The ONE Ritual Every Excellent Manager Shares

What happens when “well-known truths” about business and leadership become misdirected over time and start creating challenges in helping your employees thrive?

One of my mantras is to always seek different perspectives and points of view. And in that vein – I highly recommend the book Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World.

Ashley Goodall, Senior Vice President of Leadership and Team Intelligence at Cisco partnered up with Marcus Buckingham to coauthor this book which “explores the disconnect between how we work best and how we’re told to work.” Buckingham is a New York Times bestselling author and head of People and Performance research at the ADP Research Institute. Take time to check out their reasoning on each lie and its corollary.

Nine Lies about Work

The nine lies uncovered are:

People care which company they work for
The best plan wins
The best companies cascade goals
The best people are well-rounded
People need feedback
People can reliably rate other people
People have potential
Work-life balance matters most
Leadership is a thing

I was struck by lie # 5 – People need feedback. How on earth do you manage without feedback? Their answer is switch to Attention.

Focus Your People

Watch Marcus Buckingham’s 4-minute video FOCUS YOUR PEOPLE to learn more about switching to Attention and the ONE ritual every excellent manager shares.