How to Motivate People?

Preface

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Motivation and leadership advice is getting more common, and we might be confused as to what maxims and teachings we should follow. The best approach to select the right advice for you would be to disbelieve whatever a motivator says - until you apply his or her advice, and see that the results work for you.

These motivational tips are distilled from many years of trials and tribulations in work place. The practical, powerful wisdom encapsulated here will yield benefits for you from day one.

Know where motivation comes from

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Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

– Dwight Eisenhower

There was a manager named Tom 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.

The golfer Tom walked to the front of the room and said, "Look, you 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 Tom 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?"

"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 you 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.

Keep giving feedback

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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 principle only applies to children. But it applies even more 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 briefly experienced 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.

One day the sole worker at one of these sensory-deprivation tanks walked off the job in a huff over some injustice at work, leaving a customer trapped in the chamber. Several hours later, the customer was rescued but still had to be hospitalized. Not for any physical abuse, 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. 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.

Know Your Owners and Victims

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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.

Owners are people who take full responsibility for their happiness, and victims are always lost in their unfortunate stories.

Victims blame others and 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 seminar, a company CEO named Marcus approached Matt at the break:

"I have a lot of victims working for me," Marcus said.

"It's a part of our culture," Matt answered.

"Yeah, I know, but how can I get them to recognize their victim tendencies?"

"Try something else instead," Matt 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." Matt 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 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 said.

"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:

Reward ownership wherever you see it.
Be an owner yourself.
Take full responsibility for your staff's morale and performance.

Marcus looked concerned. We could tell he still wasn't buying everything.

"What's troubling you?" Matt asked.

"Don't be offended."

"Of course not."

"How do I turn around a victim without 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 Matt. "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 it grow, but if you do certain things, it will appear."

Put your hose away

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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: 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 immersed in, and defined by, the fire.

If you're and 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. 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.)

Get the Picture

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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?

They don't know what a leader is, most of them. 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. It's hard to encourage it or cultivate it if you can't define it.

The remedy for this is to always have a picture of what a good leader is. People are not motivated by people who can't picture great leadership. Can't even picture it!

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 live 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 quite a leader.

Manage Agreements, Not People

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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 people who seem unmanageable?" Matt asked as he opened one of his leadership seminars.

The managers who filled the room nodded and smiled in agreement. 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," Matt 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," Matt 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 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 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 adult-to-adult relationship.

A leader's first responsibility is to make sure the relationship is a mature one.

A true leader does not run around playing amateur psychotherapist, trying to manage people's emotions and personalities all day. A leader is compassionate, and always seeks to understand the feelings of others. But a 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 and not return his calls, or meeting with Harry to play therapist. But our client Jill would do none of that.

Jill co-generated an agreement with Harry that Harry (and Jill) would be on time for meetings.

They agreed to agree, and they agreed to keep their commitments to the agreements. It is and 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 you 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 what 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.

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 the two people 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, group-up conversation. Nobody was "managed."

Enjoy the A.R.T. of Confrontation

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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.

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 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 your being happy and fulfilled." Then, tell that 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, bot 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.

Play both Good Cop and Bad Cop

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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 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. The whole reason you exist here, in my life, is to get this job done."

Obviously you don't call on Bad Cop very often. Only after every Good Cop approach is exhausted. 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.

Stop Cuddling Up

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I never gave them hell, I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.

- Harry Truman

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 respect.

But this habit has a severe consequence. It leads to a lack of trust in the workplace, the most common "issue" on employee surveys.

A true leader does not focus first 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 comes up as:

The truth, as soon as you know the truth.
Full and complete communication about what's going on with me and with us.
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 new promise is issued.

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.

Motivate by Doing

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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 in the order of priority that they've rationally selected. 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 and infant's life.)

Professional managers fall into two categories. There are doers and there are feelers.

Doers do what needs to be done to reach a goal that they themselves have set. They come to work having 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. Those are the dictating forces, the commanders, of a feeler's life.

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:

They figure out what they want to achieve.
They figure out what need to be done to achieve it.
They just 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 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. 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 feeler on your team to be a doer.

Use Positive Reinforcement

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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.

Why can't we remember that?

We're too busy chasing down problems and then criticizing the problem 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.

A very surprised Napoleon once said, "The most amazing thing I have learned about war is that men will die for ribbons."

Use 10 Minutes Well

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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."

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 words: You.

Here's another quotation put up there on the office wall. This one's from Charles Buxton, the famous lawyer and 1800s member of Parliament: "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 10 minute window.

To motivate your people, first just relax

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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."

Michael Richardson recalls this remark and what he said back to Mercado, "What? That doesn't have anything to do with music!"

"It has everything to do with music."

And the way he taught relaxation was to teach, "You need to have the maximum relaxation. For instance, if you want to play faster, Michael, 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 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, Michael, 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 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.

Don't throw the Quit Switch

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Most people succeed because they are determined to. People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quite.

- 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 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 switch flipping habit is misinterpreted as lack of will power, 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 a quitter you are, the more of a motivator you become.

Play It Lightly

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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, J P Morgan 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 counter strategies. 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.

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 (Perseus Publishing, Revised Ed., 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.

Give Power to the Other Person

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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 two-thirds 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 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.

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 their 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.

Lets 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 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 defensive 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 your self made impossible.

This very human push-push back dynamic challenges marriages, it slows down careers and it makes a manager's life a misery.

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.

Use the Power of Deadlines

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The best way to predict the future is to create it.

- Peter Drucker

Put your requests into a time frame. If there is no pressing 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 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 that you can hold the other person accountable for. You have a "wished for" and "hoped for" 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 20 hours a day, until we delivered the finished manuscript to our publisher. It turned out to be the best-written 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 that.

Translate Worry into Concern

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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.

Let your mind rule your heart

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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 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 about being a 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.

Make it happen today

9999-12-10T23:59:00.000-08:00

What would be the use of immorality 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 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." While other coaches would try to gear their players toward 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 hard 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 live in the future. The past is where the problem began, so we live in the past. But every good thing that ever happened, happened now, right now. Leadership takes place now, too.

The key to leading others is in your willingness to do important things -- but to do them now. 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 talk 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.

Create a vision

9999-12-09T23:59:00.000-08:00

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.

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.

Stop looking over your shoulder

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Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

- Ambrose Redmoon,
American Philosopher

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 upper management, rather than doing real things to encourage your people.

Great leadership by example (the ultimate 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 we focus on doing our own best work and staying in action to fulfill our personal and professional goals, the more help we are to others. It's hardly selfish.

There's no one less motivational to be around than someone who is always trying to anticipate other people's criticisms.

Don't Change Yourself

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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."

We tell them what we tell everyone: You don't need to change.

All you need is a gentle shift.

To get your sports car to send itself into a smoother, faster speed, 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 sadistic control 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 shift. It's a path, not a revolution. It becomes a way of life.

Just begin.

Stop pushing

9999-12-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

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 the demonstrations Crum gave. Crum had someone come to the front of the room and stand up in front of him.

"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. 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 Tom Crum put his hand in a closed fist in front of him and they both pushed against each other. Each first 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 the 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 long 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 words "ai ki 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 my ki are blended. Right at that point, we we're 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 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.

Come from the future

9999-12-05T23:59:00.000-08:00

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

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 "easier back then" demoralizes the team. The team 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 and 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 upon, 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 year from now. Be thorough and well-prepared when it comes to discussing the future. If the details are not always known, the commitments and vision and strategies are.

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.