Skip to main content

A Freethinking Leader's Guide To The Real World

I'm a big fan of Marcus Buckingham's work, teachings and books, so I was eager to read his book, co-authored by Ashley Goodall.

Titled, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader's Guide to the Real World, the book debunks what we've come to believe as basic truths in the workplace. What at first may seem provocative and counter-intuitive, you'll learn why the nine lies "cause dysfunction and frustration, ultimately resulting in workplaces that are a pale shadow of what they could be," explain the authors.

Keep an open-mind as Buckingham and Goodall take you through these nine lies (each a chapter in the book) with engaging stories and incisive analysis as they reveal the essential truths behind these lies:
  1. People care which company they work for
  2. The best plan wins
  3. The best companies cascade goals
  4. The best people are well-rounded
  5. People need feedback
  6. People can reliably rate other people
  7. People have potential
  8. Work-life balance matters most
  9. Leadership is a thing
Buckingham and Goodall answer the following questions about their book, which piqued my curiosity to read the book and to discover more about the lies, distortions and faulty assumptions.

Question: Lies is a strong, loaded word. Why did you choose it rather than misconceptions or myths to describe the disconnect between the way we know we work best and the ways we’re told to work?

Buckingham/Goodall: First, the wrong-headed ideas that we have about work are so strongly ingrained—try telling a leader that critical feedback isn’t helping his or her people grow, and watch his or her reaction!—that we wanted a strong word to push back against them.

Second, as someone once said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” In that sense, what we’re writing about are very much lies—they’re the fake news of work, and we’re suffering, today, because of them. We wrote the book to point the way to what actually works, at work.

Question: The revelations in the book are grounded in a wealth of data. Could you give us a sense of the research behind your book?

Buckingham/Goodall: We both know that if anything we suggest is to have value, it has to be grounded in the real world, and we’re both students of the real world. There’s a lot of pseudo-research in the world of work, sadly—a lot of theorizing about what we should do—that is strangely untethered from proof and falsifiability. Very few organizations can measure knowledge-worker performance, for example, and so pronouncements about what leads to it are invariably wrong-headed.

The research in the book is the latest installment in a body of work stretching back decades that both of us have been part of, first at Gallup and then at ADP (Marcus) and at Deloitte and Cisco (Ashley). This research is the most precious knowledge we have about what animates great teams and their leaders, and is the foundation of the book. 

 Marcus Buckingham

Question: What’s fundamentally wrong with our current emphasis on workplace culture?

Buckingham/Goodall: It’s just not particularly helpful to the people who actually create our experience at work—our teams and their leaders. The idea of culture is abstract and high-level, whereas real work in the real world is neither of those things. And the idea of culture presumes the experience of work at a particular company is uniform—that everyone has a similar experience—whereas the data tells us that the opposite is true. Whether your work lifts you up or pulls you down; whether you’re supported by your peers; whether you’re learning new ways to do what you love; whether you’re productive; whether you’re innovative: all these depend not on company culture but on the team you’re on.

In emphasizing broad ideas about culture instead of trying to understand how to make more great teams, we’re missing what’s most valuable to our companies and our people.

Question: How can we figure out where we want to work if a company’s culture isn’t a good barometer?

Buckingham/Goodall: The best question to ask of a company is this: “What do you do to build great teams?” If the answer is generic or fuzzy, move on. If a company can tell you what it knows about its best teams, what it does to support each team, and how it plans to invest more, then that’s a very good sign.
  
Question: What’s the harm in pushing people to improve their weaknesses?

Buckingham/Goodall: Simply this—that shoring up your weaknesses, if you’re even able to, results at best in adequacy. Excellence doesn’t result from removing the most shortcomings—it’s the result, instead, of figuring out what works for you and turning that up to 11. Focusing on weaknesses is fine if we want to be in the business of adequacy; to get into the excellence business we need to uncover, for each person, their moments of weird brilliance, and amplify those.

Question: How exactly does feedback, even when intended as constructive, hinder learning and performance?

Buckingham/Goodall: First, it puts the brain into flight-or-fight mode, which actually impairs learning rather than impelling it. Second, it imagines that learning is a question of telling you what you can’t do, rather than helping you understand in more detail what you can. And third, it presumes that excellence is the same for everyone, so we can give you feedback on how you fall short of it, whereas the lesson from the real world is that excellence is profoundly and wonderfully different for each of us.

Ashley Goodall

Question: Why do you take issue with placing a priority on “work-life” balance?

Buckingham/Goodall: To be clear, in a world where busy is the new black, and where to maintain our sanity we need some way to stem the never-ending tide of emails and action items and urgent requests, talking about how to preserve a place for our own interests and obligations outside of work is surely a good thing. But we’ve been talking about it for a long time, and things don’t seem to have improved very much, if at all. 

