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

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/ 100 Ways to Motivate Others
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 lead-
ership today is Warren Bennis. In his book 
On Becoming a
Leader, Revised Ed. 
(Perseus Publishing, 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.
67. Keep All Your
Smallest Promises
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a
series of small things brought together.
—Vincent van Gogh
People are motivated by people they trust.

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The trust of your people is not difficult to obtain. You
can win it. And because it’s so important to motivating
them, you must win it.
So you must never ever be late to your own meetings.
Ever. Such a thing will destroy all trust you’ve built up
with seven out of 10 people, because it means to them that
you cannot be counted on to keep your word.
We explained this to Jeff after working with his team
for a while and noticing that he was not keeping any of his
“small” promises.
“Hey, it’s no biggie!” Jeff would say. “I’m a little late,
or I forget to get somebody a parking pass, so what? I’m a
big-picture guy. I’m not all that anal.”
“It’s your word, Jeff. If you can’t keep it in the small
things, no one will trust it in any of the big things.”
“Well,” said Jeff, “what should I do? Become some-
one I’m not? Get a personality transplant? Get some good
drugs that keep me focused?”
“You must do everything you say you’re going to do
for your people, when you say you’re going to do it. If
you say you’ll call tomorrow, you must. If you say you’ll
get them the documents by Friday, you must move heaven
and earth to do that. It’s everything. Trust is earned, not
just by the big things, but even more so by the little things.
Even more so.”
Keep All Your Smallest Promises

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/ 100 Ways to Motivate Others
68. Give Power to the
Other Person
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
long-lasting 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 agree-
ment 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.

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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 his own mind. There’s a per-
son who’s not going to get pushed around.”
Not true. That’s a