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

Learn the Inner Thing

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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 some-
thing 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

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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 truth-
ful 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
Follow Consulting With Action

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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 rea-
son, 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 get-
ting coaching, follow it up with action. Massive action. To
do so will be eloquent.
81. Create a Vision