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

Feed Your Healthy Ego

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A healthy ego asks: What needs to be done? An
insecure ego asks: How do I avoid looking bad?
Build your inner strength by doing what needs to be
done and then moving to the next thing that needs to be
done. The less you focus on how you’re coming across,
the better you’ll come across.
26. Hire the Motivated
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick
good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to
keep from meddling with them while they do it.
—Theodore Roosevelt
It sounds too simple. But the best way to have people
on your team be motivated is to hire self-motivated people.
But isn’t that just the luck of the draw? No. There is
much you can do to create this kind of team. Let’s start
with the hiring interview.
As you conduct your hiring interview, know in advance
the kinds of questions that are likely to have been antici-
pated by the interviewee, and therefore will only get you a
role-played answer. Minimize those questions.
Instead, ask questions that are original and designed
to uncover the real person behind the role-player. Ask the
unexpected. Keep your interviewee pleasantly off-balance.
The good, motivated people will love it, and the under-
motivated will become more and more uncomfortable.
Know that every interviewee is attempting to role-play.

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They are playing the part of the person they think would
get this job. We all do it in an interview. But your job is to
not let it happen.
One way to find the true person across from you is
called
layering.
Layering is following up a question with an
open-ended, layered addition to the question. For example:
Question: Why did you leave Company X?
Answer: Not enough challenges.
Layered Question: Interesting, tell me more about
Company X. What was it like for you there?
Answer: It was pretty difficult. I wasn’t comfortable.
Layered Question: Why do you think it affected you
that way?
Answer: My manager was a micromanager.
Layered Question: This is very interesting; talk more
about that if you can.
Basically, “layering” is a request you make that your
interviewee go further and further beyond his pre-rehearsed
story. You ask him to “go on,” then “keep going,” then
“tell me more,” and then “go on.”
Layering uncovers the real person after a while. So do
questions that have not been anticipated and rehearsed
for a role-play. Here’s an example of a very open-ended
and curious exchange:
“Did you grow up here?”
“No, I grew up in Chicago.”
“Chicago! Did you go to high school there?”
“Yes I did, Maine East High.”
“What was that like, going to that school?”
Another example
:
Hire the Motivated

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“How was your weekend?”
“Great.”
“What is a typical weekend like for you?”
Or another
:
“I see from your resume that you majored in engi-
neering.”
“Yes.”
“If you had one thing to change about how they teach
engineering, what would you change?”
Or another
:
“If you were asked to go back to run the company you
just came from, what’s the first thing you would do?”
Think of questions that you yourself like and are in-
trigued by, and keep your interviewee in uncharted waters
throughout the interview. That way you get the real per-
son to talk to you so you’ll get a much better gut feeling
about the person and what he or she would be like to work
with.
The best way to create a highly motivated team is to
hire people who are already motivated people.
27. Stop Talking
One measure of leadership is the caliber of people
who choose to follow you.
—Dennis A. Peer, Management Consultant
Most job interviewers talk way too much, and they go
way too soon to the question, “Well, is there anything you
would like to know about us?”

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Learn to stop doing that. That’s your ego being ex-
pressed, not a good interview technique. People who have
not done their homework and who are not masterful in-
terviewers will always end up interviewing themselves and
talking about their company. Totally unproductive.
They get uncomfortable asking lots of questions so
they quickly start talking about the history of the com-
pany, their own history there, and many personal convic-
tions and opinions. In this, they are wasting their time.
In five months, they will be wringing their hands and tear-
ing their hair out because somehow they let a problem
employee and chronic complainer fly in under the radar.
And it will keep happening until you learn to interview.
Remember: no talking. Your job is to intuit the moti-
vational level of the person across from you. You can only
do that by letting her answer question after question.
It takes more courage, imagination, and preparation
to ask a relentless number of questions than it does to
chat. Great leaders are great recruiters. In sports and in
life. As a leader, you’re only as good as your people. Hire
the best.
Dale Dauten, often called the Obi-Wan Kenobi of
business consultants, said, “When I did the research that
led to my book 
The Gifted Boss
(William Morrow, First
Edition, 1999)
,
I found that great bosses spend little time
trying to mold employees into greatness, but instead devote
extraordinary efforts to spotting and courting exceptionally
capable employees. Turns out that the best management
is finding employees that don’t need managing.”
Stop Talking

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28. Refuse to Buy
Their Limitation
Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.
—Tom Peters, Author/Business Consultant
Your people limit themselves all the time. They put up
false barriers and struggle with imaginary problems.
One of your skills as a leader will be to show your
people that they can accomplish more than they think they
can. In fact, they may someday be a leader like you are.
One of the reasons your people will wind up admiring you
is that you always see their potential. You always see the
best side of them, and you tell them about it.
It could be that you are the first person in that
employee’s life to 
ever
believe in him. And because of you,
he becomes more capable than he thought he was, and he
loves you for that, even though your belief in him some-
times makes him uncomfortable. That discomfort may
return every time you ask him to stretch. But you don’t
care. You press on with your belief in him, stretching him,
growing him.
One of the greatest leadership gurus of American busi-
ness was Robert Greenleaf. He developed the concept of
“servant leadership.” A leader is one who serves those fol-
lowing, serving them every step of the way, especially by
bringing out the best in them, and 
refusing
to buy their
limitations as achievers.
Your people may be flawed as people, but as achiev-
ers, they are certainly not.

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Greenleaf said, “Anybody could lead perfect people—
if there were any. But there aren’t any perfect people. And
parents who try to raise perfect children are certain to
raise neurotics.
“It is part of the enigma of human nature that the ‘typi-
cal’ person—immature, stumbling, inept, lazy—is capable
of great dedication and heroism if wisely led. The secret
of team-building is to be able to weld a team of such people
by lifting them up to grow taller than they would other-
wise be.”
29. Play Both Good Cop
and Bad Cop
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more,
and become more, you are a leader.
—John Quincy Adams
If you are an effective motivator of others, then you
know how to play “good cop, bad cop.” And you know
that you don’t need two people to play it. A true motivator
plays both roles.