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

couldn’t
have the same
teacher, that it just couldn’t be possible.
So how did he accomplish that? For one thing, he never
told us “don’t,” he never said no, and he never told us 
how
to play the instrument.
A typical example, a very fundamental thing, was how
to hold the bow. He would say, “Okay, Scott, what I’d like
you to do is to try holding your hand this way,” and he’d
have me adopt an extreme position, like holding my hand
as far to the right as I possibly could while still being able
to use my bow. He’d have me play some music that way,
and then say, “Okay, fine. Now I’d like you to do the op-
posite,” and he’d have me put my hand all the way to the
Let People Find It

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left, as far as I could possibly put it—a very uncomfort-
able position—and then he’d say, “Play this passage.”
He would then ask, “Now, if you had to choose one of
those two extremes, which one would you choose?”
“Well, all the way to the right, because it’s a little less
cumbersome than all the way to the left.”
“So what that’s telling you, Scott, is that you probably
want to hold your hand position somewhere between all
the way to the right and all the way to the left, and it’s
probably going to be more to the right than to the left. So
find the way that works the best for you.”
And if I said, “Well, what about if other people say
you have to hold your hand a certain way?”
Mercado would then reel off a number of examples of
professional violinists who did it differently. He’d ask me
to reason it out.
“So what is that telling you, Scott?”
“Well, that there isn’t one right way to do it.”
“Right, so find what works for you.”
And that was his teaching method.
So, I learned from that, and in motivating people I
adapted it to mean that there is never one right way to do
something. Rather than showing my people the “right way”
to make a phone call, or gather information from a client,
I will let them develop their own ways. The lesson learned
for me way back in music class was that people will moti-
vate
themselves
in their own way if you gently guide them
toward the outcome you want.

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95. Be a Ruthless Optimist
A leader is a dealer in hope.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
Pessimism is the most fundamental of all the mistakes
we managers can make. It is a position, a pose, taken by
the manager of not being optimistic about the future of
the organization and, therefore, the future of the team.
It is a refusal to prepare for team meetings by learning
the rationale behind the latest company decisions. It is a
refusal to take a stand for the success of the enterprise. It
is a refusal to be an advocate for the organization’s ongo-
ing strategy.
It is also an exaggerated tendency to acknowledge and
agree with every issue’s downside without standing up for
the upside. Sometimes optimism is a lonely and coura-
geous position to take, which is why most managers don’t
do it. The sad thing is, it is what the team wants and needs
the most from its leader.
While the unconscious manager doesn’t realize what
he or she is doing by being so pessimistic all the time, a
true leader knows exactly what optimism is and what it is
for: Optimism is the practice of focusing on opportunities
and possibilities rather than complaints and fears.
A true optimist is not a brainless Pollyanna, wearing
rose-colored glasses. A true optimist is more realistic than
that. A true optimist is unafraid of confronting and under-
standing the problems in the organization. But once a prob-
lem is fully identified and understood, the optimist returns
the thinking to opportunity and possibility.