The Diary of a CEOHow To Find Ultimate Fulfilment At Work: Marcus Buckingham | E140
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,862 words- 0:00 – 1:15
Intro
- SBSteven Bartlett
Could you do me a quick favor if you're listening to this? Please hit the follow or subscribe button. It helps more than you know, and we invite subscribers in every month to watch the show in person.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
I lost my dad. I lost my marriage. I sold my company. Then you sort of ask yourself, "What are you doing with your life?" My name's Marcus Buckingham. He's a best-selling author.
- SBSteven Bartlett
A rock star in corporate America.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
I couldn't say my own name until I was 12. The more you try to fix a stammer, the worse it gets. From a very early age, we start telling people that our strength is what you're good at, but yet I'm good at some things I hate. What's that? That's a weakness. I had got myself into a position where I was solely responsible for one huge client, Disney. I look like I sort of feel confident, but I had years of panic attacks. It was super psychologically damaging to be trying to be somebody that you're not. The first relationship you better have is a really good one with yourself. The best people in any job, they find love in the activities themselves. Love is for work and work is for love, and if we do that, it's not just individualistically satisfying, it's what companies want from us.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO: USA Edition. I hope nobody's listening,
- 1:15 – 9:13
Overcoming a stammer to become a public speaker
- SBSteven Bartlett
but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. (instrumental music) Marcus, it's a, it's a pleasure to have you here, in our studio here in LA, another Brit, s- sits... We've had quite a few Brits in, but, um, you're one that's particularly inspired me with your work. When I was doing the research on you and reading through your book and your prior book, um, I, I was overwhelmed with the amount of questions I wanted to ask you because of the, the depth of knowledge, but also how much the topics you talk about resonate with me. The place I wanted to start with you, though, that I found particularly surprising, having met you, having spoken to you, having seen how people have, um, become very enamored y- with you as a public speaker, is you started your life with a stammer.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
A, a really bad stammer.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How does someone get from... And I want to talk about that, but for context, you went from having a stammer which was pretty crippling in terms of social aspects to Mark French, who's the US, US's top lecture, leader of the top lecture agency, calls you one of the best public speakers he's ever seen. How does one go from having a stammer and being, you know, really hindered by it to that position? And tell me about the stammer.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yeah, so when I first started to speak, and this happens for quite a lot more boys than girls actually, as it happens, my synapses, um, didn't fire right, and so you have almost immediate disfluency. So my earliest memories, Steve, are not being able to say my name. One of my very earliest fears was not ever being able to be married 'cause I couldn't say, "Will you marry me?" So you start off and you start trying to communicate at three and four, and then you realize that something's really wrong, but you're so young you don't really understand what's wrong, and then you get older and older and you realize you can't, you can't put words together. Um, so for the first 12 years of my life, not being able to speak was what I thought about every single moment of every day. And everyone's got their own traumas and their own difficulties, and I had lots of blessings in my life, but, um, I couldn't speak and I had a lot to say. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
So I would keep trying and then it wouldn't work, and I didn't know why. And a stammer's a really... I- it's a perfect metaphor for everything that parents try to do with their kids. You... The more you try to fix a stammer, the worse it gets. So I went to the speech pathologist and they did the whole Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers thing, and you're trying to sort of get the m- the muscles to kick in, and it just got worse and worse and worse and worse. And then I was one of five boys that was asked to read aloud in chapel. I had kept volunteering to be in Christmas plays and stuff, and I was never picked because everyone rightly was like, "Uh, he can't talk." So I'd never really spoken in front of anyone at all. When I was talking to you, like if I was seven years old and talking to you like this, I couldn't say anything. Like I wouldn't... I would try and then you would be like, "This is mortifying." So I'd never been asked to read aloud anywhere. Anyway, that day, I can s- I'm... my palms are sweating even just thinking about it 'cause you realize, "My life's over. Every single child in the school is gonna see me now stand up." I can't fake the words 'cause they've got their Bible study books 'cause it was in chapel. So they can see what I'm supposed to read. So I can't... I used to substitute words that I could say for words that I couldn't. It's an old stammerer's trick. But they're like, "I... You, you can see what I'm gonna read." And girls and boys at that age, as you know, can be pretty cruel. Um, so I'm like, "I'm done. I'm not... just bait. You know? Stick a fork in me." But anyway, I walk up and I turn around and I look at all the faces and I... It was, it was like a, a stimulus, and then my response, my brain felt different. That's all I can say about it. It just felt different, felt warmer. It felt fluid. And I just read the whole piece with not a single stammer.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Just the whole thing. And what occurred to me was, I love the eyes on me. That sounds really weird, but the more people I'm talking to, I'm better. Brain comes faster, uh, words come out better, stories are... I don't know why. I didn't work at it, I didn't struggle with it, I didn't... It was just that worked on me in the same way that some people have a stammer when they sing, they don't have a stammer. So I took that away. I was blown away, didn't understand it, but, um, then I just went, "You know what? That should be an unlock for me." We often go to our deep traumas to try to understand how to fix ourselves, and if you have social anxiety, well, what caused it? Where did it start? And we sort of-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... we, we, we pathologize ourselves with the best of intentions. But I went the other way and I was like, "I know so much about this darn stammer. I've been to more speech pathology sessions and read more books and I know so much about it, I just can't fix it. Instead, I'm gonna..."...I'm gonna decide that when I talk to one person, I'll just pretend I'm talking to 400. I'll just literally pretend I'm talking to 400. And the stammer went away in a week. I was faking public speaking when I was just speaking, and I was doing it as a coping (laughs) mechanism so that I didn't stammer, and it worked.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's amazing.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
It's weird. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Makes no sense. (laughs)
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Right. It's like, we're mysterious.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And that's what I write about in the book is that I don't think we've really grabbed hold of th- this huge variability and variety that lives in human beings. We have talked about it in terms of race or gender or age or nationality or religion, but we haven't really talked about it in terms of, why are you different from your brother?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
By the time you get to be about 18, 19, you have 100 trillion synaptic connections in your brain that lead you to love some things and loathe others. Things that shouldn't go together, go together, things that you lean into that you shouldn't lean into, but you do. Like for me, I shouldn't have loved public speaking, but for some daft reason I did. Why? No idea. But we- we have this unbelievably intricate network of synaptic connections that makes us completely different from the person we grew up in the same house with, and what no one's ever taught us is, A, um, how do you understand that uniqueness? Like, what are the signs life is giving you?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And B, how do you use it? Like, can you rewire your brain to become someone else? What happens if you put your 10,000 hours in? Can you rewire your brain and become a different human being? Can you rewire that network in your brain? Well, if you have a growth mindset, supposedly you, you should. And yet, actually we know that's not what happens at all. You grow more synaptic connections in the part of your brain you have the most preexisting synaptic connections, everyone d- because you've got the alpha integrin proteins and the blood vessels and the infrastructure. So actually, growth, for all of us, is becoming actually a more defined version of who you are. You don't rewire your brain to become someone else. The question in life isn't really growth or no growth. It's, where will you grow the most?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
