Top 108 Quotes & Sayings by Marcus Buckingham - Page 2

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

If you want to be clear, act.

You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure.

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.

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

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.

I need to reach out to people who work for small to mid-sized companies, and help them identify and apply their strengths at work.

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

"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!"

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

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.

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.

If you want execution, hail only success. If you want creativity, hail risk, and remain neutral about success.

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

Great leaders rally people to a better future.

Spend the most time with your best people. ... 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. ... Persistence directed primarily toward your non-talents is self-destructive. ... You will reprimand yourself, berate yourself, and put yourself through all manner of contortions in an attempt to achieve the impossible.

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.

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

Sustained success means making the greatest possible impact over the longest period of time

The fact remains that we have an obligation to discover what we really, really, really want to do (which is probably what we do best) and then do it even better... much better.

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

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

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

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.

People quit managers, not jobs.

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.

True individuality can be lonely.

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.

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

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.

My point is, people really don't change very much.

Getting after this terrible, avoidable waste of human potentiality is what gets me out of bed every morning.

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

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

Too many of the organizations I have observed resemble a farm in Kansas. They have lots of fences and silos as well as a storm cellar.

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

You should know that what wakes me up at night, what gets me running fast in the morning, and, frankly, what prompts me to lose any semblance of my habitual reserve is the conviction that work doesn't have to be this grim. We can do better.

CEOs the world over are fond of pointing to their workforce and saying "Our people are our greatest asset." And yet today, only two out of ten people think their assets are being well used at work.

We're all filled with naturally recurring patterns that make us unique - they're called talents. And our charge is to bloody well use them.

There's something unique and different that makes a leader, and it's not about creativity or courage or integrity.... A leader's job is to rally people toward a better future.

Teach your children how to identify their own strengths and challenge them to contribute these strengths to others.

Convey your passion and link your strengths to measurable results. Employers and interviewers love concrete data.

The first step is to recognize what you need to know and why you need to know it.