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

A:
First,
appreciate
and 
acknowledge
the employee
for who she is, what she brings to the organization, noting
specific strengths and talents. Then give a very, very spe-
cific recent example of something that employee did that
particularly impressed and benefited you.
R:
Next,
restate
your own commitment to that per-
son. “I believe in you. I hired you because of what I saw in
you. I see even more in you than when I hired you. I am
committed to your success here. I am devoted to your
career, to you being happy and fulfilled.” Then, tell that
Enjoy the A.R.T. of Confrontation

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employee exactly and specifically what she can count on,
always, from you. List what you do, how you fight for fair
pay, how you are available at all times, how you work to
always get the employee the tools she needs for success,
and so on.
This recommitment places the conversation in the
proper context. Ninety percent of managerial “reprimands”
are destructive to the manager-employee relationship be-
cause they are felt to be out of context. The big picture
must be established first, always.
T:
Last,
track
the agreement. You want to track the
existing agreement you have with your employee (if there
is one) about the matter in question. If there is no existing
agreement, you should create one on the spot. Mutually
authored with mutual respect.
Agreements are co-creations. They are not mandates
or rules. When an agreement is not being kept, both sides
need to put all their cards on the table in a mutually sup-
portive way to either rebuild the agreement or create a
new agreement. People will break other people’s rules. But
people will keep their own agreements.
25. Feed Your Healthy Ego
Learning to be a leader is the same process as learning to be an
integrated and healthy person.
—Warren Bennis
High self-esteem is our birthright. It is the core spirit
inside of us. We do not need to pass a battery of humiliating

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tests to attain it. We need only to drop the thinking that
prevents it. We need to get out of its way and let it shine,
in ourselves and in others.
Masterful, artful, spirited leadership has ways of bring-
ing out the best and the highest expression of self-esteem
in others.
But it starts at home with me. If I’m a leader, it starts
with my own self-confidence. We human beings find it
easier to follow self-confident people. We are quicker to
become enrolled in a project when the person enrolling us
is self-confident.
Most managers today don’t take time to raise their
own self-esteem and get centered in their personal pride
of achievement. They spend too much time worrying about
how they are being perceived, which results in insecurity
and low self-esteem.
Nathaniel Branden, in his powerful book 
Self-Esteem
at Work
(Jossey-Bass, First Edition, 1998), says it this way:
A person who feels undeserving of achievement
and success is unlikely to ignite high aspirations
in others. Nor can leaders draw forth the best in
others if their primary need, arising from their
insecurities, is to prove themselves right and
others wrong, in which case their relationship
to others is not inspirational but adversarial. 
It
is a fallacy to say that a great leader should be
egoless.
A leader needs an ego sufficiently healthy
that it does not perceive itself as on trial in ev-
ery encounter—is not operating out of anxiety
and defensiveness—so that the leader is free to
be task and results-oriented, not oriented to-
ward self-aggrandizement or self-protection.