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

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 responsi-
bility is?” Scott replied.
“Not really,” the attorney said.

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Seize Responsibility
“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 re-
sponse
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 con-
notation, 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 com-
pany 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 pass-
ing the buck around and around the boardroom.
Finally, coach Hardison motioned to the CEO and in-
terrupted the conversation.
“Can I say something?” he asked the CEO.
“Sure, what?”
“I am responsible for the computer system,” an-
nounced 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 com-
puter 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 sales-
person 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

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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 busi-
ness 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
Get Some Coaching Yourself

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the concept of coaching in sports and show business, be-
cause those were fields where excellence was always ex-
pected. 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