Curious, eh? Most people who know me well would tell you that I work hard to eliminate “can’t” from the vocabulary of anyone I know or work with. So what gives with the title? I’m finding that as usual, rules – even good ones – are meant to be broken. And in this case, that means using the word “can’t.”

Before one of my recent speaking engagements, I had the usual talks with the group booking me about what the subject matter would be, what they wanted and all the other details. The one difference was that I was being asked to fill in for another speaker who had cancelled, so we were only eight weeks out.

Sounds like plenty of time, right? Not so. In fact, in order to make all the marketing work, we needed to get information to the organizer within a day to meet the deadlines for their online and print newsletters.

I've done this a lot so I have a photo and bio ready to send at the click of a button so I thought, no problem. Well, there was a problem. My initial contact and I had discussed my presentation for this group of women executives about the challenges and blessings of being a professional woman. This was a subject I was excited to talk about again because I've done a tremendous amount of research on the topic. But the support person doing the follow up didn’t have the same information so she inserted the information she believed to be correct into the newsletters.

When we received the electronic newsletter, we were surprised to discover that my topic was not, “I’m too busy to notice I’m exhausted – strategies for the ever-empowered professional woman”; but rather, “How to motivate yourself and your employees.” Huh?

The previous speaker’s topic was on motivation and her information had been printed with my bio and photo! We requested they correct it in the second issue of the newsletter, and they assured us they would. The second issue came out with the incorrect information again!

At that point we decided it would be better to just work with the subject at hand. Only one concern – as I sat down to consider the topic, I realized I don’t believe you can motivate another human being. Not in any way, shape or form. My first thought was, I "can't" talk about this subject, I don't believe in it. Now what to do?

Given that I spend my time coaching leaders and certifying coaches, I recognized that if I didn't re-think this, I could have a problem! Motivation is in the nature and perception of what we do with our clients. And that’s when the opportunity emerged. It became critical for me to hone in on this distinction in order to make it a successful event.

If you look up the word “motivate” in the dictionary, its root word is “motive,” meaning “an emotion, desire, physiological need, or similar impulse that acts as an incitement to action.” This is entirely up to the person being “motivated” and can have little or nothing to do with the person being the motivator. It’s internally driven and impermanent.

Now, I do believe that you can incite action in the short term (through pain or incentives), but that won’t produce desired results for any duration. I also don’t believe you really want this. If you’re like most thoughtful leaders, you want self-generating, engaged people bringing the best of who they are to all they do. And there's the problem - you can’t do that to another person.

So what can you do? You can inspire.

To “inspire” means to draw forth, elicit or arouse. That’s something worth figuring out. If you want to inspire people, you need to engage with them in such a way that you inquire, explore and expand what’s inherently already important to them at an essential level. This, with a bit more explanation, is exactly what we do as coaches and how coaches can interact to have people committed in a way that’s meaningful. And it puts the ownership on the person at the speaking engagement, not on the other party.

It sounds simple, right? Perhaps it is, with practice. When become masterful at exploring another person’s worldview at an essential, meaningful level, you won’t need any advice on how to motivate others; you’ll be living in an inspired environment.

And guess what? You can’t inspire others without being inspired yourself. Once again, the only work to be done is with you. To borrow a 12-step phrase, “We can do what I can’t.”

I still believe in banishing the word “can’t” from your vocabulary...almost.