Marcus Buckingham Quotes - Page 3

All the great organizations have great managers at all levels who recognize where their culture is getting stronger and where it is getting weaker. There are always reasons why.

No idea will work if people don't trust your intentions toward them.

You will learn and grow the least in your areas of weakness.

There has to be a way to redirect employee's driving ambition and to channel it more productively. There is. Create heroes in every role. Make every role, performed at excellence, a respected profession.

If you want to be clear, act.

We dream of having a clean house - but who dreams of actually doing the cleaning? We don't have to dream about doing the work, because doing the work is always within our grasp; the dream, in this sense, is to attain the goal without the work.

Women have lives that become increasingly empty. They're doing more and feeling less.

I do still get extremely nervous before speeches. My biggest fear is that I'll be standing there in front of hundreds of people and be incapable of talking. I'm afraid that I'll make a complete fool of myself and be unable to go on.

When it comes to exploring your creative side, it's very easy to think of all the reasons you can't do it-you don't have the time, you don't have the money, etc.-but if you are truly passionate about expressing yourself, you can find a way. 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. Take the next step and the next until what you've dreamed about begins to become reality.

The time you spend with your best (employees) is, quite simply, your most productive time.

There are "four keys" to becoming an excellent manager: finding the right fit for employees, focusing on strengths of employees, defining the right results, and hiring for talent - not just knowledge and skills.

You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure.

There is no shortage of mechanisms by which to measure almost anything.

As with all catalysts, the manager's function is to speed up the reaction between two substances, thus creating the desired end product. Specifically, the manager creates performance in each employee by speeding up the reaction between the employee's talent and the company's goals, and between the employee's talent and the customer's needs.

We all want the chance to express the very best of ourselves and to be challenged to keep reaching for more. Our time at work affords us this chance - not the only chance, to be sure, but, given that we're there forty or fifty hours a week, it's one of the best.

"Freedom, individualism, authenticity and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: Sustained success comes only when you take what's unique about you and figure out how to make it useful!"

What do we know to be important but are unable to measure?

To get the best coaching outcomes, always have your 1-on-1's on your employee's turf not yours. In your office the truth hides.

Every time you make a rule you take away a choice, and choice, with all of its illuminating repercussions, is the fuel for learning.

It's a special person - and personality - who can lead a start-up to soaring success and sustain that success for the long term. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg are star examples.

In most cases, no matter what it is, if you measure it and reward it, people will try to excel at it

Remember the Golden Rule? "Treat people as you would like to be treated." The best managers break the Golden Rule every day. They would say don't treat people as you would like to be treated. This presupposes that everyone breathes the same psychological oxygen as you. For example, if you are competitive, everyone must be similarly competitive. If you like to be praised in public, everyone else must, too. Everyone must share your hatred of micromanagement.

Obviously, you have to know what you need now and what you will soon need, then hire or promote from within to meet those needs.

I think a good business book has one coherent idea that is richly played out.

You shouldn't take pride in your natural talents any more than you should take pride in your sex, your race or color of your hair