So I don't think we've ever really grap- grappled with the 11-year-old who's basically asking herself, "Who am I? I- is there a me in there?" Um, we could have 10 years of school, yes, where we learn geometry, but you could have 10 years going, "Here's how to use the raw material of a week of school to start helping you know a little bit more about that weird massive and massively filigreed network in your brain."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And we could help you learn to have a language around that and how to describe it without bragging or how to be interested in other people's... n- network. We could do all of that, and of course, as you know as an entrepreneur, you wanna hire people like that because then they have mastery of themselves.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
So when they join a team, they can start going, "Well, you can lean into me for this, and you know, here's a bit where I struggle. Actually, I need some help. And here's where things come really fast, and here's where I'm like a deer in the headlights." But I know certainly in the company that I built, it's like, you don't hire people like that. You tend to hire people that are completely lovely and smart but really quite inarticulate at describing where they find love in what they do, where they're at their best, and where they
- 9:13 – 11:49
Starting your journey in Physiology
- MBMarcus Buckingham
struggle. We don't... we just haven't grappled with the beautiful, wonderful, extensive variation of us as individuals.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And when you were that age, when you were, say, 11 or 13 or um, 14, what was... if I had asked you what you wanted to do when you were older, what would the answer have been?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
I didn't own- if I go all the way back to 9 or 10, I wouldn't have known what I wanted to be. I did know that I started to pay attention to things that other people didn't pay attention to, and that was interesting. Then at 16, I bumped into this titan of positive psychology whose name was Dr. Don Clifton, who, um, was the chairman of Gallup but also its chief scientist. And so at 16 he said, uh, "You're gonna go study psychology," and I had chosen psychology, and he was like, "Come to Lincoln, Nebraska, and I'll te- I'll teach you about positive psychology and studying what's right with people." And I was like, "All right. I'll do that." Didn't know where it would lead, but knew that research and psychology, real world observed human behavior, I just was always interested in that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
For people that don't know, what is Gallup?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Oh, well, Gallup's the first company I joined after school-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... after university. Gallup was founded by George Gallup, who was the inventor of polling. You like polling or hate it. He figured out something which was (laughs) if you talk to 10,000 very carefully selected people, your predictions of what they're gonna do or vote for or anything is more accurate than taking 100,000 people, 'cause your 100,000 people might be skewed, but if you have what's called a representative sample in your 10,000, then you actually can extrapolate from your 10,000 to 100 million. Um, now there's subtleties around that, but- but that's where it started. After George died, uh, Don Clifton bought the company, and Don's focus was psychometrics. So, how do you measure things about a human that are really, really important but that you can't count? How can you measure engagement? How can you measure strengths? How can you measure resilience, um, talent? How- how do you measure that? Could I figure out a set of questions that would help me discover something about you in terms of your strengths, your talents, your advantages, your attributes that you don't even know yourself? Like, I just loved that idea. And so half of Gallup was polling, and half of Gallup was psychometrics, and so I was there for the first 17 years of my career, and we built this- this tool that 25 million have taken called StrengthFinder.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Um, StrengthFinder is all about exactly what it says. Um, let's try and measure
- 11:49 – 15:38
How do I know what a strength is?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
you on 34 strengths, and then we'll give you your top five. Um, so that was the side that I spent my first 17 y- years of my career with is trying to measure the uniqueness of human beings.
- SBSteven Bartlett
From a top line perspective when you were in that role, 'cause I mean, 17 years trying to remem- trying to find the uniqueness in human beings and inventing this thing called StrengthFinder-What is- what did you learn about what a strength is? Because when I think about a strength, I think it is, um, I guess just something that I'm good at.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yeah. So when you dive into what a strength is, what you find is it's shot through with emotion. It's what do you love to do, what do you lean into, what do you find yourself unable to stop doing. There's a- there's an obsessive, um, and joyous quality to a strength. So when you push and push and push on a strength, people think that a strength is what you're good at, a weakness is what you're bad at.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
But actually if you push on that even just a little, Steve, you bump into people going, "Yeah, but I'm really good at that and I hate it." What's that? What's it where you're really good at it, even in school when you got an A and you're like, "I'm- thank goodness that class is over because I don't wanna take it again." But your parents go, "Well, you got an A. In fact, you got an A in biology, so you might wanna do medicine. You should be a doctor." But deep down you're sort of going, "But I don't- I don't like sick people. I actually don't like sickness at all. And yet no matter as a doctor, you keep curing them, there's another one the next day. They keep coming into my darn office, you know, I'm never done." And- and so we've, from a very early age, we start telling people that a strength is what you're good at. But yet, our own human experience is, "I'm good at some things I hate." What's that? Well, when you push on that, that's a weakness, and so we should change our definition. A weakness is any activity that weakens you, any activity where before you do it you don't want to do it, while you're doing it, time drags on. When you're done with it, you feel drained. That's a weakness. I don't care how good you are at it. If that's how you feel after it, and then somebody were to say to you, "Build your career around that," that's sadistic.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MBMarcus Buckingham
But that's- that's y- y- that's the proper definition of a weakness is if- if it weakens you. Definition of a strength is any activity that strengthens you. Before you do it, you lean into it. You sort of just can't stop yourself from volunteering. While you're doing it, time whips by and you're like, you look up, you thought it was an hour, right? It's- and it's now it's- it's- s- you've been doing it for seven hours and you're like, "Oh my God." And then when you're done with it, you're like, "I- I don't know, I feel completed" or "I feel like me" or "I feel authentic" or "I- I don't feel drained."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
I might not wanna do it right away again, but I'm like (inhales) you're- from the Latin, right, you're invigorated, you're strengthened.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Which of course means if a strength is what strengthens you and a weakness is what weakens you, what's super cool about that is that you're the best judge of both. No one knows better than you what weakens you and what strengthens you. From the nine years old, we could be saying to people, "Hey, what strengthens you about even video games?" "Okay, which video game?" "What? What about it?" Is it a multiplayer game? Is it a first person shooter? We could start to get people to be cultivating their own ki- you know, genius about what- what are your strengths. Somebody else is the judge of your performance. No question. So if you say, "I really, really love, um, remembering s- people's names," no one can come in and say, "No, no, no, you don't." They can say, "Well, you should probably use that to, um, give better customer service and here's how you might wanna do that." But no one can come in and say, "You don't love that." 'Cause if you say, "No, no, no, I d- uh, no I do," then you're the best judge of that. Now, we might wanna help you learn the detail of that. "Well, well, what do you mean by helping people?" Or "What do you mean by learning their names or what bit about it do you..." So we could help you get more-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... detailed around it. But a strength is what strengthens you, and you are the only genius when it comes to your strengths. 17 years with Gallup, that's sort of the biggest takeaway.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And- and StrengthFinder or other tools like that can help you sort of get in the vicinity of what are your strengths.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
