Good day, team,
I’ve been rereading some of Marcus Buckingham’s book “The One Thing You Need to Know,” which focuses on the key things all managers and leaders need to know to be successful.
Buckingham defines the main responsibility of a manager as follows:
“The chief responsibility of a manager is to turn one person’s talent into performance. To speed up the reaction between the talent of the person and the goals of the organization.” He goes on to say that it’s really a catalyst job. Managers create a win-win situation when they see that supporting the strengths of all team members energizes them, because they’re allowed to do what they love and that gives them extra energy. That energy, multiplied by the energy of the other team members, who are also jazzed if they’re working from their strengths, creates an organization with an unbeatable sustainable edge. And the energy makes working together incredibly exciting!
He goes on to say that the main responsibility of a leader is as follows:
“The chief responsibility of a leader is to rally people to a better future, and the two words that are most important here are ‘better future.’” Buckingham notes that all great leaders are keenly optimistic. Not that they’re always in a good mood, or always positive, but that they are optimistic about the possibility of a better future and absolutely dedicated to moving people in that direction. He uses people like Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln as examples. These leaders were dedicated to a vision of the future that was far better than what existed in their day. And yet both of them suffered from deep depression at certain times in their lives. Regardless of what was happening personally, they never lost sight of the better future they saw for the world. And they never gave up in their efforts to try to move people toward that better future.
Your challenge this week is to leverage your team members’ strengths and all the possibilities that they create for your overall team. If you’re a leader, try to articulate your vision for a better future so that people understand what you see and where your dedication lies. Try increasing the level of engagement within your team by getting to the heart of the matter – what’s truly important to them and to their team. Each of us has an internal combustion engine that gets re-energized by doing what we love and working on what we think is important. Try freeing up that energy within the team so people are encouraged to make extraordinary efforts to achieve their goals.
Have a great week!
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
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