If a person/team is really motivated, working hard and producing results, how do you demotivate them to a stop? Let me be the devils advocate for a while… 
Well, here are some of the tips:
1. Catch those person/team and focus on their mistake or failure – consistantly give feedbacks – remind them about the failure – even if they succeed later, tell them that is not a success but all their hard work is only for correcting the mistake and it is not a success at all – they need to start working even harder.
2. If frustrated about some of the incident, just catch up everybody and express your anger forcefully (Something like blasting over the phone – the listener cannot even turn back and think something else).
3. The attitude of “If it is exciting to me – it definitely is to the team” – everybody is just like me – if I am motivated/excited to do something – others are also like that – they would stop whatever they are doing and jump into the one I am interested.
4. Be vague – if you are asking somebody to do something – just tell them – go figure out and do that.
5. Setup unrealistic goals -
manipulate (A: Is it something we can do in two days? B: yes. A: So If you said to me you can do it in two days….)
or influence (this should really be easy – shouldn’t take more than a week, how long do u think this will take to complete?)
the planning. By setting unrealistic goals the activity is doomed to a failure and people really get demotivated when they consecutively fail.
6. Shake their confidence – If somebody is coming up with an idea – not even idea – even if they are just expressing their opinion criticize it – redicule it if possible – argue that your opinion is always right ! Thereafter nobody would dare to open their mouth !
7. Move the targets constantly – while somebody is working towards something – move the target – change the activity – change the priority – but keep reminding them they started the work long long ago and still it is half-done.
8. Fake the admiration – People always yearn for some admiration – juniors and team members really get demotivated when they learn that you are lying or faking the admiration – something like elaborating all the mistakes with satirical/scornful comments and finally tell them they are good chaps – so keep up doing the work better.
9. Show distrust – there may be die-hard fellows who take all demotivations and still work – so to demotivate those people show distrust – by not giving them responsibilities and constantly monitoring them – querying them what they are doing.
10. Sometimes demotivation lets true leaders shine – so to stop those guys motivate/reward people doing meaningless activities.
anything else to add?
