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

Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is
precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.
—Warren Bennis
Inspire Inner Stability

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/ 100 Ways to Motivate Others
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 news-
paper or turn on the news, something radical is different.
Something important will never be the same.

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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 compensa-
tion 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 ath-
letes 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 mag-
nificent, powerful, wonderful athletes.
The same is true with leadership; it happens the same
way. A little bit every day—a little better at communica-
tion, a little better at delegation, a little better at servant
leadership, a little bit better at listening to people and ex-
ecuting 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.
Give Up Being Right

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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 them-
selves 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 real-
ized 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 achiev-
ing 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