During his 17 years with the Gallup Organization, Marcus Buckingham helped lead their research into the word’s best managers, leaders and workplaces. Buckingham has taken the broad experience in management practices and employee retention and put it into three best-selling books: First, Break All the Rules, Now, Discover Your Strengths, and The One Thing You Need to Know. According to Marcus Buckingham, companies that focus on cultivating employees’ strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success.
Marcus Buckingham holds a master’s degree in social and political science from Cambridge University and is a member of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Leadership and Management. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
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There is so much range on the same outcomes in all companies.
There are two key differences between good teams and great teams:
1 – All great teams have great managers running them.
There are many CEO’s who say that their company’s culture is their strength – but in actuality, companies don’t have one culture – they have as many cultures as they have managers. In the day-to-day reality of a company – whether you know what’s expected of you, if you feel like you are cared for, if you feel the mission of the team you are a part of is clear – all of those thing vary according to the manager.
People join organizations for all sorts of reasons – you believe in what they stand for, because a friend works there, because it’s the only job they could get – but whatever the reason, how long you stay and how productive you are depends on the person you directly report to.
People join organizations and they either physically or psychologically ‘quit’ their boss.
If you have a performance problem, quality problem, engagement problem – it’s all a management problem. The manager makes the difference.
2 – Great managers have a great approach of getting the best out of their people.
The job of a manager is to turn one person’s talent into performance.
They set expectations and establish relationships and reach people in such a way so you speed up the reaction between their talent and the goals of their team.
Great mangers are catalysts, they speed up the reaction between the talent, the person, and the goal of the team.
Sustainable outcomes come as a result of the believe that their employees’ success is their starting point.
Most of the best mangers any of us know our potential and they are tough on us. They set our standards high. They show us excellence and how to embody it. They figure out how to turn talent into performance.
They do it because they can’t help it.
Managing can be tough, though, because in managing, you are caught between the company and the people.
Seeing people grow is the fuel that keeps great managers going.
Managing can be a thankless task.
If you can’t do, teach, and if you can’t teach, consult!
Great mangers look at people as an end to themselves. They find a way to find people’s talent and turn it into performance.
Great managers find out what’s unique about each person and they capitalize on it. Average managers generalize.
Great managers spend 80% of their time on refining, sharpening and focusing people’s strengths and 20% of their time managing around people’s weaknesses.
Most organizations teach their managers to maintain a person’s strengths and work on their weaknesses. Performance appraisals are 2 minutes on what you did well and 58 minutes focused on your ‘areas of opportunity.’
Most conversations between managers and employees are on flaws and failures and how to fix them.
The world believes that way to succeed in life is to identify your flaws and remediate the life out of them!
Gallup did a poll on what people believed would be beneficial to their success: building on their strengths or focusing on their weaknesses.
The US is the most strengths-focused nation in the world – 41% believed focusing on your strengths. Japan and China were the least strengths-focused – 24%.
We live in a remedial world that is fascinated by weaknesses and takes strengths for granted. We study divorce to learn about marriage, we study sickness to learn about health. We think good is the opposite of bad – if you want to get good, you study bad and invert it.
We live in a knowledge and service economy – the value of all of us is ‘between our ears – we are innovative, creative, have good judgment, etc. When companies say ‘our people are our greatest asset’ they are really saying that their people’s strengths are their greatest asset.
The average American workday is spent 14% focusing on individual’s strengths.
With some many unique and wonderful gifts, one of the points of our lives is the opportunity to express our gifts – and, unfortunately, we’re not at work.
Marcus talked about how in order to effectively reach more people beyond writing books and speaking he tried to find new ways of getting his message out there and how he found NOOMA. He said he was blown away by the message, look, power and intimacy of the NOOMA films – and worked with NOOMA to produce a film series called Trombone Player Wanted. Check out the trailer.
There are many reasons we don’t play to our strengths – our boss, our job description, we don’t know our strengths, we don’t like to talk about our weaknesses – but one reason why we aren’t is because of what we believe.
Marcus brought out three lies we believe.
Myth #1: As you grow your personality changes.
66% of people believe that. As we grow our values, circumstances, and achievement change – but so many of us believe our personalities change. Deep down we are insecure about our personality and we believe if we work at it we can change our natural patterns of behavior. We love stories of transformation – like Scrooge.
Truth: As you grow, you become more and more of who you already are.
If you took a personality test every 10 years, the correlation of each test would be similar. We don’t need tests though, we have children… they show us that reality!
As we grow, our goals, dreams and achievements will change, but the core, most dominant aspects of our personality will remain the same. We all have unique contributions – our challenge isn’t to change them, it’s to apply them, volunteer them and contribute from them.
Myth #2: We will grow the most in our areas of weakness.
That’s why we call our weaknesses our ‘areas of development.’
He talked about how when a child comes home with a report card (A, A, C, F)… we naturally give the most attention to the “F”.
Truth: Our weaknesses are our area of least opportunity. The areas we will grow the most are in the areas of our greatest strength.
Myth #3: What the team needs for you to do is ‘chip’ in and do whatever it takes.
Truth: What the team needs you to take it upon yourself to identify your strengths and volunteer them most of the time.
It doesn’t mean you won’t step out of your strength zone occasionally and chip in – you will, that’s not the essence of teamwork, it’s the exception of it.
What the team needs isn’t a vague willingness to do whatever it takes.
The best teams are not made up of well-rounded people playing every role equally, they are made up of sharp people – people who have taken a stand for their strengths and volunteered them. They are surrounded by people who have strengths in areas where they are weak so the team is well-rounded because every individual in the team isn’t.
Know where your shoulders are broadest – your strengths are the answer to that.
To assume everyone shares the same pattern – and to build a team around your strengths and weaknesses is self-centered. To assume everyone is wired differently and what strengthens you might weaken someone else is wise.
We’ve got to identify the myths and blow them up.
There is a risk to playing to your strengths…
Marcus closed with this quote; “And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud became greater than the risk it took to blossom.”
There is risk to not playing to our strengths is far greater than playing to our strengths.
We all have unique strengths. We will be at our most creative, contribute the most, develop the most when we play to our strengths and take a stand for our strengths and when we do that – everyone will win.
It matters what we believe. Let tomorrow be a different day than today. Let tomorrow be stronger. Let tomorrow begin with us looking at our strengths and thinking of how we can volunteer them. Then and only then will the world see our best.
