you
are suffering because this oldster is driving poorly, but the
truth is you are only suffering because of your judgmental
thought about him or her.
We all want to be powerful and in control of our own
well-being, but we continually give away the very power
we seek by our inability to forgive and let go. The only way
out of this trap of constant suffering is to cultivate the
open-minded hands-off skills of letting the actions of others roll off our backs, and letting other people’s negativity
go in one ear and out the other.
Anything we cannot let go of has control over us. But
once we can let go, we’re in control. We can laugh and
enjoy how we are unaffected by what other people might
be thinking.
That’s when you change as a manager.
That’s when people see you as an island in the storm.
A person to go to for peaceful resolutions of crises. In
other words, a true hands-off manager who gets results
from a relaxed and highly productive team.
One does not “manage” people. The task is to lead people. And the goal is to
make productive the specific strengths and knowledge of each individual.
—Peter Drucker
Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s The Hands-Off Manager
How to open your energy field
The hands-off approach allows you to learn to take
your power back and live in a world of quiet action and
non-judgment. If you do this, you’ll soon be living with an
open mind, forgiving effortlessly, and taking back control
of your energy and enthusiasm for doing great work.
Discovering your natural gifts and learning your true
nature is not about learning how to force yourself upon
your team. It’s about allowing success to emerge from within
you, and then from inside others. It’s an inside job. And
once you see that all good power comes from the inside,
you can start to become powerful.
There is a story about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that
illustrates what we mean. A young would-be composer
wrote to Mozart, asking advice about how to compose a
symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding musical form, and that it would be
better to start with something simpler. The young man
protested: “But Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when
you were younger than I am now!”
Mozart replied, “Yes, but I never asked how.”
Mozart’s point was that he simply let the symphonies
emerge from within him. He didn’t have to figure out “how”
to force something outside him to work.
Duane has a saying he uses at work, although it doesn’t
apply only to work; it applies to life in general. His saying is,
“Find them, don’t fix them.” It’s a policy that encourages
finding strengths in your employees that already exist, and
allowing those strengths to come forward.
When they do what they love the success will follow.
Once you know what they love to do, and help them do it,
they’ll do it for you all day long. Keep finding ways to
Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
match their talents with the tasks ahead. Find them, don’t
fix them.
And there will always be employees that you don’t find
a good job match for. Nothing seems to make them happy.
Soon, you know in your heart they aren’t a fit for the team
you have.
Old-school managers have a hard time dealing with
this realization. They keep trying to fix things. They keep
trying to fix people. They go through endless inept exercises to try to find ways to motivate mismatched employees to get them to do what they really don’t want to do.
They try to find ways to make them change themselves into
someone they are not. This is a waste of everyone’s energy!
Our hands-off manager’s commitment to finding how
our people can fit rather than fixing people who don’t fit
has been the central factor in the success of teams. Take
the case of Barry.
Barry was so stressed by his financial debts at home
that he pushed hard for a sales management position early
in his employment, and got it. (Barry was very persuasive
and a crafty communicator.) However, Barry simply did
not enjoy the responsibilities of leadership. He was easily
frustrated with salespeople who didn’t have his natural love
of cold-calling and meeting new people. Even though he
tried to learn our principles of coaching success instead of
forcing it on people, he was still unhappy, and the results
showed it.
We finally identified the mismatch and convinced the
CEO, Glenda, not to keep trying to “fix” Barry with leadership training and negative performance reports. We asked
that Glenda “find” Barry. Find the real Barry, the true, natural salesperson wanting (but not being allowed) to emerge.
Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s The Hands-Off Manager
Finally Glenda saw the light and repositioned Barry as
a senior major account salesperson and turned him loose
into the field where Barry loved to be. After four months,
Barry’s commissions were enormous, and he was able to
settle all his financial crises at home while loving the job
he was doing.
