Do you know the one thing you can do to light the fire of motivation, energy, creativity, and self-propelled action in your employees?

The discovery of gold in Northern California lit off a tidal wave of prospectors, who came by the thousands to find their share of wealth. A very small number actually made any money prospecting for gold.

But lots of people did very, very well during the gold rush... and they never dug one tunnel, never sloshed one pan in a stream, never staked one claim. They only picked up a shovel to sell it.

That’s right. It was the merchants who supplied prospectors that made a fortune. There is a lesson for us as leaders in this. It is that people are self-motivated to pursue a personal dream, and there is nothing you or I can do to change that. But we can make it work for them and for us.

I call it the gold rush syndrome, and here’s how it works for us.

Extrinsic motivation, things like wages and salary, benefits, and titles, do act as incentives. We all want to get ahead, but I propose that those external incentives are only symptomatic of something far more powerful and significantly more effective.

 …