Marcus Buckingham is a senior consultant with a Gallup organization, one of the world’s largest management consulting firms. Gallup helps companies improve business performance by leveraging their employee and customer assets and Marcus Buckingham presides over Gallup’s two decade effort to determine and define excellence in the workplace.
Marcus Buckingham, redefining excellence in the workplace.
Marcus Buckingham: First of all let us just agree on this what the great managers do? What is their role? Well, they all describe it differently but if almost to say “What was the thing the great managers said they did”, they did this. They turn talent into performance, they might have been a leader over here or an individual superstar over here but in terms of the manager aspect and the responsibilities they all did this. No big surprise their. Let us add some more detail to that. These are the four basic activities on what manager does.
All of you, many of you are at least are probably in managerial roles so you know this. How do you select people? Set expectations, how do you motivate them and how do you develop them. If you look at that the first thing that might strike you is all well done Gallup, you just discovered human resources.
Yeah, initially, it does not look very good, does it? Does it not look very dramatic but peel the onion a little bit, on each one of those four activities and you can see that all of them are a little bit more complicated than they appear.
If you want to know how to select people, you need to be able to answer this question. How much of someone can you change? How much is someone can you change? What is the difference between skills, knowledge, talents, attitudes, habits, traits and drive? Which of those can you change in someone which has to be hiding in? If you cannot answer those questions, you cannot select people. Setting expectations that is more than just goal setting is it not?
If you are going to be able to do that, well you need to know in which part of the job is going to be consistent and conformity and when will I let people use their misjudgment? If you do not how to answer that question, you are going to lurch half hazardly between too many rules and too much chaos.
Motivating, as a manager you only got one thing to invest, your time. So, where should you spend it? Should you spend most of your time working with your strugglers or your superstars? No matter who you are spending your time with, should you spend more time fixing their weakness or building their strengths. Can you ever get someone too much praise, how much praise is too much praise? You cannot answer those questions. You do not know how to motivate somebody.
Developing, yeah sooner or later everyone gets to ask this question as a manager. When employee comes up and says, where do I go from here? How do you help me grow? What is the right answer to that question? You say “Hey go to the HR, it is not my job”, you say “take this training class and I will get you promoted”. What is the right answer to a front desk clerk or housekeeper saying how can you help me grow?
Growth on the workplace is Marcus Buckingham specialty, first break all the rules. His book of insights into what the world’s greatest managers do differently, it is based on the Gallup study of more than 80,000 managers in 400 countries. One of the best selling business books of all time. It focuses on how to find honest the talent have and keep the best employees.
Mark Buckingham: You are going to ask me what one thing did you discover the great managers all share. What is the one insight that great managers all seem to share whether they worked in Kobe in Japan or whether they worked in Embryo or Mobile, Alabama. What one thing did they share? It would be this, people do not change that much. People do not much, so therefore as a manager do not try and put in what was left down. Try and draw out what was left in, that is hard enough. That is the mantra that all great managers seem to share. Look, people do not change that much. Do not try and put in what was left out trying to draw out what was left in, that is hard enough.
That is a revolutionary insight, if you are not careful, you find yourself turning people that they should ignore people’s weaknesses so that all training is a waste of time. Neither or which is you know is true but if you take that one insight and you apply to those four activities, these four keys if you like. This is what you see, they would select the talent because talent is what was left in, and they would set expectations by defining the right outcomes. They would motivate people by helping each person to focus on their strength where ever they may be and when somebody says where I will go from here. The challenge is to help him find the right fit. This would be the four basic keys of what it takes to be a great manager. Every manager is different but all the great ones we state seem to know how to turn those four—.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services