Marcus Buckingham quotes

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. (Marcus Buckingham)
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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
The great organization must not only accommodate the fact that each employee is different, it must 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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
Each person's greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
A note of caution: We can never achieve goals that envy sets for us. Looking at your friends and wishing you had what they had is a waste of precious energy. Because we are all unique, what makes another happy may do the opposite for you. That's why advice is nice but often disappointing when heeded. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
People leave managers, not companies. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
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. (Marcus Buckingham)
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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
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. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
If great managers are catalysts, speeding up the reaction between the individual's talents and the company's goals, then great leaders are alchemists. Somehow they are able to transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
Innovation and best practices can be sown throughout an organization - but only when they fall on fertile ground. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
Your strongest life is built through a continuous practice of designing moment by moment. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
People don't change that much. Don't waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
Always work hard. Intensity clarifies. It creates not only momentum, but also the pressure you need to feel either friction, or fulfillment. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
Born of the impossibly varied options we have to amuse ourselves, cutting-edge companies are finding innovative ways to tailor our entertainment choices to who we are, relieving us of the burden of finding the diamond in the rough of 500 TV channels or thousands of movies and music albums released every year. (Marcus Buckingham)
Most of my work has been in corporations, studying how you build an organization that helps people to identify and work to their strengths. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
It's odd that I'm a big name in America and not known in Britain. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
In a war, no matter the outcome of a certain skirmish or battle, the winner is the party whose attitudes, behaviors and preoccupations come to dominate the postwar landscape. By this measure, the outcome of the gender wars, if wars they were, is clear: women won. View quote
Marcus Buckingham
The corporate world is appallingly bad at capitalizing on the strengths of its people. View quote
Marcus Buckingham