This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.

How I “Learned” to Motivate Others

Date: March 25, 1997
Age: 14
Location: San Diego, CA
Subject: Inducing Motivation in Others

Hi Hannah. Is Dale Carnegie’s the only self-improvement book you can recommend? I rummaged through my parent’s library, and all they have are biographies. I need something more specific … something about managing people. If I don’t find something soon, I think my head’s going to explode.

At the start of the year, Mr. Rabel, our computer lab teacher assigned us to teams of three to enter ThinkQuest. ThinkQuest is an international web design contest with huge scholarship prizes ($25,000 per teammate for first place, plus some money for our school), and my team might have a chance of taking the big one. I’ve already thrown hundreds of hours into the project, designing graphics and slinging together HTML, but sadly, my two teammates, Carlos and Paul, have nowhere near the same interest I have in winning.

I nearly broke down and cried the other day because of how frustrated I had been with Paul. At our first meeting since spring break, a slightly sunburnt Paul arrived late and actually smirked with pride at how little work he had done. As Carlos and I walked through the tasks we had completed, Paul smiled and shook his head in a smug, couldn’t-give-a-crap attitude.

In those meetings, the more I spoke, the more Paul looked at me like I was crazy for being ambitious. The thing is, we have to be ambitious, given how broad our topic is. Our site is called The Sciences Explorer, which covers Math, Chemistry, Physics, and Biology, and I think we can wow the judges if we throw in something interactive in each area, like a math game or physics simulator. That’s why we need Paul so badly. He’s really the only competent programmer in the room. The more I tried to explain that our site would fail unless it had interactive features, the more Paul stared at me like I was an unwanted pest, like I had some mental problems. Which was partially correct, because I was going crazy.

I slumped onto the floor of my bedroom, back against the base of my bed, and just stared at the carpet in a daze. I yearned and yearned for our site to come together. At some point, my mind wandered and I drifted into a hazy mental state similar to that of a parched man crawling through the desert. Vivid imagery popped into my head. I could see Paul, Carlos, and myself in New York, dressed crisply, holding trophies and shaking hands with award-givers. I could see myself holding a drink (I don’t even drink!) and chatting with a room full of college recruiters from universities like Harvard and Stanford, all eager to hand me their cards. But most importantly, I could see what had led to these moments. I saw Paul showing us completed programming task after programming task. I saw him take pride in his work and I saw his enthusiasm. If only this mirage was real, I thought.

But then a strategy for motivating Paul hit me. What I really saw in the mirage was that a productive Paul retained all of his personality. He wasn’t any nicer to me, but somehow he was eagerly producing results. In these imagined meetings, he wasn’t any more of team player, but rather he was displaying his work like a merciful dog owner throwing leftover scraps to his pets. I realized then that I had to extract work from him without bolstering my own stature. If he was going to do anything for us, I would have to preserve the illusion that Carlos and I were complete morons.

And so, on the day of our next meeting, I took a risk and just completely put on an act. The first thing I did was speak less. Instead of speaking up with commands or facts, I framed everything in the form of a question. And instead of talking to the whole group, I talked exclusively to Carlos. I made it seem like Carlos was the only knowledgeable person in the room who could answer my question. This piqued Paul, who has a superiority complex, and he swiftly interrupted Carlos with his answers, folding his arms on his chest as he did so. I nodded in slight acknowledgment each time, but kept my gaze on Carlos.

Then I asked Carlos, “What other features does our site need?” Carlos suggested we create an interactive periodic table of elements, one where students can click on each element and a little pop-up would appear that gave more information about it. I wrinkled my face in mock frustration, “That’d be cool, but wouldn’t that be too hard to make?” Paul perked up big time, and said, in a dismissive tone, “Dude that’s super easy.” He said it in such a condescending way, like Carlos and I were helpless idiots, that I had to bite my tongue. But I limited my reaction by giving Paul a short glance and then looking right back at Carlos like I didn’t believe it could be done. Paul would have to prove his programming skills to show us how dumb we were.

Paul finished the periodic table of elements that night. By the end of the week, our site was fully functional, with no crashes.

And now I can breathe.

While it’s great that all three of us are finally, fully contributing to the success of the project, I do wonder if I really had to go through all that turmoil to motivate Paul. Someone’s got to have written a book about these same exact problems, right?

- Phil

If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have been so manipula­tive, even if it meant sacrificing winning. On the other hand, this “improvement,” combined with the Carnegie one, made it really clear how awesome the power of personal change was. Just a small change to your demeanor can dramatically change how the people you’re working with are motivated. I notice this often with successful managers: They always carry an expression on their face that says, “At any moment I could lose my faith in you.”

This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.

For Philip’s 14th birthday, Hannah gave him Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which kicked off a life-long obsession with self-improvement. Over 16 years, Philip wrote 82 letters to Hannah describing every book, pop psych article, and method that he used — or abused. Dear Hannah is either a cautionary tale about self-improvement, or it is a filter for the 10% of self-help that may actually change your life.

PHILIP DHINGRA is a President’s Scholar from Stanford University, where he received his B.A. in Mathematical and Computational Sciences. In addition to authoring books on life change, he develops best-selling iOS apps including Nebulous Notes and The Creative Whack Pack (a collaboration with creativity pioneer Roger von Oech). Philip divides his time between Austin, Texas, and San Francisco, California.