Top Performance

by Zig Ziglar

  A Formula for Motivation

  You can’t sweep people off their feet if you can’t be swept off your own.

  Clarence Day

  One evening an associate and I flew back into Love Field in Dallas and got on the shuttle bus to take us to the outlying parking lot to pick up our car. As we stepped aboard, a client of mine warmly and enthusiastically greeted me. We exchanged a few pleasantries and then, to no one in particular and yet to everyone on the shuttle bus, he said, “From time to time I bring Zig in to talk to my organization. He’s enthusiastic and optimistic, and he gets ’em all charged up and convinces ’em that everything’s going to be fine and that they need to have a good, positive mental attitude.” Then he continued by saying, “Of course, I look at things a little bit differently. I tell ’em exactly how it is and from time to time I chew ’em out pretty good!”

  A passenger on the bus entered the conversation at that point and said, “In other words, Ziglar is unrealistic because he’s so optimistic, and you’re realistic in your approach.” With this, I turned to the man and said, “Friend, let me ask you a question. What percentage of the bad things you expect to happen actually happen?” At that point another passenger entered the picture and said, “About 5 or 10 percent of them.” Then I commented, “In other words, over 90 percent of the time the expected negative events just don’t happen. This is realistic and, according to the experts, factual. From my perspective, the conclusion is obvious. It’s completely unrealistic to be negative and totally realistic to be positive.” However, it is unrealistic to deny that problems do exist, so let’s take a serious look at a major problem and then look at some positive solutions.

  Bridging the Gap

  The general trend in business in the last five years has been toward growing employee dissatisfaction, according to many of the research associations and newsmagazines that study business climate. Workers at all levels—hourly, clerical, professional, and even managerial personnel—are down on employers. Gripes have less to do with money and more to do with the work environment.

  Now, if you are wondering what this “less than cheerful” news is doing in such a positive book, let me explain that we should look for the positive in all situations. However, that must not keep us from identifying obstacles to becoming even more positive. Until and unless you specifically identify the problem in a company, you cannot solve it any more than your doctor could successfully treat you for an illness until he has correctly identified the illness. Identifying obstacles or problems is critical. The key is to be solution conscious and not problem oriented.

  Use the following list of action steps to decrease employee dissatisfaction and increase good employee/employer relationships.

  Show respect for a job well done. Get rid of second-class job citizenship regardless of pay differences. Real job equality is feeling we have a stake in our company’s success.

  Involve employees. This means providing opportunities to make decisions and give useful input. This does not mean surrendering basic decision-making powers. It does mean giving employees a chance to participate, to be involved, and to be held accountable.

  As a company leader, keep skid chains on your tongue. Talking about others may be destructive and probably is just gossip unless it’s specifically designed to help.

  Cultivate a calm, persuasive voice. How you say it is often more important than what you say. In any type of discussion or confrontation, your objective is to “win them over” … not “win over them.”

  Make certain you are short on promises to your people and long on fulfillment. Action does speak louder than words.

  Be interested in the goals, welfare, homes, and families of those with whom you work. People have many facets in their lives. Don’t be a one-dimensional supervisor. You may not supervise their private lives, but you can let them know you really care.

  Keep an open mind on all debatable questions (being the boss doesn’t necessarily mean you are always right). Discuss but don’t argue. The mark of superior minds is the ability to disagree without being disagreeable.

  Be careful of employees’ feelings. Wit, put-down, and any form of ethnic or racial digs are no-nos. Leaders instinctively know that when someone is resentful and has a chip on his shoulder, the best way to remove the chip is to let him take a bow.

  Since employee morale is affected by many factors in and outside the workplace, those who have confidence in management’s integrity are most likely to deliver their best work and to do so consistently. The best way management can build this confidence in itself is to communicate its abilities honestly, confidently, and directly. A well-run company is the best employee morale builder available.

  In summary, what the researchers and their statistics say is very important; however, what they don’t say is even more important: What the workforce really wants is management leadership whose competence and concern they can trust.

  The workforce desires and feels it deserves an opportunity to grow mentally, socially, spiritually, and physically, while sharing in the financial recognition and security rewards that come as a result of their growth and effort as part of the team.

  Andrew Carnegie once said, “A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.” Regardless of how we define unlimited enthusiasm, it usually includes motivation, desire, drive, optimism, hope, faith, and energy. People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with the status quo no matter how impressive their resume looks. Now let’s take a sobering look at why he makes that statement and why motivation is a must in our personal and corporate lives.

  * * *

  What the workforce really wants is management leadership whose competence and concern they can trust.

