Motivation
Motivating yourself and others. What techniques do you currently use, and what other options are there?
Does money really motivate senior managers?
Jan 20th
Facilitated a course this week for senior managers of a Blue Chip company when the subject of the factors that motivate people at work came up. A couple of delegates were of the opinion that there was nothing better than an envelope from your Boss with a short note thanking you for a good job together with a big cheque!
We discussed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Human Givens, but I think this 10 minute video does a great job of explaining where money fits into the motivation ladder.
Boooooooo!!
Oct 30th
After appearing on a phone in last week, this week seemed to be a week to listen to them!
This one was a football phone in and a football fan had called in to justify why he and his fellow fans thought it was a good idea to boo their own players. Jason Roberts, a professional footballer, was aghast at the idea.
“How can you possibly think that booing your own players is going to help them?”
“It might not help some, but there are definitely some players who want to prove you wrong when you boo them”, was the confident reply.
A player at Spurs had a different view;
“when your fans get behind you it’s the most exciting feeling possible. It’s so important that a player feels appreciated by his own fans – otherwise he has to fight against them as well as the other team and their supporters.”
Whilst at Liverpool Fernando Torres said;
“With just 45,000 fans there, that roar they give makes you think you have wings on your feet.”
I wonder if the fans at Chelsea give him the same sense of invincibility?
There doesn’t appear to be any logic in the football fans argument that booing your own players will make them player better. It also begs the question why in other environments, work and home life for example, do we spend so much time telling people what they are doing wrong rather than telling them what they are doing well?
There has been an example of this in the last week with the row between Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, with the French president expressing rage at the constant criticism and lectures from UK ministers.
Sarkozy bluntly told Cameron: “You have lost a good opportunity to shut up.” He added: “We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings.”
You wonder if there would have been a different interaction if Cameron and the Government had taken a more positive approach, whilst still having the same goals they currently have….
Recent research suggests that the vast majority of what children hear consists of them being told not to do this and not to do that. If we are not taking the time to explain what they do well, and why they do it well, how can we expect them to grow and improve?
In work environments, the more enlightened managers and leaders spend their time trying to “catch people doing something right” and then giving them suitable levels of praise and recognition. In doing this it is important to bear in mind that the praise needs to be specific and related to a specific behaviour or action, rather than praise for praise sake.
There are many Business Leaders who have been influenced by the work of Ken Blanchard and he believes if he had to choose just one thing to teach about for the rest of his life, he has no doubt that “catching people doing things right” would be his lasting message. His research has shown that positive reinforcement and redirection can help increase productivity.
Think about somebody that you have worked with and admired. How did they behave? How did they treat you? How much belief did they have in you? What impact did this have on you?
Now think about somebody who you worked for that you didn’t respect or admire and ask yourself the same questions.
Research in the States has shown that 64% of people leave their jobs not because of the company or the work conditions, instead they leave because of the Boss they work for. This demonstrates that the way we motivate at work is key.
The question is, what type of fan are you?
Do you have many self limiting beliefs?
Jul 12th
” When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” ~ Dr Wayne Dyer
What we believe in limits or expands our world. These beliefs shape our thoughts and actions because we treat them as though they are a true and objective representation of the facts.

Beliefs can influence whether or not you attempt to achieve a particular goal in life. They determine what you pay attention to, how you react to difficult situations and ultimately your attitude.
Success and failure begin and end in what the mind believes is possible.
So how can you change a limiting belief?
The main keys to doing this is complete honesty and challenging yourself. Here are a few steps to help kick start the process:
- Identify the thought or belief
- How does this thought/belief make you feel?
- Is thought/belief 100% true?
- What would be a more honest thought/belief that also reflects your values?
- What can you do that reflects your new thought/belief?
Adopting a positive mental attitude will also help:
- Use positive self talk - up to 1500 words a minutes flow through our minds, how many of them are positive? Positive talk will lead to increased confidence and higher self esteem.
- Control the pictures in your mind. People use mental pictures to represent places, events, dreams and goals. If you create positive pictures your actions will be positive.
- Feed your mind a healthy diet. seek out positive information, and limit the negative.
- Associate with positive people. levels of success achieved can be linked to the people you associate with.
- Be proactive. Don’t wait for something to happen, take control and seize the initiative!
How many of the above do you already practise?
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement… no pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.” Helen Keller
The importance of belief… from a six year old
Jun 2nd
Two of the major factors in achieving your goals are the need to believe in yourself and perseverance. If you don’t believe in yourself why should anyone else?
