76 Leading with NLP
their telephone, including the time they spent in the toilet
and their tea and coffee breaks.
Being condescending or sarcastic is also very demotivat-
ing, as is applying unfair professional standards, for example
not giving a sales person a bonus because of a personality
clash.
All these actions make for a culture where people do not
feel valued and they breed fear, blame and paranoia, all
feeding off one another in a downward spiral. This is obvi-
ously not the way to lead.
rewards and penalties
Leaders tap that energy and passion that come from what
matters to people. People will always want to do a task that
brings them closer to their vision. Leaders may also offer ex-
ternal rewards to make it worthwhile. In business, this brings
us to the perennial key management question, debated in
boardrooms ever since people came together: How do you
get people to work? Or the more recent, softened form: How
do we get people to want to work?
There are three reasons people want to work. One, they are
doing a task that matters to them and that they enjoy. Leaders
create this whenever possible. Here the energy comes from
within – the work has an intrinsic reward regardless of any out-
side reward offered. Making a workplace fun, challenging
and pleasant to work in is worth more than any incentive
scheme.Leadership works as much as possible with values and in-
trinsic rewards.Bosses rely on outside pressure. Leaders use
values. They may use external rewards, too, but these rewards
must fit the values of the people who are working.
A problem with rewards is that both rewards and punish-
ments come from the outside, whereas motivation comes
from the inside. Too great an emphasis on rewards and pun-
ishments gives the insidious message that the work itself is
intrinsically hard and unsatisfying and people have to be
tempted, cajoled or threatened to do it at all. Neither the