Hundred Percenters

Money is great. But working for money will never be as motivating as working for something bigger than oneself.

Companies whose existential anchor is money, like Enron, will never outperform a company whose existence is serving customers.

Imagine if Martin Luther King Jr. had stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and said: "Our goal should be that within the next 30 years, the incidents of hate crimes will be reduced by 63% and the percentage of minorities living below the poverty line will be no higher than the percentage for any other racial group." Those might be goals to aspire, but not to inspire.

HARD goals aspire. They force us to push through our self-imposed limitations, to focus on something bigger than our own immediate wants, and to solve challenges of vital necessity.

Ask your employees this question: Do you believe this goal is necessary? If 70% or more say yes, then you're in good shape.

As crazy as it sounds, limiting people's resources can actually be an effective way to grow their skills and elevate their performance.

There's a positive linear relationship between difficulty and performance. Studies proved that as the difficulty of the goal increased, performance also increased, given that the goal was specific.

Critical mistakes left uncorrected are unacceptable. This translates to heavy frustration on your part and unnecessary performance limitations on the part of your employees; both of which have no place in a Hundred Percenter workplace.

Eliminate blame because the goal of delivering constructive feedback is not to make employees feel bad for whatever they may have done or thought. 100% Leaders avoid historical and emotional punishment and focus on solutions.

Don't skimp on the details. No matter how small a detail may be, it's something employees are going to be held accountable for, make sure you give them the information they need.

Synchronize your understanding. You'll never win an employee's buy-in to change if you tell the employee to shut up and follow orders.

If something is not optional and you will hold the employees accountable for if they don't do it, you must give clear and logical feedback.

Positive reinforcement is not praise, and it's not warm and fuzzy. It's a teaching tool that addresses a psychological principle based on the fact that desirable behavior gets repeated when reinforced.

The only folks who appreciate empty praise are low performers. Hundred Percenters want meaningful feedback.

Hundred Percenters are never happy when rewards are vague or distributed on a widespread level. It provides no learning curve and no differentiation that their performance stands out from everyone else's.

In order to be effective, positive feedback must provide a clear picture of the specific performance that's being commended as in "I like your attention to detail."

Positive reinforcement depends on a brain connectionthat associates the reward with the desired behavior.

If you want positive feedback to carry full impact, it has to be delivered in real time.

A great story draws listeners in by showing, not telling of events. People want more than hard data. They want to have an emotional connection with the story.

Predominantly achievement-motivated individuals avoid low-risk situations because the easily attained success is not a genuine achievement.

Tolerating low-performers, which Talented Terrors most definitely are, was one of the main causes of firing round 1000 board members from 268 public, private and health-care organizations.