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.

(2) Create a morning or evening meditation time. Even if you can't see how to find time, do it somehow. This was especially helpful to me in getting through horrible time of adjustment to life alone after my divorce and then again when my Mom died. I had always said a few wake-up prayers, but found I needed more. I started with Jerry Jampolsky's book, "Love is Answer" and read one (short) chapter a day. Then, I bought book "A Course on Miracles" and meditated on daily passages. While 365 lessons seemed to represent a huge commitment, daily phrases were so empowering that I continued. Additionally, I saved affirmations from various sources like Science of Mind magazine and The Daily Word and read them daily. Any quote from a book or article that I thought would motivate me to get up and make day a less painful one than day before, I saved and re-read daily. I posted best of them around my office and in my meditation area. I still do. When you actively start looking for empowering passages, you will be touched and inspired by what comes your way.

(3) Finally, but most importantly, express yourself in some way often! I would recommend that you do it daily, as well. I found out hard way that keeping emotions bottled up or trying to ignore them hurt more in long run and adversely affected my health. Talk to people about your loved one, write about him/her, start a journal of your thoughts and feelings, scream whenever you can find a place where you won't alarm neighbors, family members or fellow travelers, do some kind of physical exercise to work off steam - whenever and wherever you can vent, do so daily.

To anyone caught in black and blue morass of grief, I invite you to consider adding these three emotionally healing practices to your daily life. They have helped me come through some horribly upsetting times, still sad at heart, but feeling more serene in knowledge that I can and will go on - living my life to best of my ability - for my dear ones and with my dear ones safely ensconced in my mind and heart forevermore.

2005 © Creative Mastery Coaching, LLC. All rights reserved. Gail Stone is Founder of Creative Mastery Coaching, LLC. Find out how you can Get a Grip and Go®! and register for your Get A Grip Clips today at http://www.GetAGripAndGo.com Enjoy a burst of energy and inspiration delivered to your inbox every three days.