Glenda had just taken her hands off Barry’s natural
inclination to succeed. And this powerfully effective “find
them don’t fix them” approach also applies to us as individuals. We benefit when we continue finding out who we
are and letting that discovery manifest in the outside world,
rather than trying to fix ourselves.
Learning to turn in a new direction
We often enjoy going in person to hear the teachings
of a dear friend, a philosopher/guru named George Addair
who holds wonderful workshops on personal evolution.
(This book is dedicated to him.) One of his sayings is “You
never overcome anything.” In this Addair means that anything that has been a part of your history will always be a
part of your history. You can’t make it go away. However,
over time, if you choose to, you can simply defuse and
dismiss it and go another way. You can follow another
path so that the memory loses all its power over you.
When leaders are bold and decisive throughout the
day, they often make mistakes and bad calls. It’s part of
being in action. It’s a big part of courage. George Patton
used to say that an average plan executed right now is far
more effective than a great plan that takes a long time to
decide to put into action.
A hands-off leader can just release a mistake and let
go of it. And while it doesn’t disappear, it simply becomes
old news. It’s this letting go of the need to “overcome”
Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
things that happened in the past that leads to becoming
truly powerful.
The Greek word metanoeo is translated as repent in the
English New Testaments, and W.E. Vine’s Dictionary says
metanoeo literally means “to perceive afterwards.” Therefore, it means to take another look, and to change one’s mind
or purpose, and it always involves a change for the better.
So repent then means nothing more than “turn and go
another way.” Although some traditions have been trying
to teach us that if you’ve done something wrong you should
punish yourself, feel remorse, and burden yourself with
your shameful behavior, what the literal translation really
wanted you to do was just turn away from it and take a
newer, better direction in your thinking.
When I reflect on my recovery from addiction years
ago I realize I didn’t really “overcome” my addiction. I
simply took another path. I repented, in the truer, deeper
meaning of the word. I realize too that if I were to get
back on the path of alcohol and drugs I’d have the same
problems all over again. The code is there in my brain for
addictive drinking. So if I started drinking again, it would
be addictive. And it doesn’t matter whether the code came
from repetitive use or genetics, it’s there. So I just don’t
go there. The process is to not go there. To replace the
false spirit of drugs with true spirit.
I know from my personal experience that “overcoming”
truly doesn’t work. It doesn’t have any track record of working in the workplace either. And when you hear people who
are newly happy with their jobs now, they say, “I’ve moved
on. I’ve just moved on.” They don’t say, “Well, I was able to
come to grips with it, wrestle with it, overcome it, conquer it,
defeat it.” No one who is now truly free of a problem such as
Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s The Hands-Off Manager
addiction says, “I was able to overcome, defeat my alcoholism, and it lies in a heap and I am victorious over it.” They
just say, “I’ve moved on. I’ve accepted my powerlessness and
taken another path. It’s not a part of my life. I’ve chosen a
different way, a different form of spirit than alcohol was.”
Carl Jung said, “People do not solve their psychological problems, in my experience. They outgrow them. They
grow in a different direction and just leave them in their
history.” This is what the process of allowing success is all
about. It’s the heart and soul of hands-off management. It’s
considered a revolutionary form of management because
it breaks all the old codes of manipulation and mistrust.
Some therapists often say, “In order to move on, you
must reenact a conversation you had with your antagonist
all over again and resolve that memory that’s inside you.”
But that’s just giving more strength to the story. And we
are looking to free you from your stories. Micromanagers
in the workplace do the same dysfunctional thing those
therapists do. They relive breakdowns and mistakes and
go over and over them, making people wrong all day long.
Why not just leave it there and move on? Release its
power over you. See it in a different light, so that you can
focus on your natural talents, your God-given gifts, and
bring the best of who you are to the surface.
The hands-off manager uses this principle to not carry
grudges; he meets with every person in the workplace with
equal trust and understanding. The past is nonexistent.
