67. Keep All Your Smallest Promises

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

—Vincent van Gogh

People are motivated by people they trust.

The trust of your people is not difficult to obtain. You can win it. And because it’s so important for motivating them, you must win it. So you must never, ever be late to your own meetings. Ever. Such a thing will destroy all trust you’ve built up with seven out of 10 people, because it means to them that you cannot be counted on to keep your word.

We explained this to Jeff after working with his team for a while and noticing that he was not keeping any of his small promises.

“Hey, it’s no biggie!” Jeff would say. “I’m a little late, or I forget to get somebody ...

Get 100 Ways to Motivate Others now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.