Sue Guevara is a happy woman...but hardly ever entirely content. Standing on the floor of Central Michigan University's stunning new arena, Guevara seemingly has everything. When Dave Heeke, former Athletics Chief of Staff at the University of Oregon accepted the AD job at this emergent national university of nearly 30,000 students, he announced that he would enrich CMU's championship culture, which among many menu items included hiring Guevara, who still holds the record for most wins at the University of Michigan. Absent the profile of iconic Women's Basketball coaches like Tennessee's Pat Summitt or U-Conn's Geno Auriemma, Guevara is quietly building a franchise. Her CMU team has already won two holiday tournaments and was just noted for recruiting one of the 40 best major college freshman classes in America, ranking ahead of sister institutions Michigan and Michigan State.

A reporter buttonholed Guevara midst the cavernous echoes of CMU's just-opened arena asking how she was accomplishing so much in a relatively short span. Her response was worth a post-it note, as sometimes happens when a coach articulates a crucial opinion on winning. "I'll coach strategy, I'll coach technique and even at the major college level, I'll coach fundamentals. But there's one thing I won't coach, and that's effort. If I have to coach a player's effort, they'll sit on the bench." Good call coach.

For time immemorial people have written volumes on motivation. The speakers' tour de jour features highly accomplished military, sports and business titans with insights on how to motivate people, implying we can incent them to perform. Several years ago when writing a book on leadership, I offered counterpoint to the long-held belief we can magically say or do something to affect someone's desire to achieve. In fact, the best we can do is to avoid the myths of motivation, while removing barriers seen and unseen that may hold someone back from reaching beyond their current performance.

Myth: People are inherently lazy and just need a swift kick to jack them up. Whatever the barrier, it's almost never as simple as "laziness." People are uncertain and sometimes under- actualized to the degree they can't identify or correct tendencies holding them back.

Myth: Money is the best source of motivation. Wrong. Studies continue to demonstrate that while financial recognition matters, it ranks lower than other values. It's also short-term as a behavioral catalyst.

Myth: Certain types of people are just "born with it." This special genetics paradigm is disproven before our eyes on all stages. Was General Patton a greater leader than Dwight Eisenhower? Is Bill Belichick a lesser NFL success because he emotes hardly at all compared with Giants coach Tom Coughlin?

Myth: Now that I'm in charge, I have the power and authority to motivate people. Arguably the biggest myth of them all, the idea of a "motivational transplant" is feckless. What we can do is assess each of our people as individuals, spot impedimenta, and encourage a person to be more aware of their potential.