Book Review of ‘100 Plus Ways to Motivate Others’
Book Review of ‘100 Plus Ways to Motivate Others’
1. Know Where Motivation Comes From
- Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want to be done because he wants to do it. —Dwight D. Eisenhower
2. Teach Self-Discipline
- Discipline is remembering what you want. —David Campbell, founder, Saks Fifth Avenue
3. Tune in Before You Turn on
- Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. —George S. Patton
4. Be the Cause, Not the Effect
- Shallow people believe in luck. Wise and strong people believe in cause and effect. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
5. Stop Criticizing Upper Management
- Two things are bad for the heart—running uphill and running down people. —Bernard Gimbel
6. Do the One Thing
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. —Peter Drucker
7. Keep Giving Feedback
- The failure to give appropriate and timely feedback is the most extreme cruelty that we can inflict on any human being. —Charles Coonradt, management consultant
8. Get Input From Your People
- I not only use all the brains I have but all I can borrow.—Woodrow Wilson
9. Accelerate Change
- Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future. —Peter Drucker
10. Know Your Owners and Victims
- Those who follow the part of themselves that is great will become great.
- Those that follow the part that is small will become small. —Mencius
11. Lead From the Front
- You can’t change people.
- You must be the change you wish to see in people. —Gandhi
12. Preach the Role of Thought
- Great men are they who see that thought is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
13. Tell the Truth Quickly
- Question: How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
- Answer: Four; calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. —Abraham Lincoln
14. Don’t Confuse Stressing With Caring
- Stress, in addition to being itself and the result of itself, is also the cause of itself. —Hans Selye, psychologist
15. Manage Your Own Superiors
- There is no such thing as constructive criticism.—Dale Carnegie
16. Put Your Hose Away
- Wise leaders and high achievers come to understand that they can’t hope to eliminate problems…and wouldn’t want to. —Dale Dauten
17. Get the Picture
- People cannot be managed… Inventories can be managed, but people must be led. —H. Ross Perot
18. Manage Agreements, Not People
- Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau
19. Focus on the Result, Not the Excuse
- A leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless, and visionless…someone’s got to make a wake-up call. —Warren Bennis
20. Coach the Outcome
- Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes…but no plans. —Peter Drucker
21. Create a Game
- Although some people think that life is a battle, it is actually a game of giving and receiving. —Florence Scovill Shinn, philosopher, and author
22. Know Your Purpose
- There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. —Peter Drucker
23. See What’s Possible
- Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel.
- If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.—Sam Walton
24. Enjoy the A.R.T. of Confrontation
- To command is to serve, nothing more, and nothing less. —André Malraux, French philosopher
25. Feed Your Healthy Ego
- Learning to be a leader in the same process as learning to be an integrated and healthy person. —Warren Bennis
26. Hire the Motivated
- The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants to be done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. —Theodore Roosevelt
27. Stop Talking
- One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you. —Dennis A. Peer, management consultant
28. Refuse to Buy Their Limitation
- Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders. —Tom Peters
29. Play Both Good Cop and Bad Cop
- If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. —John Quincy Adams
30. Don’t Go Crazy
- The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first.
- A process that often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion. —Dwight D. Eisenhower
31. Stop Cuddling Up
- I never gave them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell. —Harry Truman
32. Do the Worst First
- The best way out is always through.—Robert Frost
33. Learn to Experiment
- Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
- The more experiments you make, the better. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
34. Communicate Consciously
- Drowning in data, yet starved of information. —Ruth Stanat, global business consultant
35. Score the Performance
- Performance is your reality. Forget everything else.—Harold Geneen, CEO, ITT
36. Manage the Fundamentals First
- Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things. —Lawrence D. Bell, founder, Bell Aircraft
37. Motivate by Doing
- People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those people who sit still and inquire, why wasn’t it done the other way? —Oliver Wendell Holmes
38. Know Your People’s Strengths
- Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves, those people are very rare. In any generation, there are a few and they lead their generation. —Moshe Feldenkrais, psychologist
39. Debate Yourself
- I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep. —Talleyrand
40. Lead With Language
- The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. —Max DePree, business consultant and author We once worked with a group of managers who managed various teams in a company plagued with low morale.
- The teams were grumbling and exulting in victim language.
- But once we suggested different words and language for the managers to use in team meetings, everything began to change.
- Their people became more self-motivated.