Can you remember what it felt like when you first learn to ride a bike? Can you remember the joy? This might remind you…
So there you have it, you can if you believe you can, and if you can’t just keep trying. Simple really.
Leaders must take responsibility if they are to achieve success
Apr 27th
“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.” Jim Rohn
Studies have shown that for more than 75 percent of employees, dealing with their immediate boss is the most stressful part of the job. In fact a 2009 Swedish study tracking 3,122 men for ten years found that those with bad bosses suffered 20 to 40 percent more heart attacks than those with good bosses.

Leaders matter, because whether or not they know it, their followers monitor, magnify, and often mimic their actions and behaviours. The actions, attitudes and behaviour of Leaders have a dramatic influence on the culture and performance of the organisations they operate in and their impact is often under estimated by the majority of leaders.
Having said that evidence shows that Leaders rarely account for more than 15% of the gap between good and bad company performanc, although they often get more than 50% of the credit and blame.
If you are a Leader, this is the way it goes; make the best of it. If you claim that you don’t have much influence over what happens to the team or company you lead, your people will lose confidence in you. Leaders who blame outside forces for their troubles come across as insincere and powerless. By refusing to take responsibility, they implicitly raise a damning question: “If you didn’t have the power to break it, how can you have the power to fix it?”
The public also sees a boss’s refusal to accept responsibility as a sign that nothing has been learned from the errors.
Watching and listening to Arsene Wenger over the last month, as Arsenal’s season has yet again fallen apart, has been a demonstration of this. Instead of him and the team taking responsibility for dropping the points which effectively put them out of the race for the Premier League title, his ire has been directed at the match officials, who have given decisions against Arsenal, and at their opponents who have prevented Arsenal from playing their football.
“We conceded a penalty after 11 minutes and the extra time was only eight minutes, I don’t know where this additional time came from,” said Wenger.

It's all going wrong for Arsene and Arsenal
This is basically an admission of defeat and a poor message to send to his team. It has also lead to his Captain, Cesc Fabregas, speaking out:
“If you went to Spain and said to Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho or Unai Emery that they would have three years without winning a trophy, it would be obvious they would not continue,” Fabregas was quoted as saying.
Fabregas also appeared to give his verdict on Wenger’s policy of developing young players instead of making big-name signings, and how that has cost them winning trophies. “A decision has to be made: to go out and win or develop players.”
With his apparent inability to take responsibility for Arsenal’s failure to win a trophy for the last 6 years, Wenger is in danger of tarnishing his reputation and he and the club have some important decisions to make in the summer.
The first step will involve identifying and agreeing the goals for the club. If they are happy aiming for top 4 and developing the young players then perhaps they won’t need to change too much, although a regular place in the top 4 will be under threat as teams around them strengthen and develop a greater winning mentality.
If the goal is to win trophies then there will need to be a change in mentality by Wenger. He needs to find a way to bring a more ruthless streak to his team and while this can be helped by bringing in experienced players he also needs to change his attitude and beliefs.
One of the most important factors here is him making sure the roles and responsibilities of the individuals in his team are fully understand and that they are accepted and they know the consequences should they exceed them, meet them or indeed fall short (meet or exceed the success and acclaim they desire, or perhaps being dropped should they fall below the standards required).
With himself this will mean him focussing on what he can influence and change rather than constantly blaming outside influences which are not within his area of control. At the moment his constant public blaming of officials and opponents is giving his players an excuse to hide behind and an opportunity to evade responsibility for results.
“The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making any excuses, that’s the day you start to the top.”
How do you, or your boss, demonstrate leadership qualities?
How would your people describe you as a leader?
Do you and your people take responsibility for outcomes or are people quick to blame others when things go wrong?
If it’s the latter what are you going to do about it?
Motivational Communication Skills
Feb 15th
Imagine this scenario:
You are an very experienced sales manager and have been asked to manage a team of senior sales people who have been struggling recently. You are in your first group meeting with the Sales Director. He is asking for updates from the other managers and turns to you and asks if you think you can achieve your targets with the team you have. You reply:
”I’m afraid after working with them yesterday and spending a day last week observing them on calls, I can’t answer that question.
I would like to say so, but it would be foolish of me to make rash statements.”
What do you think your Sales Director would read into what you have said?
He could think; “sensible answer, he needs more evidence before he can reach a conclusion.” Equally he might think, “hmm he doesn’t sound too confident, sounds like he’s trying to hedge his bets.”
Would your answer instil confidence in the Sales Director?
If your sales team could hear you saying it how do you think they would feel?
Would they feel encouraged, indifferent or would your answer increase the doubt in their minds that they might miss their targets?
