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

They
don’t
understand what you guys are going through here....” “
They,
they, they
....”)
The word 
they
used in excess soon becomes a near-
obscenity and solidifies the impression that we are iso-
lated, misunderstood victims.
A true leader has the courage to 
represent
upper man-
agement, not run it down. A true leader never uses the
word
they
to refer to senior officials in the company. A
true leader says “we.”

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6. Do the One Thing
Management is doing things right;
leadership is doing the right things.
—Peter F. Drucker
I can’t motivate others if I am not doing the right thing.
And to keep myself in a relaxed and centered state, it’s
important for me not to be scattered, distracted, or spread
thin.
It’s important that I don’t race around thinking that
I’ve got too much to do, because I don’t have too much to
do. The truth is, 
there is only one thing to do,
and that is the
one thing I have chosen to do right now.
If I do that one thing as if it’s all I have to think about,
it will be extremely well done and my relationship with any
other person involved in that task will be better and more
relaxed and full of trust than before.
A careful study of my past week shows me that I did a
lot of things last week, and they all got done one thing at a
time. In fact, even in my busiest time ever, I was only able
to do one thing at a time, even though I stressed myself
and other people out by always thinking of seven things at
once so that when I talked to you all I could think about
was the seven other people I needed to talk to. Sorry I
seemed so disconnected to you when we talked. I apolo-
gize. And eventually all seven people felt that stress and
that lack of attentiveness—that absolute lack of warmth.
A person who thinks that he or she should try to do
more than one thing at a time produces fear, adrenaline,
and anxiety in the human system, and others pick up on
Do the One Thing

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/ 100 Ways to Motivate Others
that. That does not warm people, and they eventually want
to keep away from it, so your relationships suffer.
The mind entertains one thought at a time, and only
one. Why fight it?
The greatest cause of feeling “swamped” and “over-
whelmed” in life is caused by not being willing to slow
down and embrace that one thing the mind can think of.
The greatest source of stress in the workplace is the
mind’s attempt to carry many thoughts, many tasks, many
future scenarios, many cares, many worries, and many
concerns at once.
The mind can’t do that.
No mind can, not even Einstein’s mind could.
It can only carry one thing.
Therefore, from now on, I want to choose ONE
THING from the list of things that need to be done, and
then do that one thing as if that were the only thing. If it’s
a phone call, then I need to slow down and relax and let
myself be in a good, focused mood so that the phone call
will be a complete experience, and the recipient and I can
be upbeat afterward.
Recently we talked to Jason, a national sales manager
who had just finished a brutal, long phone conference with
his team. He spent the conference call nervously urging
on his team to higher numbers and warning them that the
team goals were not going to be met at the rate they were
going. He had called the meeting because his own superi-
ors had just called 
him
to question him about his team’s
poor performance.
Although Jason had been working 12-hour days, he
felt he was falling behind in everything. On top of that, his

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superiors’ anxiety was then passed down to him. Because
it was passed down into a hectic, disorganized mind, he
freaked out and took it out on his team.
This is not motivation.
Motivation requires a calm, centered leader, focused
on one thing, and only one thing.
7. Keep Giving Feedback