CHANGE YOUR LIFE 223Practice in a training session. For those of you who would like
more material and practice opportunities than you can extract
from a book and other static materials, attend one of our live
training seminars. Give us a call and see if you can either sched
ule a session at a location near you or bring the training into your
company.
Our training materials library is equipped with a variety of
delivery tools ranging from leader-guided workshops to off-site
intensive courses.
Enhance Your MotiveWe all have ideas about how to motivate others, but how do you
motivate yourself? While you may feel 100 percent committed to
improving your crucial conversations right now, what can you do
when you're staring at an angry coworker and your commitment
to improVIDent drops to, say, 10 percent?
The truth is that we often need to take steps to ensure that our
most well-founded wishes (those made during peaceful moments
where we're taking an honest look at the future) survive turbu
lent, less forward-looking circumstances.
Apply incentives. Start with the obvious. Use incentives. For
example, people going through self-help courses are often
encouraged to put their money where their mouth is. Every time
they fulfill an assignment, they're given back a portion of their
tuition. On the other hand, if they don't step up, it costs them.
When incentives are added, results improve fairly dramatically.
So every time you deftly hold a crucial conversation, celebrate
your victory. Treat yourself to something you wouldn't otherwise
enjoy. And don't wait for perfection. Celebrate improvement. If
you used to get in a heated argument every time you brought up
a cel-tain problem. and now the interaction is merely tense, enjoy