What else could you have said?
“There’s a lot of ability in the team and I’m really looking forward to working with them. The target is in sight and if we put in the right amount of effort we’ve got a great chance of success.”
Still not guaranteeing to hit target, but do you sound more confident and put your Sales Director at ease until you can get a firm handle on what is going on? Have you also given a morale boost to your new team and demonstrated some confidence in them and their ability?
The reason for posing the questions is that Mr Motivation himself, Roy Hodgson is back in business.

Roy Hodgson, the new West Bromwich Albion Manager
Today he was officially unveiled as the new Manager of West Brom, who currently sit in 17th place in the Premier League. They have 27 points and the consensus is that 40 points will probably be necessary to avoid relegation. With some 36 points still to play for and half their games against teams in the bottom half of the table their destiny is very much in their own hands.
One of the first questions in the press conference today was to ask Hodgson if West Brom had the players to avoid the drop. Did he use the opportunity to build up his players, tell everyone how much ability there was in the squad? Nope., instead we we got:
“I’m afraid after 90 minutes working with them today (Monday) and 90 minutes watching them on Saturday, I can’t answer that question. I would like to say so, but it would be foolish of me to make rash statements.”
Inspirational and optimistic as ever then….
He didn’t stop there though, asked about the task he had at his new club, he came out with;
“We don’t have much time. Like a lot of other clubs, we’re in a desperately difficult situation at the bottom of the league, trying to retain our status.”
Instead of talking about a “desperately difficult situation” why not talk about a great opportunity to cement their place in the Premier League with a great bunch of players? If his new players didn’t previously have doubts about their ability to maintain their place in the “best league in the world” they surely do now!
I have no doubt that Roy Hodgson is only giving his honest assessment of the situation and it won’t have even occurred to him that he might be putting negative thoughts into his players minds, after all he is talking to the media and not the players, but he is demonstrating an extreme naivety about how his words might be interpreted. Indded some media outlets were reporting that Hodgson does not have confidence that West Brom can stay up, whereas others report that he is hopeful and confident in his ability to avoid relegation.
You can bet that his players will have heard what he has said to the media today and will be putting their own interpretation on his comments. If players are already feeling nervous about the task they face his answers to the media’s questions will not have eased their fears. It is absolutely critical to think about what you say as your words can so easily be twisted and exaggerated.
The danger Hodgson faces now is that his team will go into games worrying about making mistakes and their subconscious minds will be focussed on what can go wrong rather than what is going well.
As a manager it is very easy for you to put negative thoughts in the minds of your people, with your choice of language dictating how your message is received.
Derren Brown demonstrated this superbly in his show on Channel 4, when he told a 19 year old girl NOT to push a button on the desk as this would electrocute a kitten that was in a glass box in the room with her. Derren then set up a countdown click and left her alone in the room for two minutes as she watched the seconds tick down to when the experiment would be over. With two seconds to go the girl crossed the room and pressed the button….
Of course the Kitten wasn’t killed but was simply a demonstration of how you could put someone’s focus on negative actions by putting negative thoughts in their minds. Doing this ultimately resulted in the negative action being carried out.
You can see the clip on the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDwe_PNrACI
The whole clip is 23 minutes long, but the main part as described above starts on 18 mins 20 secs.
Roy Hodgson put negative thoughts into the minds of the Liverpool players in his time there, and he appears to be on the verge of doing the same with the West Brom players. It will be interesting to see if West Brom manage to avoid the drop.
While we wait to see, think about the messages you give to your team, your friends and your family. Do you spend your time looking for what can go wrong or do you talk about the opportunities that are out there?
“A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.” Mahatma Ghandi
Making a difference as a Manager…
Feb 14th
“Every day he gives you little bits of advice and makes you think. When you believe in a manager it is always really important. You listen to him all the time. He has opened our mind to doing things differently.”
Lucas Leiva talking about the impact Kenny Dalglish has had in the short term back as Liverpool manager. 
Roberto Martinez, the Wigan Athletic manager, whose side played Liverpool for the second time this season identified one crucial factor that set aside Dalglish’s Liverpool from that managed by Roy Hodgson earlier in the season;
“Belief, that’s the difference. You can see this Liverpool side plays with huge belief.”
Apart from swapping Suarez for Torres these are the same players, so how had Dalglish managed to turn round the attitude in such a short space of time?
If you listen to what Dalglish has had to say to the media since taking over the message has been a consistent one. He is delighted to be managing great players, none of whom are more important than the next player and they have the honour of playing for a fantastic club. He is confident they can produce the results that are required and his main focus is putting the fun back into training.