Most micromanagers in old-school organizations today immediately think that when things feel wrong, they
have to overcome them. They imagine a Rambo figure
who can overcome any odds and can fight off 50 or 100
people at one time if he has to, because he is so strong in
Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
his ability to overcome. Our national macho mythology nurtures an image of a guy who is really muscular and adept at
fighting. So we build into our culture and collective psyches
the idea that “If I only become stronger, if I only work out
harder, if I only run more miles, or go to more seminars, or
push myself harder, then I’ll finally become strong enough
to deal with the issues my team is facing.”
But the opposite is true. If you want a strong mind,
you must learn to quiet your mind. If you want real power,
you must learn to let go.
Doing this will eventually make you incredibly powerful. Not so strong that you can lift hundreds of pounds
of weight at one time, but strong in a different, deeper way.
So strong that you can discipline your mind and discipline
your thoughts to let go of anything that isn’t serving you. So
strong that your people draw their strength and calm from
you—from just being with you! You don’t have to say anything for them to feel how peacefully powerful you are. They
warm up to your vision, and teamwork begins to emerge of
its own accord. It’s being inspired to happen, instead of
forced to happen.
No more team-building seminars
Companies often ask me for a seminar in team-building.
I don’t give them anymore. I know that if people are not
performing and communicating with team spirit it’s not a
team-building issue, it’s a leadership issue.
I am very direct with the manager asking for the training. I want him to see that great leadership will create a
culture in which teamwork will simply grow. They don’t
need teamwork training. The manager himself needs handsoff leadership training so he can learn to mentor success
instead of trying to impose productivity.
Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s The Hands-Off Manager
If you are a newly enlightened manager you have begun with a shift in awareness. You’ve pulled your power
back from the external world of form to the internal world
of energy. You now know how to shift your awareness up
and over the bothersome event so that you can see another path to take.
You cannot be attacked from this lofty position. Even
if people say negative things about you, you don’t end up
giving your power to them. You keep it in yourself. “Negative” occurrences don’t bother you so much anymore because you simply use them for practice. You actually gain
strength from them.
Is it a tough discipline? Yes! It may be even harder than
working out with weights. Because, at first, it’s so counterintuitive. It goes against our whole upbringing and training.
Learning the inner game
When you study people in history who knew the secret of inner allowing versus outer overcoming, you find
that they usually had long, happy lives. Bernard Baruch,
who died in 1965 at the age of 95, was an American financier, stock market and commodities speculator, statesman,
and presidential adviser. After his success in business, he
devoted his time to advising a range of American presidents including Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy on
economic matters for more than 40 years. Baruch was highly
regarded as an elder statesman. He was a man of immense
charm who enjoyed a larger-than-life reputation that
matched his considerable fortune. Baruch is remembered
as one of the most powerful men of the early 20th century.
Asked about his long life and success, Bernard Baruch
said he discovered the key when he was younger. He said,
Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
“In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to
discipline ourselves.”
What? Ourselves? Not overcoming outside obstacles?
Here is another way to look at the hands-off manager’s
shift in inner awareness. Imagine going to the airport with
a huge suitcase. You don’t even consider trying to take it
onto the plane with you because you know it won’t fit or
be allowed. So you check your bag and let the airline take
care of it.
But what if you tried to board a plane the same way
you try to live your life?
You’d be carrying all your heavy, inappropriate, disallowed baggage onto the plane! All your hurts and resentments and tiny betrayals get carried around with you.
Imagine going through the airport and picking up other
bags, not even your own, and trying to carry all of them
onto the plane with you! Your spouse’s baggage, your kids’
baggage, and all your direct reports’ baggage.
Is there even enough room on this plane?
It sounds similar to a slapstick comedy, but it’s how
most of us who play micromanagement roles in society
today live. Just keep this in mind: If you did this with your
baggage in an airport, you would not be allowed to fly.
And the same is true with your career. By trying to
carry all this baggage (by trying to remember who has done
you wrong, who you don’t trust, who disappointed you,
what department you don’t get along with) you are too
burdened to fly.
