Good Managers Focus on Employees’ Strengths, Not Weaknesses

Marcus Buckingham knows enough about good management to know he’s not a good manager.

Before launching a career as a management consultant and author of such books as First, Break All The Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently and The One Thing You Need to Know, Buckingham served as head of The Gallup Organization’s strengths management practice. He was a manager, and he didn’t much care for it. "I wasn’t terrible, but I had no appetite for it," said Buckingham, who spoke about management and leadership at the Wharton Leadership Conference http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/conferences/conf_060905.shtml on June 9. The conference was sponsored by Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management.

According to Buckingham, the best managers share one talent — the ability to find, and then capitalize upon, their employees’ unique traits. "The guiding principle is, ‘How can I take this person’s talent and turn it into performance?’ That’s the only way success is possible." And yet not everyone has that knack, Buckingham said. If he has learned anything from his years spent interviewing the best minds of the business world, it is this: Truly great managers, and truly inspiring business leaders, are rarer than many think. "Some of you in this room may not have that talent," he said. "If not, management can become a thankless task."

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