We argue that this is because we’ve got the categories wrong. If we treat work as generally bad, and life as generally good, and imagine that somehow we can balance these two out, we’re embarking on an impossible mission. If, however, we focus on doing more of what we love, and less of what we loathe, at home as well as at work, then over time we can express more of what we value in the world in more ways. That’s a more achievable and ultimately more rewarding goal.

Question: How can every leader, at any level in any type of organization, begin to engage and motivate his or her team? 

Buckingham/Goodall: Get curious about the people on your team. Ask what lights them up and what they run towards; ask what they’re doing when time seems to fly by; help them uncover what’s going on in their heads when they do something brilliantly well. Pay attention to who they are, and how they express that through their work, each and every day. And then help them make their essence and their loves a bigger and bigger part of their work.

Whether you are at a large company or small, wherever you are on the career ladder, the truths Buckingham and Goodall uncover are what you need to perform at your best and find fulfillment each day at work.

Buckingham is the author of best-selling books, First, Break All the Rules (coauthored with Curt Coffman; Now, Discover Your Strengths (coauthored with Donald O. Clifton; and The One Thing You Need to KnowHe addresses more than 250,000 audiences around the globe each year.

Goodall is Senior Vice President of Leadership and Team Intelligence at Cisco. He is the coauthor, with Buckingham, of "Reinventing Performance Management," the cover story in the April 2015 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How To Find The Job You Love

In 2024, I named Be The Unicorn: Data-driven Habits That Separate The Best Leaders From The Rest , by William Vanderbloemen , as the best new leadership book of that year.   The book is timely, incredibly practical, and immediately usable for any leader wherever they are on their leadership journey.   Through extensive research of more than 30,000 top leaders and proprietary data, Vanderbloemen identified in the book the twelve habits that the best of the best leaders have in common. These superstar leaders are the unicorns – highly desirable but that are difficult to find or obtain.   And now, Vanderbloemen followed up that gem of a book with another terrific book called, Work How You Are Wired: 12 Data-Driven Steps To Finding A Job You Love . It’s a great companion book to Be The Unicorn .   Those 12 steps align with these 12 personality traits/interpersonal habits: Fast Authentic Agile Solver Anticipator Prepared Self-aware Curious Connected Likeable Producti...

How To Master The Cycles Of Leadership: The Four Seasons

Whether you’re an aspiring leader, a newly appointed CEO, or a board member wanting to better steward your company’s performance, A CEO For All Seasons: Mastering The Cycles Of Leadership is the hands-on playbook you need – packed with practical, proven tips to help you navigate the four distinct phases of leadership.  “The journey of a CEO has a beginning, middle, and end, and the challenges leaders face early on are often far different than those midway through and near retirement, explain the authors of the book – Carolyn Dewar , Scott Keller , Vikram Malhotra, and Kurt Strovink .   “For us, the most apt analogy to describe these cycles is the four seasons of the year,” they add.  Spring : Stepping up - Preparing for the role. Summer : Transitioning into the role. Starting strong. Leading with impact. Fall : Navigating the middle years. Staying ahead. Sustaining momentum. Enhancing your learning. Future-proofing the organization. Winter : Transitioning out of the rol...

How To Align Sales And Marketing To Drive Company Success

Nearly 90 percent of startups will fail without ever reaching a point of positive return on investment. Founders and entrepreneurs are facing unprecedented challenges in pursuit of becoming one of the coveted 10 percent.   Who better to turn to for advice than the duo behind the most successful software IPO in history?   That is where Denise Persson and Chris Degnan come in, authors of the new book, Make It Snow .   During the nearly nine years they worked together at Snowflake, they built  one of the longest-running and most effective sales-marketing partnerships from the ground up, unifying  two historically divided groups in corporate America. Together, they took Snowflake from struggling startup to a tech powerhouse on par with Google and Amazon. Over the years, Snowflake surged to more than 9,000 employes and $3 billion in annual sales.   “Sales and marketing are often neglected in startups, with focus squarely placed on the engineerin...

How To Lead Bigger

Anne Chow ’s book,  Lead Bigger , is about “where it all comes together.” By that, she means: Being driven by a compelling purpose and values, which are not platitudes, but rather lived. The goals are better decisions, improved performance, and ultimately a greater impact. Impact means you have the power to make real and enduring change for the better. Widening your perspective to have a greater performance and impact. Advancing work that matters. Developing a vital, innovative workforce that is both trusted and agile. Championing flexibility by embracing trust and empowerment for individuals, teams, and leaders alike.   Drawing from over three decades of experience, former CEO of AT&T Business Chow shares that leading bigger also means:   Embracing the whole of your team beyond the workplace : Seeing the value and potential of each individual—in the context of not only their work, but also their life.   Engaging in self-reflection : Demonstrating self-awareness ...

