Marcus Buckingham quotes: here’s what author, business consultant, and motivational speaker Marcus Buckingham says about making millions of dollars with your strengths.
“You will learn and grow the least in your areas of weakness.”
“You will excel only by maximizing your strengths; never by fixing your weaknesses.”
“Always work hard. Intensity clarifies. It creates not only momentum, but also the pressure you need to feel either friction or fulfillment.”
“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 doing every day.”
“Every time you make a rule you take away a choice, and choice, with all of its illuminating repercussions, is the fuel for learning.”
“Many of us feel stress and get overwhelmed not because we’re taking on too much, but because we’re taking on too little of what really strengthens us.”
“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.”
“Sustained success means making the greatest possible impact over the longest period of time.”
“Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength.”
“The great organization must not only accommodate the fact that each employee is different, it must also capitalize on these differences. It must watch for clues to each employee’s natural talents and then position and develop each employee so that his or her talents are transformed into bona fide strengths.”
“The opposite of a leader isn’t a follower; the opposite of a leader is a pessimist.”
“I think a good business book has one coherent idea that is richly played out.”
“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.”
“It’s a special person – and personality – who can lead a startup to soaring success and sustain that success for the long term. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are star examples.”
“Remember, what you focus on expands; results follow focus.”
“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.”
“Innovation and best practices can be sown throughout an organization – but only when they fall on fertile ground.”
“If we have to know without a doubt that the choices we are making are the perfect ones, we risk never making any choices at all.”
“You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure.”
“Your strongest life is built through a continuous practice of designing moment by moment.”
“You will improve the most, be the most creative, be the most inquisitive, and bounce back the fastest in those areas where you have already shown some natural advantage over everyone else.”
“What defines a leader is his preoccupation with the future. In his head he carries a vivid image of what the future could be, and this image drives him on.”
“Performance that generates superior results is always the point.”
“Teach your children how to identify their own strengths and challenge them to contribute these strengths to others.”
“Our definition of a weakness is anything that gets in the way of excellent performance.”
“If you want to change your life so that others may benefit from your strengths, then change your values. Don’t waste time trying to change your talents.”
“Authenticity is your most precious commodity as a leader.”
“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.”
“Everyone can probably do at least one thing better than 10,000 other people.”
“Whenever you interview people who are truly successful at their chosen profession – from teaching to telemarketing, acting to accounting – you discover that the secret to their success lies in their ability to discover their strengths and to organize their life so that these strengths can be applied.”
“Clarity is the antidote to anxiety, and therefore clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.”
“If great managers are catalysts, speeding up the reaction between the individual’s talents and the company’s goals, then great leaders are alchemists. They are able to transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future.”
“True individuality can be lonely.”
“In most cases, no matter what it is, if you measure it and reward it, people will try to excel at it.”
“People should be hired ‘as is’ and their managers should 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.”
“Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in.”
“The necessity for leaders to possess optimism and ego serves to answer the age-old question: are leaders born or are they made? They are born. A leader is born with an optimistic disposition or she is not. If she is not, then no amount of ‘optimism training’ is going to make her view the world in an overwhelmingly positive, opportunistic light.”
“Discover what you don’t like doing and stop doing it.”
“The difference between a pebble and a mountain lies in whom you ask to move it.”
“Strengths are not activities you’re good at, they’re activities that strengthen you. A strength is an activity that before you’re doing it you look forward to doing it; while you’re doing it, time goes by quickly and you can concentrate; after you’ve done it, it seems to fulfill a need of yours.”
“No idea will work if people don’t trust your intentions toward them.”
“As a general rule, people tend to do best what they enjoy doing most.”
“The best strategy for building a competitive organization is to help individuals become more of who they are.”
You might also enjoy these quotes by Stephen Covey.