But really a strength is an activity that strengthens you. And- and life frankly is waking up every day kind of
- 15:38 – 24:57
How do I ask a good question?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
putting on a show for you going-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... "What about this? What about this? What about this?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
"What about this? What about this?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Um, and yeah, you're on the receiving end going, "Hmm, how about that? What is it about that?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
17 years at- at Gallup, you know, the other thing I- I was thinking about before you arrived was you must know how to ask a good question.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because that's sort of central to Gallup's work is knowing how to ask the right type of question. And there's so many questions that are trying to get to the same answer, but there's various routes you can take and the divergence between, I guess, the- in terms of outcome of a good question and a bad question must be quite significant. Like if I'm trying to find out what motivates you, there's a number of ways that I could ask that. And I think a lot of the ways that I would ask that simple question would actually lead me to the wrong place.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because they're like laced with biases and presumptions and maybe they're not open, maybe they're too binary. So how does one go about ... 'cause asking good questions is so important in life generally, whether you're trying to help a friend, you're trying to hire someone, you're trying to understand anything, it's all about inquiry. Um, how does one ask better questions? Is there ... did you learn anything about that at Gallup?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Well, you're right. That's ex- that's what the product is.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
It's ... And you would test it out. You would do what's called a concurrent validity study where you take 100 really good managers and 100 average ones and you try out 250 questions. 250 questions. And you see which questions elicit patterns of answers that the best people in a role do versus ones that are less successful. And many of the questions that you thought were great questions you have to throw out 'cause they don't work, as in the most successful people don't answer them in any way that's similar to each other and different than these people. So that's really what the business was, trying out lots of different questions to figure out what are the best questions you can ask, in this case for a particular role or job. But in general, if you wanna (laughs) if you wanna ask really good questions, the first thing to know is you should be asking open-ended questions. So you're asking, um, "What did you love most about your previous work?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
D- open, not yes/nos. Like just open-ended. "What- what did you love most about?" That- so the- that's the f- it sounds like an obvious thing, but it's amazing how close-ended our questions are.
- SBSteven Bartlett
As- as opposed to like what's- what would be an example of a closed ... "Did you love managing people?"
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Are- are you an overachiever or an under- underachiever?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Um, you know, or, um, "Do you like overcoming people's resistance to your ideas?" That's yes or-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
So you can ... I- if you're not careful you close the answer down.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Best questions are always like, uh, "Tell me about a time when you, uh, when you built something that you didn't expect to build." Like it's just open.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hard to measure though, right, if it's open? That's why I think people avoid open questions, right? 'Cause then- 'cause then you get such a d- divert- like variety of answers. How do you like put them in categories?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Well, when it comes to psychometrics, you have a listen for and you code it. Plus when you hear the listen for and zero for everything else, like boiling and not boiling. So, when you're actually building an instrument, this may be too inside baseball as it were but, inside cricket, um, but that's how you do it when you're building an instrument. So for example, you take a question like, um, "How do you know if you're doing a good job of listening?" Let's say that you're trying to figure out empathy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And you decide that one of the ways to measure empathy would be a question like, "How do you know if you're doing a good job of listening?" So you take your study group of highly empathetic people, your s- your contrast group of less, and you experiment with a whole bunch of questions. One of them is that one. Well, it turns out, by the way, that one does have a listen for, a really good listen for.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's the listen for?
- 24:57 – 39:15
The biggest predictor of employee satisfaction
- MBMarcus Buckingham
We just, mostly in conversation, we just talk at each other. "Well, I did this." "Well, I did that." "Oh, you didn't fall asleep last night?" "I didn't fall asleep last night either." "You missed your plane." "I've missed my planes before." (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, yeah. (laughs)
- MBMarcus Buckingham
You know?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Instead of, like, waiting to talk.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Exactly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
In your, in your first book, um, you talked a lot about employee satisfaction.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So your first book was called First, Break All The Rules!, and y- you really highlight the importance of employee satisfaction. And I think, you know, a lot of people might think, "Oh, yeah. Keeping employees happy is, you know, it's, uh, you know, uh, we'll do our best." But, um, it really is from your read, from your, um, your work, it's clear that it's central to the success of a company. I guess my first question is then, what is the single biggest predictor or the unexpected predictor of employee satisfaction in the workplace? 'Cause I would think it was like, you know, one might think it would be how much you pay them or how many holiday days they get. What did you find out?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Well, the two biggest things from all of this research, and it sorta goes full circle from First, Break All The Rules!, which was the first book I wrote, which was based upon Gallup research in, you know, way back when. But it comes all the way full circle, Steve, to this book, which is all about love. Um, when you push and push and push on your question, what you bump into is an item, a survey item, that just keeps showing up in people that are more likely to stay with you, more likely to be productive, more likely to have fewer lost work days, less likely to sue, frankly, if they have an accident on the job. Like all sorts of really good predictive real world outcomes-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... are more likely to happen when someone says, firstly, um, "I have a chance to use my strengths every day." Or, "I love what I do and I'm good at it." Um, there's something about person-work fit. Person-work fit. This job has some big bits of it that fit me. Now, who me is is variable, of course, but is this job in any way an alien job to me or is it actually part of me? When you have that, in any job, th- th- we were talking before about the first job I ever studied was housekeepers where we think, "Oh, stup- you know, housekeeper's a stupid job." I mean, I bet they all just wanna get out of it as quickly as they can. But you study the world's best housekeepers and you're like, "Oh, my word, there are some people that love certain aspects of that role." Any role done at excellence has got a lot of love in it, and every role done averagely is loveless. If you have loveless work, you're a worse worker. We now know all sorts of biochemical reasons why that's so, but it just kept showing up in survey after survey after survey. Work-you-fit, however you wanna talk about that, is huge which is why, of course, uh, I'm sure when you built your company you realized this, teams are everything. Teams are everything because they make homes for unique individuals. And you can start going, "Ah, well, you're all weird but, but you do this and you do this and you do this and you do this," and low and behold the team's well-rounded precisely because each person on it isn't too well rounded. And then the team leader, of course, can be really creative about, "Well, which bit of it do you love? And can we get you to do a bit more of that?" And then you feel lean into this person who weirdly loves balancing the books but you hate it. "Well, that's interesting." They love Excel, you love PowerPoint. "Okay, well that's it." That's a team. And, and so that's th- that, that's all about, person-work, uh, fit.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
So that's a huge one. Um, and then of course the second one in terms of, um, in terms of all the discoveries around engagement is, um, it's your manager, stupid.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
It's like, if you think, if you don't trust your manager, if your manager doesn't know you, if your manager doesn't pay attention to you, then your whole company becomes the manager.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And you can actually walk around your neighborhood going, "You know what? It's a pretty good company, but I fricking hate her. And if you fricking hate her, you leave."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
"I left, the company's great." Now if you flip that around so you can go, "The company's terrible. Like, the, the pay is bad and the, and the, you know, the benefits package isn't really what it's cracked up... But my manager, Steve, he's, I mean, I would follow him anywhere." Which by the way sometimes happens when-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... Steve moves companies. So those two things of everything... I'm, I'm not saying that pay is nothing or benefits are nothing, people like those things, but if you wanna see where people give that discretionary effort, if you wanna see where certain teams soar and you go, "Why? Why is that team crushing it and this team's struggling?" Which by the way, you go inside companies, you start measuring anything, uh, lost work days, productivity, sales, profitability, and what you find, and no one talks about this, but you find variation. You go inside of, you go inside of Home Depot, um, or you go inside of Marks & Spencers or you go inside of, um, Goldman Sachs or you go inside of Tesla, you go inside of Disney. "Oh, well, Disney's got this culture. Tesla's got that culture." All of that is rubbish. You go inside a company, let's just take Tesla, and you start measuring, what's it like to work here? What you get is range. What's it like to work at Tesla depends massively on which bloody team you're on. And if you are working on a team down here that's disengaged, where your manager doesn't care about, you're not trusted, that's Tesla. And when you leave, you're leaving that. Now this team over here is a super engaged sh- now, same business card, Tesla, Tesla. But you, I don't know, you read the... I don't know what you read, but you read the business press, it sure looks as though companies have one culture. Rubbish. They have as many cultures as they do teams. They have one stock price, but that's a totally different ballgame. So in terms of what drives engagement, on this team does someone really think about how c- I can fit the work that I'm doing a lot of and then do I really trust that my team leader is out to make me bigger?... better. He's interested in that. When those two things, I'm not saying there aren't other things, recognition's important, mission, you're gonna talk to Simon while you're here, the why is important. But the why doesn't compensate for the what.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
If you, if what you're doing on that team doesn't fit you, it's like nurses, you know, why we have such burned out nurses in the NHS and over here too. Their why couldn't be stronger, of course, their why is so vivid and yet they're burning out, they have higher levels of PTSD than veterans that return from war zones. It's like, we're crushing our nurses. Why? Well, one, many reasons, but one reason is the span of control. One nurse supervisor to 60 nurses, which is the average over here. I don't know exactly what the average is in the NHS, but it's really big. There's no teams in hospitals. Hospitals aren't built around teams, they're built around vertical areas of expertise, so if you're a nurse, 60 of you, one nurse supervisor, that poor nurse supervisor can't do those two things I just mentioned. He or she can't get to know you in terms of where your strengths and passions lie, and then they can't put you on a team to help you be collaborative with others so that together, you can reinforce and support one another in those areas where you don't have strength or love or whatever. It, humans have been working in teams for 50,000 years, and if you go to hospitals, there are no teams 'cause the structure is set up to make it impossible, and then we wonder, we go out and we clap, but it's all a bit, it's like, hey, rather than dragging people out of the river who are drowning, why don't we go upstream and see why they're, why we're pushing them in in the first place? With nurses, we've built a system where th- they don't get those two things, those two needs met. No one's interested in who they are and what they bring, and no one has enough time to pay attention to how they're feeling, what they're into, what they're not into, who could, they can work with, like, all of that stuff that humans need, th- that particular profession-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... doesn't get, and that's the reason why we, in all of our studies, I run the ADP Research Institute now which is a big global institute, it's the least resilient profession of all. Even pre-pandemic it was. And funnily enough, the second most, uh, burned out is teachers.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
So the two most burned out, least resilient professions have the clearest why, the clearest sense of purpose, but the reality of the work, the day-to-day reality of the work is super disengaging. There's no teams in schools. It's like, wherever you see no teams, you get no trust in team leader and no v- link between you and work, you and your role, you and your role.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
It's like teams are this magic technology that we m- discovered 50,000 years ago when we tried to bring down big game.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's so interesting you say that 'cause, um, I've always pondered ... So there's so many things that I thought about there, the first thing was actually how right you are, having seen in my own o- own organization over the years where I would do my one-on-ones with team members, and if Jason Fisher was managing the team, ev- even though they were in the same room, they're all in the design department, but the 15 people Jason Fisher was managing would report a tremendously high levels of job satisfaction. A team sat next to him doing pretty much the same work would come in and it, I was, I felt like I was fighting to s- keep them in the company because they were managed sat next to the other team-
- 39:15 – 45:57
How to manage under-performers
- SBSteven Bartlett
have one culture.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And like, that's kind of been a bit unnerving for me. It's made me rethink a couple of the decisions I made. But, um, the other thing like I, I, I, I know you wrote about it in that book before we get onto this one is you talked about how great managers handle underperformers.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And now every team has people that underperform, that are, for w- whatever reason. From what you've understood, how do great managers handle people that aren't performing to a certain standard?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
So the first thing that we've got to remember about all managers, and again, we don't hear this much discussed either, is, um, like why do we all hate the performance review? Why do we all hate the annual performance review? Many reasons, 'cause when I go through it and somebody says, "You're a four," I go, "Well, I'm not a number." Um, so there's that part of it, but it also is too infrequent, right? They're once a year. So you go in going, "I've got to tell this person everything I'm worrying about, I'm anxious about, or thinking about 'cause I'm not gonna talk to them again for a year." It's too infrequent. The best managers know that the world moves quickly. There's 52 little sprints, that's a year, 52 little sprints. So the best managers are checking in with each of their people, really light touch, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes, but every week, one on one, every week, one on one. Really simple questions like, "What'd you love last week and loathe? What are your priorities this week? How can I help?" But like that every week. Little, because remember, the goals you set at the beginning of the year are irrelevant by the third week of the year.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
I mean, we're in the middle right now of like all sorts of global conflict, we didn't know that e- three weeks ago. So we also know from data, by the way, people don't go back in and check their goals. So p- less than 4% of people once they set a goal at the beginning of the year, maybe there's a software program that records it or whatever, they don't go back in and check it. But we all know it, it changes so dramatically even in the next couple of weeks. So the first thing is the best managers are frequently going, "How was last week? How is next week? How is la-" It's really this sort of, that rhythm, it's like 52 little sprints like that. And of course that means if the, you've got an underperformer, you are hitting it really early. You don't wait until December and go, "You have had a bad year."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MBMarcus Buckingham
