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

To decide to be at the level of choice, is to take responsibility
for your life and to be in control of your life.
—Arbie M. Dale, Psychologist/Author
Leaders who take ownership motivate more effectively
than leaders who pass themselves off as victims of the “cor-
porate” structure or “upper management.”
That’s because they have made a conscious decision
to
live at the level of choice.
Throughout their day, their people hear them talk of
“buying in.” They are always heard saying, “Count me in.
I’m in on that.”
The reason leaders living at the level of choice say,
“Count me in,” is not because they’re apple-polishing,
bootlicking “company” people. As a matter of fact, they don’t
much care who their company is! They’re going to play full
Count Yourself In

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out for the company because it makes life more interesting,
it makes work a better experience, and it’s more fun. Whether
it’s a volleyball game on a picnic or the company’s latest big
project,
it is more fun
to buy in and play hard.
Let’s say the company orders everyone to break up
into experimental teams. The manager with the victim’s
mind may say, “I’ll wait and see if this is a good idea. Why
are they throwing new stuff at us now? It’s not enough that
I have to work for a living; I’ve got to play all these games.
What’s this woo-woo, touchy-feely team stuff? I’m not go-
ing to buy into it yet; I’ll wait and see. I’ll give it five months.”
Meanwhile the owner-leader is saying, “Hey, I’m not
going to judge this thing. That’s a waste of mental energy.
I’m buying in. Why? Because it deserves to be bought in
to? No. I don’t care if it deserves to be bought in to. I am
buying in because it gives me more energy, it makes work-
ing more fun, I deserve to be happy at work, and I know
from experience that buying into things works.”
True leadership inspires a spirit of buy-in. It’s a spirit
that has no relationship to whether the company “deserves”
being bought in to—no relationship at all. The source of
the buy-in is a personal commitment to have a great expe-
rience of life. That’s where it comes from. It doesn’t come
from whether the company has “earned it.” True leaders
don’t negatively personalize their companies. That habit
is a form of mental illness.
You stand for mental health. And when other people
see that spirit in you, they are motivated to live by positive
example too. They can see that it works.
In sports, it’s sometimes easier to see the value of this
spirit. It seems obviously smart for an athlete to say, “I
don’t care if I’m playing for a minor league team or a major

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league team, it’s in my self-interest to play full-out when I
play.”
In companies, though, that would be a rare position to
take.
But true leaders are rare. They don’t wait for the com-
pany to catch up to their lead. They 
take
the lead. They
don’t wait for the company to give them something good
to follow.
No company will ever catch up with a great individual.
A great individual will always be more creative than the
company as a whole.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Even if a man is called to
be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michelangelo
painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare
wrote poetry.”
51. To Motivate Your People,
First Just Relax
A frightened captain makes a frightened crew.
—Lister Sinclair, Playwright/Broadcaster
The great music teacher and motivator of artists
Rodney Mercado had a simple recipe for success. He said,
“There are only two principles that you need to get to play
great music or to live a great life: concentration and relax-
ation. And that’s it. That is it.”
Scott recalls this remark and what he said back to
Professor Mercado: “What? That doesn’t have anything
to do with music!”