How To Achieve Transformational Success For Leaders

The book,   Reinventing the Leader ,  is an inspiring account of the magic that can happen when a leader realizes they must undergo their own transformation in order to transform their organization.  This candid and practical book by  Guilherme  ( Gui) Loureiro , Regional CEO overseeing Walmex, Walmart Canada, and Walmart Chile (now Chairman of the Board for Walmex and Regional CEO for Canada, Chile, Central America, and Mexico), and his executive leadership coach  Carlos Marin  shows how even the most successful leaders must be open to personal change in order to transform their company. The book details how the pair pioneered a data-driven, customer-centric business transformation at Walmex—Walmart’s biggest division outside of the United States. “This book is a blueprint for transformational success for leaders in any business who find themselves facing the need to retool their own company’s systems and operations and energize and inspire an entire ...

How To Be An Inspirational Leader

Today, I bring back one of my most-read blog posts from 2017. It read as follows: At the end of each year, I select my choice for the  best new leadership book  for that year and then highlight that book on my blog. Well, we're only five months into 2017 and there is a new leadership book so good that I can't wait until year-end to share it with you. And it's likely to be among the select few options for best new leadership book of 2017. It's called,  The Inspiration Code , by  Kristi Hedges . Perhaps now more than any other time, the need for inspirational leadership is critical in the workplace. Filled with profound insights and compelling data and based on a commissioned survey on who and what inspires people, Hedges uncovers a set of consistent, learnable behaviors that dramatically enhance leadership success. And shows you  how to inspire those you lead. And, how to energize people every day . Kristi Hedges But, first, what exactly is inspiration? Hedges ex...

How To Embrace And Learn From Failing

When you read the book,  Right Kind of Wrong: The Science Of Failing Well , you’ll gain a greater appreciation for the benefits that comes from failure, and how to embrace failure as part of your journey to achieving greater success.   Author  Amy Edmondson ’s book and revolutionary guide will undoubtedly transform your relationship with failure.   She defines  failure  as an outcome that deviates from desired results. Failure is a lack of success. Failure is different, explains Edmondson, from  errors  and  violations . “Errors (synonymous with mistakes) are unintended deviations from prespecified standards, such as procedures, rules, or policies. Violations occur when an individual intentionally deviates from the rules,” adds Edmondson.   After decades of award-winning research, Edmondson provides the framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely. Outlining the three archetypes of failure— basic ,  complex , and  i...

Six Mindsets That Distinguish The Best Leaders

The key takeaway from the book,   CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish The Best Leaders From The Rest , is the best CEOs think and act differently than the rest across each of   six key CEO responsibilities , including:  Setting the direction  (vision, strategy, resource allocation) Aligning the organization  (culture, organization design, talent) Mobilizing through leaders  (composition, teamwork, operating rhythm) Engaging the board  (relationships, capabilities, meetings) Connecting with stakeholders  (social purpose, interaction, moments of truth) Managing personal effectiveness  (time and energy, leadership model, perspective)  Starting with a pool of more than 2,400 corporate leaders, McKinsey & Company senior partners and authors  Carolyn Dewar ,  Scott Keller , and  Vik Malhotra  extensively screened the group to identify the elite core, then sat down with 67 of them for multiple hours to talk...

Debbie Laskey On Branding And Leadership

Image Credit: Freepik . For years, branding, marketing and leadership expert, Debbie, Laskey , has offered her insights, observations and tips to my blog readers. Today, Debbie joins us again to answer questions about branding and leadership. Debbie Laskey has nearly three decades of marketing experience and an MBA Degree. She developed her marketing expertise while working in the high-tech industry, the Consumer Marketing Department at Disneyland Paris in France, the nonprofit arena, and financial services and insurance sectors. Her expertise includes brand marketing, leadership development, and customer experience marketing. She is a regular contributor to several national blogs that provide insights about marketing and leadership, and she's been recognized as one of the "Top 50 Branding Experts" to follow on Twitter/X at @DebbieLaskeyMBA. Visit her website at www.BrandingAndMore.net and her blog at www.DebbieLaskeysBlog.com.   QUESTION: NBC has launched a new unscri...

How To Build An Extreme Team

Extreme Teams  is a fascinating book by  Robert Bruce Shaw , where he takes you inside top companies and examines not just great teams (your more “conventional” teams), but extreme teams. According to Shaw,  extreme teams : View work as a calling —even an obsession. Value members’ cultural fit and ability  to collectively produce results. Pursue a limited set of vital priorities —less is more. Strive to create a culture that is at once both hard and soft  – simultaneously tough in driving for measurable results on a few highly visible targets and supportive of individuals to create an environment of collaboration, trust, and loyalty. Value conflict among team members —recognizing the benefit of being uncomfortable. Companies with extreme teams will go to great lengths to ensure that their extreme teams are well equipped to address not only the challenges of today, but also the challenges of the future.  The central questions to ask , therefore, are: What is...