All the questions in the world will not help your team if you are not listening. You don’t learn when you’re talking; you learn when you’re listening. Excellent coaches are also excellent listeners and learners.

Mark Twain said, “If we were supposed to talk more than we listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.”

If you’re not listening to your employees, you will gradually suffer from “blind spots” – weaknesses that are apparent to others but not to you.

How do I motivate my team, my kids, my spouse, my anyone?

It’s an age-old question with a myriad of different answers... too many to even summarize here.

So, in our information overloaded world, let me boil it down to this. If you want to motivate, then appreciate.  We do more for those who appreciate us.

The two most powerful words for any leader, parent, teacher or colleague are "Thank You!" I added the exclamation point to make sure we really mean it when we say it.

When employees don’t get the necessary information to perform their jobs, including asnwers to the fundamental four questsions, they tend to “fill in the blanks” with their own assumptions, and their assumptions are often worst-case scenarios. This is not necessarily a reflection of the leader. It’s our natural human insecurity. We often assume the worst in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Lack of information and unanswered questions can start the silence spiral: