The One Thing You Need to Know

About Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success

by Marcus Buckingham (12900)

It’s human nature to always want to get to the heart of any matter. This is especially true in an information age, where there is so much data available on each and every subject it becomes easy to get side tracked. So what, exactly, is the key organizing principle of great management, of effective leadership and of a successful career?

Managing

The key to being a great manager is never to forget that everyone who reports to you is a unique individual. Your job is to find practical way to capitalize on this rather than trying to eradicate those differences and get everyone to act in the same way. The more you can do this in practice, the better you’ll become as a manager.

Leading

To excel as a leader rather than as a manager requires the opposite skill set. Leaders transform the group’s fear of the unknown into confidence by providing clarity of purpose. Leaders create confidence by describing a better joint future vividly and precisely. As your skills grow in being able to do this, your effectiveness as a leader will grow and be enhanced.

Sustained Individual Success

To succeed in building your own career, find practical ways to eliminate from your working life those activities that detract from your personal strengths. Become highly skilled at making the small and subtle course corrections so you can sustain your highest and best contribution and the more valued, more fulfilled and more successful you will become.

The One Thing You Need to Know