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

1001 Ways to Reward
Employees, 2nd Edition 
(Workman Publishing Company,
2005), and read it with a yellow highlighter or a red pen in
hand. Everyone we know who does this increases their
team’s productivity. Everyone we know who does this un-
derlines and highlights completely different parts of the
Deliver the Reward

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book and then translates the ideas into ideas that fit their
style. Most of the ideas don’t take any extra time, just
extra commitment to reward.
But you’ll get what you reward.
99. Slow Down
Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as
what he does from day to day to lead himself.
—Thomas J. Watson, Former CEO, IBM
You’ll lead better if you slow down. You’ll get more
done, too.
It doesn’t seem like it would be true. It doesn’t seem
like slowing down would get that much more done. But it
does. Every day you do it, you will get more done. Every
day you experiment with slowing down, you will under-
stand the truth behind the legend of the tortoise and the
hare.
The most important element of slowing down is to know
that you’re always working on the right thing to be work-
ing on at any given time. Business consultant Chet Holmes
says that he and his clients accomplish that by making sure
each day has only six things on the Must Do list. That list
lets them slow down.
”Why only six things?” says Holmes. “Because with a
bigger list than that, generally you just try to trim the list.
You spend the day trimming the list. At the end of the day
you feel that most of the important things on the list did
not get completed. You just look down and say, ‘Oh, I

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didn’t do the most important things.’ There’s a bad psy-
chological impact in not finishing your list! And so only
list the six most important things…and then 
make sure
you get them done. You’ll be amazed at how much you’ve
accomplished.”
If I am on the wrong road, it doesn’t matter how good
I get at speeding down the road. It’s still the wrong road.
I need to remind myself to slow down and win. I need
to take my sweet, gentle time. I want this conversation
ahead of me to be relaxed and strong so that the relation-
ship I have becomes relaxed and strong. So all day, it helps
to tell myself: Slow down. Even slower than that.
There you go.
100. Decide to Be Great
When life demands more of people than they demand of life—as
is ordinarily the case—what results is a resentment of life almost
as deep-seated as the fear of death.
—Tom Robbins, Author
Either now or on one’s deathbed, one realizes a strange
truth: There’s no excuse for not being great.
If you are a leader, a leader is what you are. If you are
still just a manager, just managing to manage, well, maybe
you’ll manage, but how fulfilling is that? How proud is your
subconscious mind of you? How proud is your family?
Someday you will just decide to be 
great
at what you do.
You’ll never look back. You’ll never regret the decision. It
might not have seemed like a big deal at the moment you
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decided, but somehow you’ll know the decision is final. It
will never have to be revisited.
There’s a reason why it’s good to be great: people want
to follow you. People start to respect you. People want to
be more like you. People want to do things for you.
And if you are honest with yourself, you will someday real-
ize the truth for yourself, either now, or on your deathbed:
There was no excuse for not being great.
101. Let Them See You
Change and Grow