He has concentrated on emphasising players strengths, reminding them what they are good at and encouraging them to come up with solutions themselves. He has handed responsibility for what happens on the pitch to the players and you can see in the performances that the players have risen to that challenge and started to play to their potential.
As Lucas indicates in his comments this demonstration of belief in the players has encouraged them to view situations from different perspectives and to seek different ways of achieving their objectives. This is a classic example of how coaching people on their strengths can lead to improvements in other areas that need attention.
As a team Liverpool are much stronger defensively and they have been more open to the ideas introduced by the coaches such as Steve Clarke because they are in a positive frame of mind and believe they can and want to improve their performance.
When working with managers in business too often you see them trying to “catch people doing something wrong” and this merely serves to create a climate of fear, where people are more worried about making mistakes than they are in stretching themselves. This narrows the mind and leads to reduced creativity thus making it more difficult to envisage positive solutions to difficult situations.
Looking to catch people doing something well instead can lead to a far more positive culture at work with a happy and inspired workforce. How can you do this? Here are 5 steps you could introduce today:
1) Ask your people what they enjoy about their jobs.
2) Ask your people what they would like to improve about their jobs – and if possible make changes to improve this situation.
3) Can you describe how what they do contributes to the team’s goals?
4) Remind them how important and valuable their role is in achieving team goals.
5) When they do something well, tell them and thank them.
I was working with a group of sales managers recently and encouraged them to think about the steps above. At our next meeting I asked them if they had been able to implement some of these steps into their daily routine. Brian, one of the more experienced managers, told me about an update he had completed with Sally, one of his team, who had a reputation for being demanding and impatient with other departments within the company. He had received another complaint about her and in the past he would have read her the riot act and sent her way with a flea in her ear. This time he had talked to her about how much he valued her contribution to the team and how her customers were always happy with the service she provided and explained how he was puzzled that she didn’t seem to have a similar relationship with people inside the company. Sally replied that she felt she needed to chase other departments to make sure she maintained a high quality service to her clients, but eventually agreed that perhaps this wasn’t the best way to go about it.
A few days later Brian was surprised to receive two phone calls from senior managers of other departments within the company to tell him how they had noticed a real change in behaviour in Sally and asking him for the secret! When Brian fed this praise back to Sally he could see a visible change in her posture as she revelled in the praise and recognition. Brian was also delighted to see such a quick turnaround after a relatively simple change in approach to his conversation with Sally.
Dalglish has managed to achieve the same with the Liverpool team with a different emphasis in approach and outlook. Lucas Leiva has talked about it and so has Steven Gerrard:
“the last three or four weeks have been really positive. We’ve had some good results. The lads are smiling again. I’ve actually enjoyed going to work again.”
Do your people enjoy going to work, and if not why not? What can you change to improve the culture at work?
Coach Potatoes is the blog for the people at The Coach Business.
At The Coach Business we specialise in providing valuable effective coaching to management teams at all levels in both the public and private sector. Our experience in based on over 20 years of managing, coaching and developing people in a Blue Chip environment and our goal is to achieve tangible improvements in performance for our clients. If you have an issue you would like to discuss or are seeking advice please contact us at support@thecoachbusiness.com for further information or to arrange an initial consultation.
What inspires you to get up out of that chair?
Jan 26th
The ability to motivate yourself is the key to achieving your goals and while we can get a lot of help from those around us to spur us on we all have different triggers that can kick start us. I find different pieces of music can help me focus, concentrate and finish what I start. For example listening to classical music helps me rattle through a variety of tasks thus leaving me with a great sense of satisfaction when I cross off a long list of items from my “to do” list.
The following song by Pink Floyd never fails to inspire me to make a start on something instead of procrastinating:
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say
“We don’t have an eternity to realize our dreams, only the time we are here.” ~ Susan Taylor
What makes you get up out of your chair?
Inspirational figures
Jan 20th
I was running a course this week with a group of managers about creating a coaching culture in their workplace, and we were talking about role model behaviour. One of the examples used was Bill Shankly and how his values not only inspired a group of players but a whole city.
At the end of the day one of the managers came over and shared a story with me about her husband who had been in hospital in the early 70′s recovering from a cartilage operation. Also in the ward with him was a Manchester United player who was visited by Matt Busby. While he was there Matt said hello to the manager’s husband Jim and asked why he was in hospital and wished him well before leaving.

- Sir Matt Busby
Five years later Jim was queuing up outside Old Trafford for a game when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see a smiling Matt Busby who said “Alright Jim, how’s the knee?”












