Marcus Buckingham Quotes - Page 2

Discover what you don't like doing and stop doing it.

The best way to find out whether you're on the right path? Stop looking at the path.

True individuality can be lonely.

Clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.

Managers are, and should be, totally responsible for recognizing individual strengths (both natural talents and skills), getting those strengths in proper alignment (i.e. in the right "seats"), and then leveraging them.

Authenticity is your most precious commodity as a leader.

Passion isn't something that lives way up in the sky, in abstract dreams and hopes. It lives at ground level, in the specific details of what you're actually doing every day.

The best strategy for building a competitive organization is to help individuals become more of who they are.

In the minds of great managers, consistent poor performance is not primarily a matter of weakness, stupidity, disobedience, or disrespect. It is a matter of miscasting.

We live with them every day, and they come so easily to us that they cease to be precious.

Always work hard. Intensity clarifies. It creates not only momentum, but also the pressure you need to feel either friction, or fulfillment.

You can find energizing moments in each aspect of your life, but to do so you must learn how to catch them, hold on to them, to feel the pull of their weight and allow yourself to follow where they lead.

If the manager really is the problem, try to get reassigned elsewhere in the organization or start looking for one in which you can play to your strengths.

The true genius of a great manager is his or her ability to individualize. A great manager is one who understands how to trip each person's trigger.

Remember, what you focus on expands; results follow focus.

CEOs hate variance. It's the enemy. Variance in customer service is bad. Variance in quality is bad. CEOs love processes that are standardized, routinized, predictable. Stamping out variance makes a complex job a bit less complex.

Great managers know they don't have 10 salespeople working for them. They know they have 10 individuals working for them . A great manager is brilliant at spotting the unique differences that separate each person and then capitalizing on them.

It remains true that great managers recognize individualities and focus on developing strengths rather than weaknesses. Great leaders, in sharp contrast, recognize what is (or could be) shared in common - a vision, a dream, a mission, whatever - and inspire others to join them in the given enterprise.

Forcing your employees to follow required steps only prevents customer dissatisfaction. If your goal is truly to satisfy, to create advocates, then the step-by-step approach alone cannot get you there. Instead, you must select employees who have the talent to listen and to teach, and then you must focus them toward simple emotional outcomes like partnership and advice....Identify a person's strenths. Define outcomes that play to those strengths. Find a way to count, rate or rank those outcomes. And then let the person run.

People should be hired "as is" and their managers then help them to develop their individual strengths while completing tasks for which they have the greatest aptitude and in which they have the greatest interest.

People quit managers, not jobs.

Define excellence vividly, quantitatively. Paint a picture for your most talented employees of what excellence looks like. Keep everyone pushing and pushing toward the right-hand edge of the bell curve.

Too many companies waste time trying to eliminate their employees' weaknesses when, in fact, they should concentrate on developing their strengths.

Emphasize your strengths on your resume, in your cover letters and in your interviews. It may sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people simply list everything they've ever done. Convey your passion and link your strengths to measurable results. Employers and interviewers love concrete data.

Everyone can probably do at least one thing better than ten thousand other people.