Law 3. Emotion drives motivation. The words "emotion" and "motivation" come from same Latin root meaning to move. When you want to move people to take action, you must engage their emotions. I'm not talking about getting people emotional. I'm talking about having people make strong emotional commitments to what you're challenging them to achieve.

The best way to make that emotional connection is with Leadership Talks.

My experience working with thousands of leaders world wide for past two decades teaches me that most leaders are screwing up their careers. On a daily basis, these leaders are getting wrong results or right results in wrong ways.

Interestingly, they themselves are choosing to fail. They're actively sabotaging their own careers.

Leaders commit this sabotage for a simple reason: They make fatal mistake of choosing to communicate with presentations and speeches -- not leadership talks.

In terms of boosting one's career, difference between two methods of leadership communication is difference between lightning and lightning bug.

Speeches/presentations primarily communicate information. Leadership talks, on other hand, not only communicate information, they do more: They establish a deep, human emotional connection with audience. For more on Leadership Talk, click on my website in resource box.

Law 4. Face-to-face speech is generally best way to motivate people (i.e., have those people choose to be motivated.) A middle-manager told me, "Where is our new CEO? We call him‘Elvis'. We seldom see him in person. There're only purported sightings of him. Maybe I'll see a blurry photo of him in one of those supermarket check-out tabloids."

In another company, a secretary said, "Our division chief stays in his office most of time. But on rare occasions that he's out and about, only evidence of his existence is odor of his pipe smoke."

Isolation may be good for monks but it's an affliction with leaders. When you want to motivate people, relationship is name of game; and you can't have a relationship, at least a productive one, as an absentee leader.

Get out and about. This is more than MBWA, (Management By Walking Around). The key is what you do when walking around. Don't be about simply sharing information but also creating environment for motivation. People hunger to be motivated. Even more: people are ALWAYS motivated. And if they won't be motivated for your cause, they will be motivated for their cause – a cause that may be at cross purposes with yours.

Make no mistake: Motivation isn't about bands playing, people cheering, hugging, and singing kombaya. Those are only surface features of motivation. True motivation happens in profound quiet of human relationships.

So, in your interactions, strengthen those relationships by keeping laws of motivation in mind. When interacting with people, challenge them to take physical action, understand that motivation is their free choice, their HEARTFELT free choice, give Leadership Talks to develop deep, human, emotional relationships; and take opportunities to speak with them face-to-face.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Law 2. Motivation is their choice. Many leaders are clueless about motivation because they think it's their own choice. They think because they simply want people to be motivated, people should automatically be motivated. That misunderstanding has caused many a leader to come to grief. The act of their being motivated is not your choice, it's theirs, always. Motivation can't be done to people. People must "do" motivation to themselves. Leaders communicate, and people they lead motivate themselves.

Law 3. Emotion drives motivation. The words emotion and motivation come from same Latin root "to move". When you want to move people to take action, engage their emotions. Motivation involves emotionally commitment.

Law 4. Face-to-face speech is generally best way to motivate people (i.e., have those people choose to be motivated.)

With these concepts in mind, you can begin to get a clear understanding of motivation by studying past.

This exercise will sharpen your ideas on motivation. Who were three most effective leaders in history? Why were they effective? Who were three least effective? Why were they ineffective? Who are most effective leaders in your industry? Why are they effective? Who are least effective leaders in your industry? Why are they ineffective? Who are most effective leaders in your organization? Why are they ineffective?

Now go back over each answer and tie it to motivation or lack there of. What motivational lesson is there in each answer? In doing so, you may find yourself changing and sharpening your ideas about motivation; and hence changing and sharpening your leadership skills.

In Part Two, I will expand on each law.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.