Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success by Marcus Buckingham - Book Report/Review Example

? Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success by Marcus Buckingham Book Review: Great Managing, Great Leading andSustained Individual Success by Marcus Buckingham Introduction Marcus Buckingham is one of the most successful authors of recent time. He graduated in 1987 with Master’s degree in Social and Political Science from the University of Cambridge. After his successful completion of his study he joined Gallup Organization where he worked for over 17 years. It is here that he developed the interest of carrying out a research on the best managers, leaders and workplaces. He has used his research as a basis for some of his bestselling books, among them were Break All the Rules: What the World’s Best Managers Do Differently, Discover Your Strengths and the most recent one called The One Thing You Need to Know. This paper will provide a book report on his new publication The One Thing You Need to Know about Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success. The One Thing You Need to Know The One Thing You Need to Know talks about great managing, leadership and sustained individual success. The book is a 285 pages’ volume. In this book, Buckingham is dwelling a bit more about one thing. The main message behind this book is that there are certain things which good managers, leaders and workers do that prevent them from failing. However, there is one thing that the best managers and leaders do to succeed at workplace (Buckingham, 2005). The book is basically structured into three sub-topics, which are the following: great managing, great leading and sustained individual success. In this book, we find how Buckingham differentiates leaders and managers by classifying workplace managers as beginning with individual employees. He looks at their particulars, knowledge, skills, experiences and goals and designs specific features under which the employee in question can achieve success in the workplace. At this point, the employee becomes the center of focus (Buckingham, 2005). Buckingham argues that leadership begins with a vision for the future. Here, he notes that any good leader must have a vision for the organization to succeed. In order for a leader’s future vision to be successful, Buckingham argues that there must be an element of persuading other people. According to leadership, the future remains the focus (Buckingham, 2005). Great Managers In order to succeed as a manager, Buckingham (2005) recommends the following in the book: An organization should hire the best people, have clearly defined expectations, provide praise and recognition of workers and care for the workers under a manager. He also notes that the core responsibility of a great manager is not to ensure customer service or enforce quality, or build high performance workforce or setting of standards. He, however, feels that best managers succeed at turning an individual’s talent into performance. Great managers are also a catalyst which implies that they speed up the reaction between workers’ talents and the company’s targets. With regard to hiring of workers, he advises that managers need to define what talents they are seeking for, ask open questions and seek some of the provided answers (Buckingham, 2005). Buckingham (2005) argues that the best predictor of the future behavior is frequent past behavior. He suggests that the manager has to keep filtering pressure and priorities from above in order to be able to build a clear short-term focus with a clear vision of success. For this reason, good managers continuously clarify that expectation in all contacts and meetings. The book attempts also to answer the question relating to what one thinks he or she gets paid to do. Here, Buckingham advises that a manager should carefully manage especially all the consequences of employee’s behaviors through praise and recognition. He describes behavior as an aspect that is certain, positive and immediate. With regard to what managers need to know in order to succeed, he tells to “discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it” (Buckingham, 2005). He notes that instead of attempting to transform a person or worker, a manager needs to tweak the world in order for their capabilities not to be restricted. He illustrates this using the following points (Buckingham, 2005): 1. The manager needs to build workers assurance with regard to their strengths. 2. The managers should be able to praise the employees for the unique strengths which they have brought to achieving success. 3. The managers should resolve employees’ weaknesses by providing training opportunities and knowledge, give them a partner, change the environment, or trick them so that the weaknesses does not get manifest in the workplace. Great Leadership Buckingham (2005) argues that great leaders are those who rally people to a better future. In this regard, he argues that great leaders are those with a clear vision of what the future hold and, therefore, rallies others toward achievement of the vision. He notes that one is a leader, if and only if he or she is restless for change, is very much dissatisfied with the status quo and is eager to see progress. Therefore, the main talents that underlie great leadership are ego and optimism. Buckingham (2005) argues that the opposite of a leader is not a follower. Instead, he argues that the opposite of a leader is a pessimist (Buckingham, 2005). He, therefore, classifies leaders as either pessimists or depressive. However, despite the fact that this kind of leaders tends to look at things on the negative side, nothing at all undermines their belief that everything they do would get better in the end. With regard to ego, Buckingham (2005) argues that the key to leading is that the leader must envision a better future and believe in every fiber of their being. This implies that a leader is the one who makes this future come true. For this reason, it is the leader who is supposed to assume the responsibility of ensuring that the present is transformed into something better. Buckingham (2005) notes that there two types of leaders with respect to ego. There are those leaders with a powerful ego and those with egomania. He notes that the difference between the two exists in the manner in which they are channeled. A powerful leader is that person who takes his self assurance, self belief, and self confidence and applies them into an enterprise services bigger than himself. With regard to egomania leaders, Buckingham (2005) notes that “the self is the enterprise”. The book also provides ideas on what should be done so as to develop a budding leader. Buckingham (2005) suggests that if you want to develop a budding leader, it is not in order for you to tell him that he is humble, instead give him a challenge that makes him more inquisitive, and curious thereby making it clear in describing his vision with regard to a better future. It is then that you encourage him or her to channel his desires and claims towards making this vision come true Buckingham (2005) also suggests a general fear to focus among leaders. Here, he talks of “fear for the future” which usually manifests as a “need for clarity”. The clarity concern that of knowing who to serve, the strengths, and what actions are supposed to be taken. He says that a leader needs to recognize whom he or she needs to serve, and encourage followers and employees to come up with a novel and new ways of how they feel they should be served. For this reason, he notes that a great leader should be able to make his strengths together and make his weaknesses look irrelevant. The book also puts forward a number of questions that a leader needs to answer with clarity. This are: what edge the company has, how the company would beat his competitors, how will the organization overcome any obstacle that comes its way and whether the organization would be able to prevail in the foreseeable future. In conclusion, Buckingham puts forward a wealth of applicable examples to show that controlling insight actually lies at the heart of great managing, leading and sustainable individual success. He suggests that a great manager is one who hires the best people, have clearly defined expectations, provide praise and recognition of workers and care for the workers under him. Buckingham also suggests that a great manager succeeds at turning an individual’s talent into performance. With regard to leaders, the book suggests that great leaders are those with a clear vision of what the future hold and rallies people towards achievement of the vision. They are restless for change, very much dissatisfied with the current situations and are eager to see progress. Reference Buckingham, M. (2005). The one thing you need to know about great managing, great leading, and sustained individual success. New York: Free Press. Read More