Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?: Olympic-winning Strategies for Everyday Success - Second Edition

It’s all too easy to assume that what motivates us will motivate other people. A simple way of figuring out what floats each person’s boat is to ask them. What excites each individual in your team? What constitutes a reward for them?

Time and again research shows that what interests people to perform above and beyond average performance is not money, but what the psychologist Herzberg called motivators – things like recognition, interesting work, feeling part of the ‘in’ crowd…

The crew found that there were three elements to a really powerful team goal. 1a. Mutual desire 1b. Mutual reliance 1c. Measurability

The language you use is a great indicator of whether your doors are open or closed. When you catch yourself using powerless language, challenge yourself to figure out fact from assumption.

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935), Seven Pillars of Wisdom

fear is just a message to do some preparation and think things through. It’s not the automatic stop sign that we all too often mistake it for.

“Today is going to be a good day, because I’m going to make it a good day.”

The feeling of irritation was the red-light indicator on his mental dashboard that he needed to manage the pressure of the negotiation, rather than snipe at a poor random colleague.

One of our clients, a bank, gave sales targets to their branches for certain insurance products. The staff ‘knew’ it was an impossible target and there was lots of legitimate chat about how it couldn’t be done, backed up with plenty of valid reasons. However! In one branch one employee not only achieved the target, he absolutely smashed it. Intrigu