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

Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
If you are micromanaging in the old style of shame
and blame, you will recognize this example: You’re com-
ing into the company parking garage and suddenly have to
slow down because there’s an old person in front of you
going slower than molasses. If you then decide you don’t
like older people who drive slow, 
you
start to suffer. And
you will suffer every time this “happens to” you. Even
though it’s not really happening 
to
you, it is being 
caused
by
you—the stress comes directly from your thought. The
old person has no power to stress you out. You 
think
you
are suffering because this oldster is driving poorly, but the
truth is you are only suffering because of your judgmental
thought about him or her.
We all want to be powerful and in control of our own
well-being, but we continually give away the very power
we seek by our inability to forgive and let go. The only way
out of this trap of constant suffering is to cultivate the
open-minded hands-off skills of letting the actions of oth-
ers roll off our backs, and letting other people’s negativity
go in one ear and out the other.
Anything we cannot let go of has control over us. But
once we 
can
let go, we’re in control. We can laugh and
enjoy how we are unaffected by what other people might
be thinking.
That’s when you change as a manager.
That’s when people see you as an island in the storm.
A person to go to for peaceful resolutions of crises. In
other words, a true hands-off manager who gets results
from a relaxed and highly productive team.
One does not “manage” people. The task is to lead people. And the goal is to
make productive the specific strengths and knowledge of each individual.
—Peter Drucker

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Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s 
The Hands-Off Manager
How to open your energy field
The hands-off approach allows you to learn to take
your power back and live in a world of quiet action and
non-judgment. If you do this, you’ll soon be living with an
open mind, forgiving effortlessly, and taking back control
of your energy and enthusiasm for doing great work.
Discovering your natural gifts and learning your true
nature is not about learning how to force yourself upon
your team. It’s about 
allowing
success to emerge from within
you, and then from inside others. It’s an inside job. And
once you see that all good power comes from the inside,
you can start to become powerful.
There is a story about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that
illustrates what we mean. A young would-be composer
wrote to Mozart, asking advice about how to compose a
symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a com-
plex and demanding musical form, and that it would be
better to start with something simpler. The young man
protested: “But Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when
you were younger than I am now!”
Mozart replied, “Yes, but I never asked 
how
.”
Mozart’s point was that he simply let the symphonies
emerge from within him. He didn’t have to figure out “how”
to force something outside him to work.
Duane has a saying he uses at work, although it doesn’t
apply only to work; it applies to life in general. His saying is,
“Find them, don’t fix them.” It’s a policy that encourages
finding strengths in your employees that already exist, and
allowing those strengths to come forward.
When they do what they love the success will follow.
Once you know what they love to do, and help them do it,
they’ll do it for you all day long. Keep finding ways to

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Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
match their talents with the tasks ahead. Find them, don’t
fix them.
And there will always be employees that you 
don’t
find
a good job match for. Nothing seems to make them happy.
Soon, you know in your heart they aren’t a fit for the team
you have.
Old-school managers have a hard time dealing with
this realization. They keep trying to fix things. They keep
trying to fix people. They go through endless inept exer-
cises to try to find ways to motivate mismatched employ-
ees to get them to do what they really don’t want to do.
They try to find ways to make them change themselves into
someone they are not. This is a waste of everyone’s energy!
Our hands-off manager’s commitment to
 finding
how
our people can
 fit 
rather than fixing people who don’t fit
has been the central factor in the success of teams. Take
the case of Barry.
Barry was so stressed by his financial debts at home
that he pushed hard for a sales management position early
in his employment, and got it. (Barry was very persuasive
and a crafty communicator.) However, Barry simply did
not enjoy the responsibilities of leadership. He was easily
frustrated with salespeople who didn’t have his natural love
of cold-calling and meeting new people. Even though he
tried to learn our principles of coaching success instead of
forcing it on people, he was still unhappy, and the results
showed it.
We finally identified the mismatch and convinced the
CEO, Glenda, not to keep trying to “fix” Barry with leader-
ship training and negative performance reports. We asked
that Glenda “find” Barry. Find the real Barry, the true, natu-
ral salesperson wanting (but not being allowed) to emerge.

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Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s 
The Hands-Off Manager
Finally Glenda saw the light and repositioned Barry as
a senior major account salesperson and turned him loose
into the field where Barry loved to be. After four months,
Barry’s commissions were enormous, and he was able to
settle all his financial crises at home while loving the job
he was doing.
Glenda had just taken her hands off Barry’s natural
inclination to succeed. And this powerfully effective “find
them don’t fix them” approach also applies to us as indi-
viduals. We benefit when we continue finding out who 
we
are and letting that discovery manifest in the outside world,
rather than trying to fix ourselves.
Learning to turn in a new direction
We often enjoy going in person to hear the teachings
of a dear friend, a philosopher/guru named George Addair
who holds wonderful workshops on personal evolution.
(This book is dedicated to him.) One of his sayings is “You
never overcome anything.” In this Addair means that any-
thing that has been a part of your history will always be a