  * * *

  Our Wasted Time

  One shocking statistic that costs America and its people a great deal of money and countless opportunities is the incredible amount of time that is wasted, or even stolen. An August 1999 report by Michael G. Kessler & Associates showed that a survey of over five hundred employees across the nation found that almost 87 percent of those surveyed admitted to falsifying time sheets. While that is incredibly disturbing, an even greater form of time theft takes place every day without a second thought, or even a sense of wrongdoing. The Internet, though it has innumerable benefits, has begun to eat into the productivity of almost every person who uses a computer and has access to the World Wide Web. An estimated 38 percent of e-mails either are unwanted spam or don’t pertain to the work at hand. Add this loss of time to the typical time wasters—water fountain discussions, late arrivals, early departures, personal phone conversations—and you have enough dollars lost through wasted time to potentially cause one out of three new businesses to fail. That’s a lot of corporate dollars, but the truly big loss is the individual’s, because Emerson was right when he said, “The right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.”

  The most conservative nationwide survey I saw while compiling this information revealed that the average worker wastes nine full work weeks a year simply putting off or postponing work that should be done. Burke Marketing Research conducted the survey for Accountemps, an accounting, bookkeeping, and data-processing personnel organization. The survey was based on interviews with vice presidents and personnel directors of one hundred of America’s one thousand largest companies. Those responding to the survey estimated that the average employee procrastinates 18 percent of the time, or nine full thirty-five-hour workweeks each year. Why? Well, the last survey question was: “What do you believe are the main reasons for procrastination in business?” The answers make up the following list. Read it and see if you agree that motivation could be the most important ingredient leadership can bring to a company.

  Lack of communication

  Low morale

  Lack of interest in the job or particular task

  Absence of clear-cut goals or objectives

&nbs
p; Lack of discipline

  Poor self-esteem

  To this list we must add the thought that far too many people get carried away with what Charles E. Hammel identifies as the “tyranny of the urgent” and permit the “urgent” things to crowd out the “important” things. Basically, we have a prioritizing problem and not a time problem.

  EFFICIENCY IS DOING THINGS RIGHT.

  EFFECTIVENESS IS DOING THE RIGHT THINGS.

  The proper utilization of our time and resources, according to Thomas K. Connellan, president of the Management Group of Ann Arbor, Michigan, involves some truths that are so simple and basic that many people miss them completely. First, we need to understand that there is no point in doing well that which you should not be doing at all. When you take on a task, you should ask yourself if this is something you should be doing or something someone else should be doing. Focus on effective use of time rather than efficient use of time.

  According to Connellan, 10 to 15 percent of the tasks managers are personally handling should be delegated and 10 to 15 percent should be eliminated.

  Question: What happens to these effective people who take their jobs seriously and use their time wisely? Answer: According to an Associated Press release, they get promoted:

  [Text not included because of rights restrictions.]

  The Successful Know about Attitude

  Allan Cox, author of the widely acclaimed book Confessions of a Corporate Headhunter, talks a great deal about attitude and, as a result of a survey of 1,173 executives in thirteen corporations, has some strong opinions and factual information. He says, “Attitude determines strength. It determines direction. American executives by and large believe that having a positive attitude is responsible for career advancement.” In his survey he asked the question, “What was your finding concerning the impact of positive thinking?” Among top executives, 49 percent said it affected their own success very strongly and 46.5 percent said it was a “significant” factor. In a nutshell, 95.5 percent of these men and women said their attitude played a very strong or significant part in their success. The rest were neutral on the question. On the other side, Cox points out that no one with whom leaders deal is given less time and consideration than the negative thinker.

  Cox points out that positive thinking is not manipulating or being manipulated. It is not being grandiose; it is not being naïve. It is not being falsely enthusiastic or optimistic. Most important, perhaps, it is not denying periodic, normal bouts of discouragement. Thinking positively is not legislated experience, either. By this he means you cannot practice it merely because someone tells you to, nor can you extend it selectively, say to life at home, and exclude it from work. He points out that life constantly presents us with obstacles and opportunities. Positive thinking is the means for dealing constructively with both.

  An Important Gift You Can Give Others

  One of the most important and positive things we can give others is hope with direction, encouragement, and believability—hope that the future is going to be bright for them, regardless of where they are at the moment. Never will I forget an incident at a hotel on Marco Island, Florida, several years ago. A speaker friend and I were visiting in my room when the maid knocked and asked permission to clean the room. Since this did not present a problem, we invited her to go ahead.

  She had been working less than a minute when our conversation stopped and I started watching her in action. Though she was substantially overweight, she moved with amazing speed. In three fast movements she stripped the blanket and linens from the bed. With each of her hands working, she removed the pillowcases from both pillows simultaneously. She took the sheet that covers the mattress and quickly put it on one side. Next she put the cover sheet on top of that, followed by the light blanket and the bedspread. Then she put the pillowcase on the pillow and completed that one side of the bed.

