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

Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
“In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to
discipline ourselves.”
What? Ourselves? Not overcoming outside obstacles?
Here is another way to look at the hands-off manager’s
shift in inner awareness. Imagine going to the airport with
a huge suitcase. You don’t even consider trying to take it
onto the plane with you because you know it won’t fit or
be allowed. So you check your bag and let the airline take
care of it.
But what if you tried to board a plane the same way
you try to live your life?
You’d be carrying all your heavy, inappropriate, disal-
lowed baggage onto the plane! All your hurts and resent-
ments and tiny betrayals get carried around with you.
Imagine going through the airport and picking up other
bags, not even your own, and trying to carry all of them
onto the plane with you! Your spouse’s baggage, your kids’
baggage, and all your direct reports’ baggage.
Is there even enough room on this plane?
It sounds similar to a slapstick comedy, but it’s how
most of us who play micromanagement roles in society
today live. Just keep this in mind: If you did this with your
baggage in an airport, 
you would not be allowed to fly.
And the same is true with your career. By trying to
carry all this baggage (by trying to remember who has done
you wrong, who you don’t trust, who disappointed you,
what department you don’t get along with) you are too
burdened to fly.
Take your hands off your life to allow success and al-
low yourself to fly.

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Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s 
The Hands-Off Manager
Allowing your career to take flight
When my son Bobby was a little boy he was always
asking me about various sports figures and superheroes.
“Dad, who would win in a fight between Arnold and
Bruce Lee?”
“Bruce Lee.”
“Who would win in a fight between Superman and
Batman?”
“Superman.”
“What if Arnold and Superman fought Rocky, Chuck
Norris, and Spider-Man?”
“Okay, time for bed!”
We are actually fascinated by questions such as
these, which is why such fictional heroes as Rambo and
Superman endure. And the internal power that can lift
you up through your organization is more akin to the power
Superman had than the external power Rambo tried im-
pose on events. Rambo was a human being who could be
brought down by a bullet. And if he were shot in the heart,
he’d be dead; there’d be no more Rambo. But one of
Superman’s abilities enabled things to bounce off of him.
He had a power beyond Rambo. If someone fired a bullet,
he’d just push it away with his hand and move on; it
wouldn’t affect who Superman was. That’s why his arche-
type calls to us. That’s why he endures and speaks to the
inner hero in children and adults.
He had the power to deflect rather than overcome.
You can shift your whole way of leadership thinking.
You can shift your awareness to be totally in tune with
what’s happening with others, and what’s happening with
you. And whenever you see something come up that doesn’t

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Sample Chapter 1: “Taking Your Power Back”
align with you, you don’t fix it; you accept it, deal with it,
deflect it, and move in a newer, healthier direction.
Deepak Chopra recently wrote that when you get “bad
news,” if you suspend judgment, it becomes good news. It
was always good news anyway. It was just in disguise. “If
you don’t get what you expected, look at what you got,”
said Chopra. “Where is the gift in what you received? Is
there a way you can transform it into an opportunity to
learn? In this approach, change is accepted, not denied. A
sense of spaciousness enters in.”
The spaciousness he describes is exactly the shift in
awareness we are talking about. It’s a shift from narrow,
judgmental, constricted awareness to a bigger, more spa-
cious, hands-off 
allowing.
Chopra concludes, “On a profound level, every event
in life has two possible causes. Either what happens is posi-
tive, or it is bringing up something you need to learn in
order to create something positive. It’s the same with the
body. What happens inside a cell is either healthy activity
or a sign that a correction is needed. Although life can
seem random, in fact everything is pointing to a greater
good. Evolution is not a win-lose crapshoot, but a win-win
journey to transformation.”
You’ll learn your true nature this way, by being free
from the effects of everyone else’s nature. It’s a way of
giving yourself space, of giving yourself the freedom to
live out your true professional potential, to discover what’s
possible for you! Because once you have gotten rid of all
of this limitation, weakness, anger, and sadness, you’re
back into possibility. You’re enthusiastic once again about
ideas and innovation, and the very things that move this
organization forward.

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Steve Chandler and Duane Black’s 
The Hands-Off Manager
Soon you’ll have a different definition of personal
power. You’ll realize that if you are truly powerful, you
can let go. You can forgive. You can release. You can
deflect. That’s the real power.
Greatness is within you. There is nowhere you need to
look to find it. It is already inside, waiting for permission
to express. If you knew you already had something, then
why would you go looking for it? The only trick is to re-
member. Remember to let go of all the negative ways of
thinking that are obstacles toxic to your success. Remem-
ber to allow your success to take its natural course and
happen for you. And the success you find will be greater
than you ever imagined possible.
Steps to hands-off success in your life
Three action steps to take after reading this chapter:
1. The next time you feel a conflict with some-
one, write down two things you appreciate and
admire about that person and sit down to re-
solve the conflict by telling them these things
first.
2. Take mental and physical notes about every-
one who works with you so that you become
more and more aware of each person’s loves
and strengths. Start a notebook about this,
and don’t forget to include yourself in it.
3. Begin noticing your own thinking throughout
the day as you lead and communicate: Which
thoughts bring you down? Which thoughts lift
you up? By practicing this step you will begin
to understand that it is always your thinking
that creates your feelings, never other people.

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