Marcus Buckingham (1966- )
British-American expert on motivation and maximizing people’s potential (pictured right).
Key books
First, Break All the Rules
(1999), written with Curt Coffman (pictured right below)
Two research studies by the Gallup Organization discovered that the best managers:
1. Break the rules to:
- challenge conventional wisdom.
- find a better way of doing something.
2. Recruit the best talent
Hiring people with self-motivation and analytical/numerical/social skills.
3. Motivate people through giving them:
- involvement in decision making and acting upon their opinions.
- care, praise, trust and opportunities for learning and training.
- adequate materials and equipment to do the job well.
- the opportunity to do what they enjoy and do best every day (fully exploiting their
strengths).
- tough love (being kind and sensitive but tough enough to make difficult decisions).
Key quotes on
management
Select a person, set expectations, motivate the
person and develop the person.
Conventional wisdom is comfortingly, seductively easy. The revolutionary wisdom of great managers isn’t
Now, Discover Your Strengths
(2001), written with Donald Clifton (pictured right below)
The best organizations excel by:
- getting their employees to excel by exploiting their different strengths.
- giving them jobs they’re best at.
Successful organizations reject two management fallacies:
- Anyone can be taught to do any job.
- Improvement requires minimizing weaknesses, not (as should be the case) developing strengths.
Key quote on
success
To excel in your chosen field... You will need to become an expert at finding and describing and applying and
practising and refining your strengths.
The One Thing You Need To Know
(2005)
The “One Thing” you need to know about great managers is that they get the best results from the best people
by
- exploiting their unique strengths.
The “One Thing” to know about great leaders is that they inspire people through:
- satisfaction of their needs.
- clear communication of a common purpose.
Key quote on
management
The great manager bets that he will prevail by magnifying, emphasizing and capitalizing on each employee’s
uniqueness.
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