  At that point she quickly moved to the other side and finished that side of the bed in record time. How she handled the next little maneuver is an absolute mystery to me, but somehow from the opposite side of the bed she flipped the bedspread and the pillow (which she had neatly tucked on the other side) over in the correct spot and, with two more quick movements on her side, the bed was complete.

  I don’t exaggerate when I say she had made that bed in less than half the time of anyone I have ever seen. Since I served two years in the navy and made a few hundred bunks myself, I consider myself knowledgeable on the subject. But this lady was far and away the best I’ve ever seen.

  Curiosity demanded that I get some information, so I asked her whether she minded if I asked her some questions. She cheerfully responded, “No, go right ahead,” but in the meantime she was doing the other things needed to clean the room. First I asked her whether she worked on an hourly basis or if she was paid by the room. She told me she was paid by the room. I smilingly asked, “I’ll bet you do all right, don’t you?” For the first time she stopped and said, “Well, to tell you the truth, I have a large family and I am the only one to support them, so I have to work hard.” Then she grinned from ear to ear and said, “And yes, I do all right.”

  CAN YOU TRAIN MOTIVATION

  SO THAT IT LASTS AND HAS AN IMPACT?

  Where You Start Is Not Important

  I’d like to complete this story by saying I got her name and address and two years later I wrote to discover she was the manager of the hotel. Unfortunately—and for me, amazingly—I did not even get her address, so I cannot finish her story on that kind of note. However, I’ll bet she’s still doing “all right.”

  About a year later I was speaking in Zanesville, Ohio, and had lunch with the manager of a Holiday Inn and the president of the Chamber of Commerce, along with a personal friend. As we visited, I told the story of this lady, and the manager of the Holiday Inn said, “Well, obviously that was not me, but it could have been.” She pointed out that when she finished high school, she got married and had to go to work. The only job available was to serve as the housekeeper at the Holiday Inn, and her job was cleaning rooms. However, she determined that she was going to work as hard as possible and be the best at what she did. The net result was that within six months she was manager of that floor of the Holiday Inn. A few months later she was manager of the entire housekeeping department. About a year later they moved her into the restaurant, first as assistant manager and shortly after as manager. A couple of years later she was manager of the Holiday Inn in Zanesville, Ohio, and served in that capacity for several years. This lady, Mrs. Nan Gump, could easily have been immobilized by where she had to start. Instead, she realized that where you finish is much more important.

  Can Motivation Affect Where You Finish?

  My dream to be a professional speaker was born in 1952, and it was not until 1970 that I could pursue my dream on a full-time basis. It was 1972 before my speaking career really exploded. During the course of the preparation for what was to be, I always stayed grounded in my philosophy and the principles I adhered to. I altered ways in which I delivered the training in those early years, but I was fixated on the principles. In the mid-sixties I was educating organizations on sales training principles with the underlying brand of motivation that has become the identity of Ziglar Training Systems. In the course of those relationships, I met a young man named Larry Proffit. Larry decided to take some of the principles I taught, along with his own experiences and expertise, and go to Japan to expand his horizons. Larry succeeded in culturally translating those principles with the help of his literary translator, a Japanese gentleman named Tom Watanabe. Tom Watanabe had a relationship with another Japanese gentleman named Mr. Masuda. The story takes a turn when these two Japanese gentlemen joined hands in a project that would bring Watanabe to the United States. Larry Proffit was invited to join the organization as the person in charge of sales and sales training. Today the company is a multibillion-dollar direct-marketing company based in Irvine, California, called Nikken.

  Almost thirty years after ou
r first encounter, Larry decided to invite me to speak for this giant corporation at their convention in San Francisco. There I was introduced to a young Korean gentleman named Kendall Cho, who was the vice president of finance for Nikken. He is now the president. The next five years moved even more quickly as the relationship solidified. Ziglar Training Systems and Nikken developed a couple of custom training programs, and I made a few more personal appearances at their annual conventions. In 2001 Nikken invited me to become their international honorary chairman and national spokesperson. As I look back on the cycle of events of those thirty-five years, I am more convinced than ever that success comes to those who are not only determined but also consistent.

  My symbol of persistence for the last three-and-a-half decades has been a chrome-plated water pump, and those of you who know that story know that my message is to keep on pumping after you have primed the pump. At first you have to pump vigorously, and when the water starts to flow, all you have to do is maintain a slow, steady pace. Those early years of pumping have paid off in ways that are indescribable, but the icing on the proverbial cake is that in Nikken’s recognition system, the first pin rank is symbolized by a small water pump designed as a lapel pin. Ironically, employees at Ziglar Training Systems also receive one of those pins when they finish a year of service with us.

  Yes, motivation can and does impact where you finish in life.

  Can You “Stand” Motivated?

  Of all the subjects on this earth, surely one of the most exciting and confusing is the subject of motivation. The next example opens the door and deals with just one facet of this intriguing subject.