Dan Erwin

3 Keys to Personal Motivation

Eventually, all managers learn that if they want a person to make some changes, whether stopping a frustrating behavior or gaining new skills, motivation is going to be at the center of the behavioral change. Motivation, that prompting to behave in a certain way, is just very, very important.**

But, a recent global survey by Nik Kinley and Shlomo Ben-Hur found that only 28% of more than 500 global managers and leaders were confident they could motivate people to change. And only 10% of that group said they felt confident that the changes would stay changed over time. The issue then is not what changes need to take place, but how to do it.

The beginning place for making change is understanding personal or inner motivation, what researchers call intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation developed out of cognitive psychology and self-determination theory. Initially identified in the 1970s and 80s, it has evolved over time and been put to very successful use. Understanding intrinsic motivation is highly important because. . . 

How to Keep Your Enemies Closer Than Your Friends

In April 2015, I wrote a blog questioning, “Why Should You Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer?” With an excess of 28,000 reads of that post, it obviously identified a real need of a great many people.  The post provided a rationale for the issue, not least that you can learn a lot from people you dislike, gain a different perspective and make it easier for your allies to work with you. But it only addressed strategies for working with enemies and difficult people in a cursory fashion.

Near as I can tell, there are two vocations that absolutely require a person to keep their enemies closer just to keep their job: elected politicos and Protestant church ministers. However, most business people recognize early on that they’re going to have to work with “enemies,” people they don’t especially like or trust--or pay the price in performance and sometime job loss.

So how can you keep your enemies closer?
First, confronting your enemies is usually a waste of time and a bad conversational move. They’ve got their views and in a high percentage of cases you’re not going to change their mind anyway. You may feel good by confronting them, but that won’t make the problem go away. Sure, there are occasions when confrontation is useful, but they are rare. And sometimes confronting another is a form of suicide.

Furthermore. . .