100 Ways to Motivate Others : How Great Leaders Can Produce Insane Results Without Driving People Crazy

Introduction
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Introduction
Time to Play Go Fish
Don’t believe anything you read in this book.
Even though these 100 pieces were written from real-
life 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, be-
cause 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 anx-
ious 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 mo-
tivates 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.

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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 con-
sultants 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 cus-
tomer. 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 per-
forming. 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 con-
sulting to break through the mediocrity and inspire suc-
cess 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.

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Introduction
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Well, even that’s not completely true. There are actu-
ally 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 “be-
fore” 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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