Take your hands off your life to allow success and allow yourself to fly.
Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s The Hands-Off Manager
Allowing your career to take flight
When my son Bobby was a little boy he was always
asking me about various sports figures and superheroes.
“Dad, who would win in a fight between Arnold and
Bruce Lee?”
“Bruce Lee.”
“Who would win in a fight between Superman and
Batman?”
“Superman.”
“What if Arnold and Superman fought Rocky, Chuck
Norris, and Spider-Man?”
“Okay, time for bed!”
We are actually fascinated by questions such as
these, which is why such fictional heroes as Rambo and
Superman endure. And the internal power that can lift
you up through your organization is more akin to the power
Superman had than the external power Rambo tried impose on events. Rambo was a human being who could be
brought down by a bullet. And if he were shot in the heart,
he’d be dead; there’d be no more Rambo. But one of
Superman’s abilities enabled things to bounce off of him.
He had a power beyond Rambo. If someone fired a bullet,
he’d just push it away with his hand and move on; it
wouldn’t affect who Superman was. That’s why his archetype calls to us. That’s why he endures and speaks to the
inner hero in children and adults.
He had the power to deflect rather than overcome.
You can shift your whole way of leadership thinking.
You can shift your awareness to be totally in tune with
what’s happening with others, and what’s happening with
you. And whenever you see something come up that doesn’t
Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
align with you, you don’t fix it; you accept it, deal with it,
deflect it, and move in a newer, healthier direction.
Deepak Chopra recently wrote that when you get “bad
news,” if you suspend judgment, it becomes good news. It
was always good news anyway. It was just in disguise. “If
you don’t get what you expected, look at what you got,”
said Chopra. “Where is the gift in what you received? Is
there a way you can transform it into an opportunity to
learn? In this approach, change is accepted, not denied. A
sense of spaciousness enters in.”
The spaciousness he describes is exactly the shift in
awareness we are talking about. It’s a shift from narrow,
judgmental, constricted awareness to a bigger, more spacious, hands-off allowing.
Chopra concludes, “On a profound level, every event
in life has two possible causes. Either what happens is positive, or it is bringing up something you need to learn in
order to create something positive. It’s the same with the
body. What happens inside a cell is either healthy activity
or a sign that a correction is needed. Although life can
seem random, in fact everything is pointing to a greater
good. Evolution is not a win-lose crapshoot, but a win-win
journey to transformation.”
You’ll learn your true nature this way, by being free
from the effects of everyone else’s nature. It’s a way of
giving yourself space, of giving yourself the freedom to
live out your true professional potential, to discover what’s
possible for you! Because once you have gotten rid of all
of this limitation, weakness, anger, and sadness, you’re
back into possibility. You’re enthusiastic once again about
ideas and innovation, and the very things that move this
organization forward.
Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s The Hands-Off Manager
Soon you’ll have a different definition of personal
power. You’ll realize that if you are truly powerful, you
can let go. You can forgive. You can release. You can
deflect. That’s the real power.
Greatness is within you. There is nowhere you need to
look to find it. It is already inside, waiting for permission
to express. If you knew you already had something, then
why would you go looking for it? The only trick is to remember. Remember to let go of all the negative ways of
thinking that are obstacles toxic to your success. Remember to allow your success to take its natural course and
happen for you. And the success you find will be greater
than you ever imagined possible.
Steps to hands-off success in your life
Three action steps to take after reading this chapter:
1. The next time you feel a conflict with someone, write down two things you appreciate and
admire about that person and sit down to resolve the conflict by telling them these things
first.
2. Take mental and physical notes about everyone who works with you so that you become
more and more aware of each person’s loves
and strengths. Start a notebook about this,
and don’t forget to include yourself in it.
3. Begin noticing your own thinking throughout
the day as you lead and communicate: Which
thoughts bring you down? Which thoughts lift
you up? By practicing this step you will begin
to understand that it is always your thinking
that creates your feelings, never other people.