"You're a two," right? You're hitting it every week and because you're hitting it every week, you've got an opportunity much earlier to start saying two things. The first is, uh, and this is so, it sounds so obvious, but one of the questions that separates a good manager from a bad manager, by the way, is you put this question to them. You've got someone who comes into work consistently late, what would you do? So you take a study group, take a contrast group, 100 great managers, 100 average ones, and you just throw that question out. You've got someone who comes into work consistently late, what would you do? And you can, again, think of a million different answers to that question. These folks here, they all stay-
- SBSteven Bartlett
The g-
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... the good ones-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... the stu- we call it the study group. When you're doing a concurrent validity study, you take 100 great ones measurably and then 100 average. I won't get into how you measure it, but it's like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... it, it, that's, that's how you do it. And, uh, anyway, these ones here, their first re- their top of mind response, unprompted, is, "I would ask why before I do anything else. I would say, 'Why are you coming in late? I mean, is it, is it a bus issue? Did you miss the... You got something with your kid? Is it a drop-off time? Should I change your start time to 9:30 so you can get your kid?" Why? If you start by assuming this is a real human-You start by assuming this person's not trying to get one over on you, which is kind of an interesting mindset. It's like the best managers start, I think Douglas McGregor called it Theory X, you start by assuming that people want to do good work. And so if someone's underperforming, you start by assuming there's something going on that I don't know. And so that's the beginning you, and then because you're doing it every week, it's like the person's not going, "Wait a minute, that was three months ago. I fixed that now." No, no, this is last Tuesday and Wednesday, remember? 15 minutes late. "Oh, well..." But now the person may come up with an excuse, but the first thing you do is you ask a question and you shut up and you let the person define their own reality. Of course, if you're doing that every week and you're putting together little strategies to help the person, in this case show up, and they don't, then the, the instinctive insight the best managers seem to have, and the best coaches, is that your job isn't trying to put in what God left out. Your job is to try to draw out what God left in. Your job as a manager is not to make someone, your job as a manager is not to perfect someone. Your job is to go, "Who the heck are you? And then can I find work or indeed a work context in which you can express you?" And if I've consistently seen underperformance from you, it's not because you're a bad human, it's because for some reason I've put you in the wrong role. In which case my caring doesn't stop, my loving doesn't stop. I just practice, sometimes, tough love. And I'll come in and I'll say to you quickly, "I love you, uh, and you're fired and I still love you because this job I, I, I put you in it maybe, and it's wrong for you. I can see it, you can see it, we can all see it. So let's move you out quickly because this job is, we're not gonna rewire your brain so that you get to be somebody else. You're you and this job doesn't fit you." And it, it's my job... Again, another great question, this is a close-ended one, but ask great managers, "Well do you give people what they want or do you give 'em what's right for them and you then you just shut up?" And they go with the second one. You get people what's right for them, even if occasionally it isn't what they want. So I mean, there's more to it than that of course, but, but in terms of how best managers deal with poor performers: frequency, ask questions and shut up, and then stop trying to rewire people's brains. Most of high performance is a function of talent role fit. And when you get low performance, it's because the person's not a bad person, it's 'cause they misfit.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And I bet you've seen that with your people. You've had a thousand. So you moved, I bet you moved some people sometimes, not always, but you go from a C-minus, ah, so frustrating. And then you tweak the job even just a little and you're like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... "Who are you?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And they're extraordinary.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
That's why I always hate the stuff where people go, "Well, they're an A player." It's like stop categorizing people.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
A players depend upon which flipping role you put 'em in. I could take your A player, I'll make 'em a D. So don't... There's no A players. There's just people who really fit their role and get real joy from it and, um, have mastery in it, et cetera, et cetera, and then there's people that don't. I, I bet you've been a B-minus in something.
- SBSteven Bartlett
100%.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Right? Me too.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Put me in finance, I'm a E.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yeah, right.
- 45:57 – 54:19
Dealing with people that don't do things the way you do them
- MBMarcus Buckingham
at all. That's a good night's sleep. That's what that is. When you've got a person in a team that you go, "Ooh."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
"That, that's a thing of beauty."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm. One of the things you said as well was the hardest thing about being a manager is realizing that your people will not do things the way that you would.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think everyone can resonate with that. Part of the, part of the frustration I think of being a founder as well is y- because you're very often very clear on the way that things, you think things should be done, whether that's right or wrong, you just have your own subjective opinion on how it should be done or how hard people should be working, whatever, it's sometimes difficult to appreciate that other people don't have the same clarity of vision or perspective as you do. I see that throughout my teams and just with managers generally, they tend to be quite, um, what's the word? Uh, r- resentful that their, their teams might not be doing it the way that they would do it.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yes. We, um, some of us get into management because we want more control.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And then you're like, "Uh, surprise."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(clears throat)
- MBMarcus Buckingham
"You now have to manage by remote control."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Like you're sitting here, people are doing stuff and you're not there. You're here. It's like, "Ah." But that's why f- you know, we talk a lot these days about feedback, and of course the opposite of feedback on some level is, is ignoring people and people don't wanna be ignored. There's no question. If you wanted to destroy your team, just ignore them. But feedback's actually pernicious. The best managers don't give feedback. By which I mean feedback meaning, uh, "You're doing this wrong. Let me tell you how to do it right." I don't mean feedback as in you got that fact wrong. Um, but in terms of me telling you, "This is what your performance is and this is how you should do it better," that's feedback. Well, you read a lot, right? You'll see a lot of tools, articles, books even on how you should learn how to give and receive feedback. Uh, that's, that's how you grow. Somebody tells you, 'cause your, your, your blind spots are the people, they know the truth about you. So they're gonna tell you who you are 'cause you can't see it. That's called feedback. But of course what that means is that the person, the manager is assuming, A, that I do own the truth about you, which they don't. We have observer bias like crazy. And I don't mean race, gender, age bias. I just mean idiosyncrasy. In fact, in psychometrics it's called the idiosyncratic rater effect, which means I have a unique pattern of rating that I'm unaware of and that when I'm rating you and I'm rating this person over here and this person, my ratings should move 'cause I'm looking at different people. They don't. My pattern of ratings moves with me, which means that basically all ratings reflect the rater, not the ratee.... even though we end up paying or firing or promoting the ratee, as though the ratings reflect the ratee, but they don't reflect (laughs) the rater. We've known this about this in, in psy- psychometrics for years, and yet in businesses today, still most people are rated by their manager. But the other thing is, in terms of learning, when you give, when I give you feedback and I go, "Do it my way," uh, I mean even with the best of intentions, most feedback basically ends up meaning, "You would be better if only you were more like me."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
There's a realization at some point, isn't there, as an entrepreneur where you go, "I think what I really need to do is actually just create the conditions in which a person can express the best of themselves, rather than me assuming that learning for that person is just information transfer and dumping it into their blank slate." Like, that's not... At some point as a entrepreneur, you learn what basically brain scientists have learned for a really long time, learning is insight. All learning is insight. It comes from within the person. And so all you can do as a team leader or a manager is create conditions which, within which a person can interact with the world-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... a client, a prospect, a thing they're making, uh, and then go, "Ooh, ah, ooh, ah, oh, okay, ah."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And then the person has the learning. You're, y- you're not telling them how to be. When the moment you tell them how to be is the moment you're assuming that they are wired like you are. It's like trying to tell a person how to sell. It's like, no, you sell when the person believes you and the prospect believes you, and everyone has a different source of belief. What's yours? Some people sell through competence. Some people s- sell through relationships. Some people sell through impatience. Some people sell through being silent. Some peop- it's like everybody's source of belief and trust is totally different. So yes, tell people your reaction as a manager, like if somebody comes in late, you can say, "Look, when you come in late, it makes me think you don't care."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
The person can't then say, "Well, you shouldn't feel that," 'cause you go, "No, I do feel that. I feel like you don't care." When... Or, "In that meeting, when you interrupted your colleague, I felt like you weren't listening, 'cause I felt, that felt weird to me. You shut her down. That's what it felt like to me." That's a reaction. When you then tell the person what to do differently, tell the person how to change their behavior, that's feedback, and you've basically just crossed the feedback bridge, and now you're telling them how to be, and how to be is how to be more like you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And so, uh, as we talk about it in the book a lot, it's like give people your reaction. You own that. Don't give people feedback. And if you're on the receiving end of feedback, shut it out, 'cause no one knows you like you know you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's so true, 'cause yeah, I mean, everyone says, oh, the importance of giving feedback and communicating, and the narrative I've always heard in terms of, like, management advice is always, you know, you've gotta give people constant feedback to help them grow.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yeah, people don't want feedback. People want attention. That's different. If you give people no attention, they'll shut down. I mean, loneliness is a killer. We kn- so that's true. But people don't want feedback. And imagine when somebody says to you, "Hey, sit down. I'm gonna have a conversation. I wanna give you some feedback."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MBMarcus Buckingham
It's like an anvil on your head. Your brain leaves the room, and all you're thinking about is, "How do I survive this darn thing with Marcus 'cause it's gonna turn out to be Marcus is gonna tell me something that he's got the truth about me that I don't have, and then he's gonna tell me a bunch of things, and I'm gonna have to do this as he tells me a bunch of tactics and stuff that don't feel like me."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
And, and you're just trying to think, "How do I survive this conversation?" "Here, let me give you some feedback." It's like, ugh. So yeah, I'm on a bit of a campaign going, that is so arrogant. Feedback is arrogance. What people want is attention, which could be your reaction. So, if you said to me, "Marcus, you know, halfway through that whole session that we did, I thought you got a bit off track," I can't then go, "No, you didn't think that."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- 54:19 – 1:00:39
Your book Love + Work
- MBMarcus Buckingham
... two reasons. One, the juxtaposition's always interesting, like war and peace, like love and work. You just don't hear them s- said that way. Um, so then part of it was like, yeah, it just gets your attention. And the other part of it, from a research standpoint, if you interview people that are really, really good at what they do... And that's really been my entire career. I mean, I was talking to you before about study group contrast. For 25 years, that's all I've been doing, is you take 100 great nurses, 100 great teachers, 100 great housekeepers, 100 great lawyers, 100... And you're just asking open-ended questions, you're shutting up, you're tape recording the whole thing, transcribing it and going, "Hmm, what's there?" And when you do that, the best people in any job, they don't all love the same things, but there's love in what they do. There's, um, vanishing into the activity. The activity isn't something they're doing, it's something they're being. Whether it's cleaning a room and vacuuming themselves out so they can see the lines and they get a kick out of the lines, or whether it's another housekeeper going, "I lie on the bed and turn on the ceiling fan." W- And I remember be- back then going, "Why?" 'Cause that's the first thing a guest does after a long day out in the theme parks, and I like looking at the room through the lens of the guest. You're like, "Whoa, but I love looking at the room. That's why I sit on the toilet or I lie on the bath. Even though there's rules in the job description saying do not lie, you know, in the bath, or I'll sit on the toilet." (laughs) You're like, "Whoa." So when you look at really, really good people in any job, they find love in the activities themselves. Interestingly though, they don't love all they do. The whole cliche about find what you love and you'll never have to do a day's work in your life again. And I'm a, I'm a bit of a data nerd, so you look around and you go, "Is that true?" And you study the most successful people. E- My first, um, master's thesis actually at school was the social and psychological issues of entrepreneurship. Hmm. Even the best entrepreneurs don't love all they do. And so you go, "Okay, find what you love to do and you never have to work a day in your life again." Is there any data to support that at all? No, none. So let's stop saying that, and let's rehabilitate with science the word love. Measurably, when you study highly successful people, they find love in what they do. They don't love all that they do, but they find love in what they do. They find activities or moments or situations every day that they love. How many? 100%? 50%? 20%'s a really good threshold. Mayo Clinic research shows doctors and nurses who are not burned out have at least 20% of their activities be things that they love. Take a bunch of emergency room nurses. They love different things, but 20%. You get below 20%, 19, 18, 17, it's like you start getting really dangerously psychologically damaged. Even if it's, you know, 21% though, 27%, 50%, it doesn't seem as though you get necessarily a massive uplift in resilience. It's not like you need to love all you do. 20%'s a threshold. Like, get above that, and every day feels different. Every day feels different. So... A- And then of course if we dive into the brain science of it, you find that when people are actually in that state of... The positive psychologist who we lost last year, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he called it flow. Hmm. Okay? When you get into that flow state, even if it's just 20% of your time, if you look at someone's brain when they're in the moment, in the zone, in their element, whatever your phrase is, they have the same chemical cocktail in their brain as you do when you're in love with someone. So vasopressin, oxytocin, norepinephrine, with the addition of this weird cocktail called anandamide, which is, brings feelings of wonder and awe. But your brain on love looks, at work, looks a lot like your brain on love with another person. And when you're doing something that you love, you are more o- measurably, you perform cognitive tasks better, your memory's better, you're more accurate in measuring or identifying the emotions of others. You're just better. So love and work was like, hey, if you want... This is kind of when I was sitting there trying to fill the pages and thinking, "Why are you writing this?" (laughs) On one level... I mean, on one level I was thinking of my kids. I want my kids to be happy in life and have joy in what they do, and yet most people don't. And I wanted to have something that I could go, "Read this." (laughs) Yeah. (laughs) You know? Um, but on another level I wanted to write to CEOs, like you and me, and go, "Listen, if you want collaboration, if you want innovation, if you want creativity, if you want really authentic customer focus, you can't get it without love. So if you feel abashed talking about love, then shut up talking about these other things, you won't get them." Loveless excellence is oxymoronic. And