41. Use Positive Reinforcement
- The first duty of a leader is optimism. How does your subordinate feel after meeting with you? Does he feel uplifted? If not, you are not a leader. —Field Marshall Montgomery
42. Teach Your People “No” Power
- As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. —Bill Gates
43. Think Friendly Customer Thoughts
- There is only one boss: the customer. —Sam Walton
44. Best Time? Biggest Challenge
- It’s so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it. —Robert Pirsig, philosopher, and author
45. Use 10 Minutes Well
- Man must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact that each moment of his life is a miracle and a mystery. —H.G. Wells
- Our recent visit to a very successful leader’s office was enhanced by our noticing these words posted on the wall behind his desk—also a great guideline
for using 10 minutes well: - The Most Important Words in the English Language:
- 5 most important words: I am proud of you!
- 4 most important words: What is your opinion?
- 3 most important words: If you please.
- 2 most important words: Thank you.
- 1 most important word: You
46. Know What You Want to Grow
- Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments. —Jim Rohn, author, and motivator
47. Soften Your Heart
- He is only advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, his blood warmer, his brain quicker, and his spirit entering into living peace. —John Ruskin, philosopher, and author
48. Coach Your People to Complete
- Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. —William James
49. Do the Math on Your Approach
- We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. —Winston Churchill
50. Count Yourself in
- 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, and author
51. First, Just Relax
- A frightened captain makes a frightened crew. —Lister Sinclair, playwright, and broadcaster
52. Don’t Throw the Quit Switch
- Most people succeed because they are determined to.
- People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit.—George Allen, football coach
53. Lead With Enthusiasm
- Nothing great was ever created without enthusiasm. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
54. Encourage Concentration
- The first law of success is concentration, to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
—William Mathews, journalist
55. Inspire Inner Stability
- Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult. —Warren Bennis
56. Give Up Being Right
- I must follow the people. Am I not their leader? —Benjamin Disraeli
57. Wake Yourself Up
- Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.
- They seem to be more afraid of life than death. —James F. Byrnes, former Secretary of State
58. Always Show Them
- I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. —Confucius
59. Focus Like a Camera
- Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking. —Bernard Baruch
60. Think of Managing as Easy
- Always think of what you have to do as easy and it will be. —Emile Coue, psychologist
61. Cultivate the Power of Reassurance
- In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions. —Margaret Wheatly, management consultant
62. Phase Out Disagreement
- The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. —Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize scientist
63. Keep Learning
- Leaders grow; they are not made. —Peter Drucker
64. Learn What Leadership Is Not
- The great leaders are like the best conductors—they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players. —Blaine Lee, management consultant
65. Hear Your People Out
- I have more fun and enjoy more financial success when I stop trying to get what I want and start helping other people get what they want. —Spencer Johnson, business author
66. Play It Lightly
- The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. Then you develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it. —Elaine Agather, former CEO, JPMorgan Chase Bank
67. Keep All Your Smallest Promises
- Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. —Vincent van Gogh
68. Give Power to the Other Person
- When I’m getting ready to persuade a person, I spend one-third of the time thinking about myself, what I’m going to say, and two-thirds of the time thinking about him and what he is going to say. —Abraham Lincoln
69. Don’t Forget to Breathe
- In war, as in peace, a man needs all the brains he can get.
- Nobody ever had too many brains.
- Brains come from oxygen.
- Oxygen comes from the lungs where the air goes when we breathe.
- The oxygen in the air gets into the blood and travels to the brain.
- Any fool can double the size of his lungs. —George S. Patton
70. Know You’ve Got the Time
- Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible. —St. Francis
71. Use the Power of Deadlines
- The best way to predict the future is to create it. —Peter Drucker
72. Translate Worry Into Concern
- Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. —William Ellery Channing, minister, and psychologist
73. Let Your Mind Rule Your Heart
- If you don’t think about the future, you won’t have one. —Henry Ford
74. Build a Culture of Acknowledgment
- I have always said that if I were a rich man I’d hire a professional praiser. —Sir Osbert Sitwell, poet
75. Seize Responsibility
- Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses. —George Washington Carver
76. Get Some Coaching Yourself
- A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops. —Henry B. Adams, American historian
77. Make It Happen Today
- What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour? —Ralph Waldo Emerson
78. Learn the Inner Thing
- Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
- Whoever looks outside only dreams, whoever looks inside also awakens. —Carl Jung
79. Forget About Failure
- A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing. —George Bernard Shaw
80. Follow Consulting With Action
- Action is eloquence.—Shakespeare
81. Create a Vision
The reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first. —Robert J. McKain, management consultant
- Without creating a vision for my team, my team will live according to its problems.
- Without goals (the subsets of vision), my team will just fight fires, work through emotional upsets, and worry about the dysfunctional behavior of other people.
- I, as their leader, will have attracted a problem-based existence.
- Soon, I will only end up doing what I feel like doing, which will sell me short and draw on the smallest of my brain’s resources.
