QuoteProject
Define excellence vividly, quantitatively. Paint a picture for your most talented employees of what excellence looks like. Keep everyone pushing and pushing toward the right-hand edge of the bell curve.
Marcus Buckingham
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Excellence should be clearly defined and visually represented to inspire employees to strive for it.

Marcus Buckingham emphasizes the importance of defining excellence in a detailed and quantitative manner to motivate talented employees. By clearly illustrating what excellence looks like, leaders can inspire their team to continuously improve and aim for the highest standards, pushing the boundaries of their abilities and potential.

Themes

ExcellenceMotivationLeadershipPerformanceInspiration

In practice

Example use cases

In a team meeting to set goals and expectations for the upcoming project.

More from Marcus Buckingham

The best way to find out whether you're on the right path? Stop looking at the path.
Marcus BuckinghamRead
Strengths are not activities you're good at, they're activities that strengthen you. A strength is an activity that before you're doing it you look forward to doing it; while you're doing it, time goes by quickly and you can concentrate; after you've done it, it seems to fulfill a need of yours.
Marcus BuckinghamRead
There has to be a way to redirect employee's driving ambition and to channel it more productively. There is. Create heroes in every role. Make every role, performed at excellence, a respected profession.
Marcus BuckinghamRead
Most of my work has been in corporations, studying how you build an organization that helps people to identify and work to their strengths.
Marcus BuckinghamRead
The true genius of a great manager is his or her ability to individualize. A great manager is one who understands how to trip each person's trigger.
Marcus BuckinghamRead
Don't waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in.
Marcus BuckinghamRead

Similar quotes

Women have to be active listeners and interrupters - but when you interrupt, you have to know what you are talking about.
Madeleine AlbrightRead
If you look for the best in your employees, they'll flourish. If you criticize or look for the worst, they'll shrivel up. We all need lots of watering.
Richard BransonRead
If a man's associates find him guilty of being phony, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.
Dwight D. EisenhowerRead
My whole career has been marked by taking on the toughest problems, bringing people together, creating uncommon coalitions to ultimately produce uncommon results - things that people said couldn't be done.
Cory BookerRead
My child, you are going to be a great king; do not imitate me in the taste I have had for building, or in that I have had for war; try, on the contrary, to be at peace with your neighbors.
Louis XivRead
When you look at the development of the American presidency, you see that the presidents who have had the greatest impact are the ones who fit their times most successfully.
H. W. BrandsRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.