that's not just a phrase. It's like you look at what people look like on love at work, and they're amazing. So if we took it seriously at work, and we thought about what do you love, how does that turn into work, and how does the work that you do inform the detail of what you love? And then it becomes this wonderful infinite loop of work is to help you... Sorry, love is to help you figure out contribution, which then informs what you love. Like, like, your life is like this. You've already built a company. You've sold it. Now you're doing all this other stuff because your love leads you to turn it into contribution, which required you spending tens of thousands of pounds to do something, and then now you're doing it, and we're sitting here. And there's, there'll be stimuli that... Information's going into your brain right now, and it will add detail to that which you love. This whole thing over here in LA, it will have had a little more detail, and your life will be this. Now listen, I don't know your mum and your dad, but if your life was like this, they would go, "Yes. I don't care how much fricking money he makes. If he knows that which he loves and turns it into contribution, then on his death bed he'll feel like he lived a fulsome version of his life." And I've got an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old, and I just wish in every fiber of my being that they get to feel that loop. That's love and work. Love is for work and work is for love, and if we do
- 1:00:39 – 1:13:22
Should we be dragged by what we’re good at in a job we hate?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
that, it's not just individualistically satisfying. It's what companies want from us. We just haven't taken it, we just haven't taken it seriously. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You, um, you talked about, we- I think, I don't know if this was before we started recording, but this, the- the curse of... You know, I- I remember a conversation I had with a, with a young lady who was a law- lawyer, and, um, she was clearly dissatisfied in her job. And it transpired that the reason she was a lawyer is because that's what she had been good at in terms of A levels then, um, university, and also her mum and dad had said, like, "That's a good job." And she had, she was almost on the verge of a mid-life crisis when she spoke to me, because she had, she was so good at this thing that it had kind of dragged her off into the future, and she, she was now that. That was her identity.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So many people listening to this now will resonate with that in various ways. They would've become a, a banker because their parents were bankers and they were really good at maths. What have you found out about those people, their satisfaction, and really what they should be doing, I guess? Is there something else they should be doing instead? Is, should we be dragged by our, our competence in something?
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Well, no. As we talked about before, I mean, competence can be a, a devilish curse, um, because you can get the As and hate the work. You can get high performance but actually hate the activities. Um, for anyone, if they want a, a really great career, the why is important. Like, to think about do you really believe in the purpose of what you're doing? That's important, no question. The who is important, no question. If you hate the people you're working with, that's always a bit of a problem. But the what trumps the who and the why in the end. Like, what are you actually filling your days with? So if your friend is a lawyer, it's like which... Like give me a day. Talk to me about a day. What's a day look like? What are you doing at 10 o'clock on a Monday morning? What are you doing at 3:00 PM on a Thursday afternoon? That's the what. What are the actual activities themselves? So if anyone's-
- SBSteven Bartlett
That trumps the other things.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
What always trumps the who and the why, which is why we've got nurses and teachers who are so disengaged. They believe in the why.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
They really love the people on their shift.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
But the day-to-day reality of what they're doing doesn't fit them. No one's paying attention to it. There's no manager helping them, there's no teams, all the stuff we talked about before that w- that goes... Is anyone paying attention to what I have to do every day and whether or not it fits me? Which bits do, which bits don't? How do I lean into one another? What is collaborate? All that stuff is missing. So the why is there, the who is there. The what is wrong.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So if I say lawyer, that could be a com- that could be an entirely different experience for, you know, everybody that's a lawyer. So one lawyer-
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... could be doing a completely different thing, different working hours, work from home, work in a great team with, you know, weekly check-ins.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And another lawyer, although it's the same job title, could be in an awful corporate office, two-hour commute every day, on their own in a tiny cubicle.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Yes. So to anyone watching or listening, the, the first thing to do is assess. Like, where are you at? Which really means, how much love do you have in a week? Do you have a lo- do you have a loveless job? How would you do that? Well, the simplest way to do it is just take a blank pad around with you for a week. Draw a line down the middle of it. Put "loved it" at the top of one column and "loathed it" at the top of the other. And this is easy to do. Most people never, never done this. And all you're gonna do is you're gonna imagine that your day is made up of many, many different threads. There's a fabric of a workday. It, which is a bit like a tapestry on a wall. When you're far away it looks like just a picture, but when you get close there's many, many, many thousands of threads. Well, the same's true of any day. You've got a thousand different activities, moments, situations, contexts. Like just stuff just hits you, like, and it's little baby five minutes, two minutes, seven minutes, five minutes, two minutes, seven minutes. But these are threads. Some of them are white, some of them are black, some of them are gray, some are green. They lift you up a little, down a little. But some of them are red. So in the book here I talk about red threads, activities, that when you're doing them all that stuff we talked about before, the flow, the energy, the instinctive volunteering, the I'm in my essence, the f- the, the feeling of innate mastery, the... Those moments. They could be, like, two minutes here, seven minutes here, 10 minutes. But they are red threads, and your life is sort of putting on a show for you every day going, "What about this thread? What about that thread? What about this thread? What about that thread?" And the most successful people in any job, of course, they identify the red threads really well, and then they weave them into contribution. Now we can talk more about how they do that. But it starts by going, take a blank pad around with you. Think about the clues to your red threads. What do you instinctively volunteer for? While you're doing something, does time fly by? When you're done with it, do you feel sort of an sense of, of mastery, a sense of being up, not down? And then take it round with you for a week. And anytime you find anything that fits those criteria, scribble it down. And anytime you find the inverse, before you're doing something you try to procrastinate or, or, or hand it off to the new guy 'cause it'll be developmental, you know.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Or, or you're doing it and the time drags on like a snail and it's like you thought you'd be doing it for an hour, but you look up it's five minutes. And we've all got stuff like that where it's like, "Ugh." And time and love have a weird relationship. You know, it's like when you're with someone that you love, that whole day goes by in 15 minutes. Um, yet before you were with them, like, you're, t- time just stretches out and then you're with them and whoa. Um, same is true with an activity that you love. If you, if you don't love it, you're, you keep trying to do this and then when you're doing it, it's like how's the, how is it this long? Um, scribble it down in the loathed it. And so get to the end of one week, just one regular week, and see what's in the loved it column and what's in the loathed it column. If there's nothing in the loved it column, well then you have to stop and do it again next week and pay attention. And if you get no red threads two weeks in a row, and this is really easy to do. No one's ever told people how to do it, but it's really easy to do. You get two weeks in a row of no red threads, then you've got a loveless job. And, and the bad trait for anybody is somebody going, "Well, my job doesn't have to love me back. I'm making the money. Uh, I'll just stick it out. I'll pay my dues or I'll earn the money for three, four, five years. Then I'll..." You know that?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
Or five years, then I'll...
