AOL is considered by some as a dying company, one that's struggling to even maintain the minority market share it has compared to, well just about everyone else out there.

So when the troops are all put together and the CEO of AOL is planning on rallying them into the very long road ahead, it doesn't really make much sense to fire someone right in the middle of the conference now does it? 

Listen to the leaked audio here.

PR stunt or not it seems as a very, very poor act of judgement. One that probably won't give you the ability to return from the image that it has just given Armstrong.

I've found that one of the key problems that sales leaders or even management at any level have is that they rarely know how to motivate the team. Some motivate by going on past experiences and considering what worked and what didn't, this of course makes sense but a lot of the times repetition rarely promotes motivation. Others like to try new wild and wonderful things to motivate; fear or compassion are generally used.

Whilst I would never, ever recommend publicly firing a director in front of your team I would recommend promoting some sort of "fear". Not on a scale of extortion/black mail or job loss but on a scale of losing out on something. For example the team will be going to a group retreat if they hit the target, however the individuals who are off target both personal and business then they simply don't get the same reward. 

It may see very school like but the reality is we as humans tend to fear on missing out, it's not a fear that causes nightmares but instead its a fear that motivates action and productivity to attempt to achieve targets and ultimately become involved again.

However motivating teams should be considered on an individual basis, simply because targets that require team efforts rarely become reality, it's just the facts of business life. Through in a personal and team target and you'll be acting on a different level of motivation.