Marcus Buckingham Quotes

Leaders are fascinated by future. You are a leader if and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress and deeply dissatisfied with status quo. Because in your head, you can see a better future. The friction between 'what is' and 'what could be' burns you, stirs you up, propels you. This is leadership.

You grow most in your areas of greatest strength. You will improve the most, be the most creative, be the most inquisitive, and bounce back the fastest in those areas where you have already shown some natural advantage over everyone else your strengths. This doesn't mean you should ignore your weaknesses. It just means you'll grow most where you're already strong.

Focusing on strengths is the surest way to greater job satisfaction, team performance and organizational excellence.

Strengths are not activities you're good at, they're activities that strengthen you. A strength is an activity that before you're doing it you look forward to doing it; while you're doing it, time goes by quickly and you can concentrate; after you've done it, it seems to fulfill a need of yours.

You will excel only by maximizing your strengths, never by fixing your weaknesses.

The difference between a pebble and a mountain lies in whom you ask to move it.

The Four Keys of Great Managers: When selecting someone, they select for talent ... not simply experience, intelligence or determination. When setting expectations, they define the right outcomes ... not the right steps. When motivating someone, they focus on strengths ... not on weaknesses. and When developing someone, they help him find the right fit ... not simply the next rung on the ladder.

Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time.

People leave managers, not companies

As a general rule, people tend to do best what they enjoy doing most.

A note of caution: We can never achieve goals that envy sets for us. Looking at your friends and wishing you had what they had is a waste of precious energy. Because we are all unique, what makes another happy may do the opposite for you. That's why advice is nice but often disappointing when heeded.

Many of us feel stress and get overwhelmed not because we're taking on too much, but because we're taking on too little of what really strengthens us.

Companies don't have one culture. They have as many as they have supervisors or managers. You want to build a strong culture? Hold every manager accountable for the culture that he or she builds.

When you feel as though you can't do something, the simple antidote is action: Begin doing it. Start the process, even if it's just a simple step, and don't stop at the beginning.

Innovation and best practices can be sown throughout an organization - but only when they fall on fertile ground.

Don't waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in.

The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world-class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.

Great leaders rally people to a better future.

Most of the time, our limitations are self-imposed.

Clarity is the answer to anxiety. Effective leaders are clear.

A strength is what you do that makes you feel strengthened.

The secret to living a strong life is right in front of you, calling to you every day. It can be found in your emotional reaction to specific moments in your life.

The opposite of a leader isn't a follower. The opposite of a leader is a pessimist.

Your strongest life is built through a continuous practice of designing moment by moment.

If we have to know without a doubt that the choices we are making are the perfect ones, we risk never making any choices at all.