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MBMarcus Buckingham
As though you emerge the same person after five years of loveless work. You don't. You are psychologically damaged. You're a different person. After five years of loveless work, you're damaged. And the people, weirdly, who feel it the most are the people you're supposedly supporting at home. You think the people around the dinner table don't know that you come back every day on your loved it/lothed it list, although they wouldn't say it this way, there's nothing on the loved it column?They know. They can feel it. People often worry about, "Don't bring your personal stuff to work." Uh, it's way more powerful the other way. People bring their work, their emptiness, their alienation at work back home. Mm-hmm. So, if you're two weeks in a row, nothing- Yeah. ... then you have to stop and you have to, in a sense, apply the loved-it/lothed-it to the rest of your life. Just take that around and see whether you can find any red threads anywhere. In your hobbies, as a mother, as a father, as a friend, in your community, in your faith, what- I don't know. Where... W- write one love note to yourself which is simply, "I love it when..." and then finish the sentence. And the thing after the word when has to be a verb that you're doing. Not, "I love it when people praise me," or something. "I love it when I..." what? Just write one sentence. It's amazing, Steve, how many people, uh, adults can't be articulate about describing something that they love. I know it sounds really weird, but you ask people... We've done this so many times, you ask people, you know, "Tell me what you love," or, "Tell me what your strengths are." "Oh, I love people." "Which people?" (laughs) "What are you doing with the people? Give me a verb. Any verb will do. Let's start with a verb." But we've trained people for so long to be divorced from their own emotion, or believing that basically their emotion can be rewired if they just work at it and show enough grit or whatever. And you're like, "No, no, no, no, no. It's real. You and your emotional reaction to things is real." So, I would say to people, first of all, do that love-it/loathe-it, and then try to write one, maybe even two, love... (laughs) That's a silly word, but a love note to yourself. "I love it when I do what? I love it when I do what." What many people will actually find is that if you hate lawyering, it might well be that you're the wrong kind of lawyer. It might not be that you have to ditch your degree. It might be that you can start to rewire or re-, um, -sew, re-weave your job so that it has more red threads in it. So, if you do that for a week and you find there are a couple of things on there, actually, "There are a couple of love-dits. There are a couple of specific things where I'm like, 'Ooh, ooh.'" Well, when you have that, first of all, pay attention to it. Things that are p- not paid attention to, they wither. So, every day wake up. This is the advice I would give you, or you might give me. Every day wake up and just try to... Rather than, "What do I have to get through? What's the to-do list I have to get through?" Mm-hmm. Why don't you wake up every day... Yeah, you may have a to-do list, but wake up every day and go, "What red threads can I weave today?" 'Cause they're gonna be not 75,000, but there might be five. What are the five? Start there, and then over time what you'll find is you can start to maybe go, "Well, next week, actually, I'm gonna pick one day, it's gonna be all red. It's gonna be all red one day." Then you might go... Because people start to lean into it, they might go, "Well, could you actually do more of that for this client and this client and this client?" And you're... And then maybe you learn a competency, like somebody who's, I don't know, really good at creating emails that people open. You might go, "Eloqua, we'll teach you Eloqua. We'll teach you that competency because you've got something that you seem to be able to write text that people actually open. That's kind of interesting. I know that's not in your job description but, but you seem to keep doing it, and so we'll teach you now a new competency, a new software program." And lo and behold, you start doing that over time, and you get to the place where the most successful people get to, where we look at the most successful people and we go, "How'd they find that job? Ah, seems to fit them so perfectly. How'd they find that job?" And of course they know. They didn't find it. That's totally the wrong verb. They made it. They took their red, to use that metaphor, that... They took their red threads seriously, and then they... And they didn't imagine someone could read their mind and tell them what their red threads are, 'cause y- only you know what these things, little moment, situations, contexts are that really lift you up. But then they took them seriously and, and wove them ever more deeply into the fabric of what they do. Now, sometimes that might mean stop being a lawyer. "You know what? You've worked... You've tried this now for six months and there's nothing there for you." Hmm. Okay, well then that's really tricky. Now you have to change your entire focus, and hopefully your loves will be your guide. But we actually know over here, I don't know the number for the UK, but 73% of Americans say that they have the freedom to maneuver their job to fit themselves better. That's a lot of people. And yet only 18% of us do, 'cause if you ask people, "Do you have a chance to use your strengths every day," that number's 18%. So you've got 73%, 18... I- in psychology we call that an attitude behavior consistency problem. (laughs) I know I can do it. But I don't. I don't. Hmm. So that's... P- people are watching and they're like, "I'm in the wrong job." Maybe. Maybe you're one of the 27%. You're in the wrong job. All right. Before you get there, though, try to... Uh, pick out your red threads anywhere. And no one can do it but you. That's the thing that, hmm. It's like you wanna go, "Hey, nine-year-old, let's start you on this life skill early." 'Cause even at nine you know better than all your teachers do- Yeah. ... about this part, anyway. About the red threads part. And that way, when you wake up, you know, your mum's going, "Be a dentist, be a dentist, be a dentist," and you're like, "Mum, there's a whole language actually here that talks about dentistry and whether I love it or not, and I'll keep walking on down that path, but I'm actually supposed to look really carefully about which bits of any job really lift me up and give me a sense of mastery." Kids have more of a language, as I say in the book, they have more of a language about geometry than they do about this thing I was just talking about. Hmm. So your parents are so powerful and they're so scared, and they want you to not be a layabout and they want you to be able to get a job, and they want... They're so scared for you. But what they've not done... And even the best teachers are sort of scared for you. "Come on, Stephen, you can..." And no one really goes, "Wait a minute, how do you make sense of your own emotion in your own life? What do you lean into? What do you not lean into? What are the words for that? Is there any detail around that? Or what do you like about people? What do you like doing with the people?" Can you imagine how early you could start with that? And that wouldn't mean that it's Pollyanna. Like, we're still gonna put people in the wrong jobs. I built a company that was focused entirely on people's strengths, and I still put people in the wrong job- (laughs) ... super complicated. (laughs)
Episode duration: 1:40:29
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