- But when we begin to create, we use more of the brain.
We rise up to our highest functioning as humans.
- So it’s my primary job as a motivator to create a vision of who we want to be and then live in that picture as if it were already happening in this very moment.
- It has to be a vision I can talk about every day.
- It can’t be a framed statement on the wall that no one can relate to after some company retreat is over.
- It is not surprising that one of the biggest complaints about leaders that show up on employee surveys is, “He had no idea where we were headed.
- He had no vision of our future that he could tell us about.”
- Create a vision. Live the vision.
82. Stop Looking Over Your Shoulder
- Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. —Ambrose Redmoon, American philosopher
83. Lead by Selling
- Everyone lives by selling something. —Robert Louis Stevenson
84. Hold on to Principle
- In matters of style, swim with the current; In matters of principle, stand like a rock. —Thomas Jefferson
85. Create Your Relationships
- A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually, and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction. —Rita Mae Brown, mystery author
86. Don’t Be Afraid to Make Requests
- As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. —Toni Morrison, author
87. Don’t Change Yourself
- It takes a tremendous act of courage to admit to yourself that you are not defective in any way whatsoever. —Cheri Huber, author/Zen philosopher
88. Pump Up Your E-mails
- No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. —Helen Keller
89. Stop Pushing
- Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all. —Dwight D. Eisenhower
90. Become Conscious
- A boss creates fear, a leader, confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. —Russell H. Ewing, author
91. Come From the Future
- The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.
- You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet. —Theodore M. Hesburgh, Former president, Notre Dame
92. Teach Them to Teach Themselves
- If you want a man to be for you, never let him feel he is dependent on you. Make him feel you are in some way dependent on him. —General George C. Marshall
93. Stop Apologizing for Change
- If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near. —Jack Welch
94. Let People Find It
- People ask the difference between a leader and a boss.
- The leader works in the open, and the boss is covert.
- The leader leads and the boss drives. —Theodore Roosevelt
95. Be a Ruthless Optimist
- A leader is a dealer in hope. —Napoleon Bonaparte
96. Pay Attention
- Do not hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away.
- Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with the company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind. —Samuel Johnson
97. Create a Routine
- Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. —John Quincy Adams
98. Deliver the Reward
- Love is always creative and fear is always destructive.
- If you could only love enough, you would be the most powerful person in the world. —Emmet Fox, author, and philosopher
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
100. Decide to Be Great
- When life demands more of people than they demand of life—as is ordinarily the case—what results is resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death. —Tom Robbins, author
101. Show Your People the “Want to”
- He who has a why can endure anyhow. —Friedrich Nietzsche
102. Learn to Encourage Testing
- The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently.
- We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work. —Charles Kettering
103. Teach the Love of Challenge
- Life is a challenge, meet it. —Mother Theresa
104. Learn How to Help a Pessimist
- Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power. —William James
105. Switch to Enthusiasm
- A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one. —Mary Kay Ash
106. See Your People as Perfect
- Find the best in everybody.
- Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you.
- It might even take years, but people will show you their good side.
- Just keep waiting. —Randy Pausch
107. Learn to Master Problem-Solving
- Every problem has a gift for you in its hands. —Richard Bach
108. Welcome Every Circumstance
- Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared to believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.
—Bruce Barton
109. Do What’s Required
- Is what you are doing in the next hour highly productive for you? Is it your next did necessary require action? Or are you just keeping busy? —Dusan Djukich
- Dusan Djukich is a powerful leadership coach who begins his work with leaders by asking pointed, straight questions. He has given us permission to
share some of his questions here so that you might ask them of yourself and the people who report to you: - What would make this conversation amazingly useful to you?
How do you want to use the rest of your life?
- What if you could give 100% with or without fear?
- What’s missing? (I can’t be useful if I don’t know what’s missing.)
- What would life be like if you responded differently?
- Is this useful? In what way?
- Is this too much information?
How do you want this to go?
- What experience do you want by achieving this?
- What purpose would that serve?
- What is occurring that tells you that?
- What would it look like if it were resolved?
- Based on what you are up to, what would you like to create?
- So, what agreement do we have?
110. Transformation, Not Information
- To bankrupt a fool, give him information. —Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- The final way to motivate others is to use the books and mentors and leadership training that motivates you as transformation, not information.
- Take the parts of the book that you have highlighted and use them out there in the game of real life.
- Think in terms of tools, not rules.
- You already have a lot of information.
- The key to becoming masterful at motivating others is to turn your information into transformation—real change.
- Choose something and practice it.
- Pick a passage and put it to use.
100 Ways to Motivate Others by Steve Chandler and Scott Richardson