By Keith Rosen, MCC
The Executive Sales Coach ^TM

Managers provide incentives, set goals, and acknowledge top producers; they may even use consequences or threats to motivate their team to greater productivity. They use these tactics to stimulate interest in their staff and to push them into action. Most confess that motivating employees is exhausting and time-consuming work.

Yet when that external stimulation is no longer present, people have a tendency to slip back into their old ways, to immobilize without someone there to push them into action.

Business owners tell me that they believe their primary role to be a "problem solver" to their employee's challenges -- a role they probably learned from their predecessors and mentors. Many attempt to control their environment and work within the limits of what they already have. Some spend their time extinguishing fires. Others find their sense of purpose in keeping certain challenges alive.