Originally published in the May 2003 Issue of Link & Learn.

The following interview was originally published in Linkage's The Daily Leader (distributed to participants at Linkage's Global Institute for Leadership Development)

Marcus Buckingham has spent the past ten years focusing on how to find, harness the talent of, and keep the best employees. In this interview, he shares his insights on "Breaking the Rules."

The Daily Leader: In your own assessment, who are the top one or two business leaders today?

Buckingham: If I were to select, it would not be anyone you know. My definition of a great manager is someone who turns someone else's talent into performance. That is where my focus has been -- not on whether someone can set a vision, change an industry, or inspire the troops (although this is all critical and wonderful). My focus has been on that part of the leadership that relates to how you multiply yourself through someone else and how you turn someone else's talent into performance. Most of those people who do this tremendously well are not necessarily people we put in the business press as heroes. We have interviewed over 80,000 great managers and they are wonderfully effective at being productive through their people -- but they are not the Jack Welch's or Michael Eisner's.

The Daily Leader: What are the leadership qualities that enable one to attract and retain the best employees and achieve the highest levels of performance?

Buckingham: I would say many, but two come to mind - Optimism and Individualization.

1) The first is Optimism. Probably the most important thing that leaders do have is that they believe the world is a friendly place. By which I mean, they believe that the world is an opportunity and no matter how tough the times are they believe that times will get better. Out of that picture comes the image of the future. Those images of the future are visions and are always optimistic. They never describe a worse place -- they always describe a better place. One of the reasons followers don't follow people who aren't optimistic is they can smell out the fact that the visions are not real. The leaders who have somebody else write their vision statements for them aren't followed because the followers intuitively realize that the leader doesn't believe it him/herself. So the quality is innate optimism -- but you can't teach it. There are clearly some inherent perspectives on the world that leaders have to have and if you don't then you shouldn't lead.

2) The next is Individualization. Great managers and leaders seem to realize that people are endearingly unique. You don't have 20 sales people -- you have 20 individuals who happen to be sales people. You can either try to build your whole organization to try to fight against that or you can assume that your 20 sales people are the same and motivated by the same thing. You can either assume that -- or you can ignore it and build your systems to try to prevent people from being different, which is what most companies do: "Here is the right way to sell… Here are the certain steps to selling… Here are the 15 steps to leading and the 10 steps to managing…" That is what most companies do. Unfortunately you end up fighting against the inherent individuality of people. People are not the same. Great leaders try to figure out and do a wonderful job of using people's endearing differences rather than fighting against them.

The Daily Leader: How do you foster individuality yet, at the same time, provide structure?

Buckingham: You define and standardize the right outcomes -- not the method. There needs to be focus and structure but this should be around the end and outcome. For example, in many organizations today, they are saying "We need people to lead who are not only productive but also lead in the right way and have the right values and behaviors." And they will build leadership development programs designed to get every leader to lead in the same way. Expressing the need for leaders to have the right values is a very good thing. Even lifting out some of the competencies is also a good thing. What is not a good thing is telling every leader that they should have all of them. No leader has all of them and it is a waste of time to tell every leader that in order to excel you need to have every one of these qualities. It is also terrible to hold people accountable for evidencing all qualities and telling them that the only way to get a better rating next year or get a promotion is to improve in the ones where they are weak. That is an attempt to impose structure on individuality and it doesn't work. A much better thing to do is to identify simple outcomes, not methods, for getting to the outcome.

The Daily Leader: Given all of the research you have conducted, how have you applied what you have learned to your own management and leadership roles?

Buckingham: I have gotten out of them [management/leadership roles]. I managed at Gallup for about 3-4 years and I wasn't bad, but I wasn't great. There are some things that great managers do that I don't do. I don't individualize very well. I can understand the concept but I just can't do it. I can't see the small differences between people. I don't set expectations very well. I am inside my own head too much. Of course management is not about sweeping in and fixing things, it is about setting clear expectations so people can then meet them. So every day for me as a manager was a day-by-day descent to hell as I woke up every morning thinking: "Oh my god people are out there making stupid decisions on my team." They weren't, but I couldn't convince myself they weren't. So at one point I just went: "This is crazy… I am living a second rate version of someone else's life and I want to live a first rate version of mine." I went to my boss and said I don't want to manage because I can't be good at it. And luckily I work for a company that enabled me to not lose faith and they channeled me to write a book. I became a much more effective, productive and valuable employee because of that. So what I realized for myself is that there are some things that great managers do innately that I don't do. I could be an average manager and make good money or I can take a much more individual contributor route and figure out how to turn my natural talent into productivity in a different area.

The Daily Leader: It is pretty ironic that most people who are managers are promoted into management because they are great individual contributors -- because that doesn't mean they are going to be great managers.

Buckingham: It happens all the time. If you believe that people can be anything they want to be if they try hard enough... If you believe that the brain in infinitely malleable -- that if you work at it you could just get it... If you deeply believe that… Then you will keep promoting individual contributors into management roles because you say to yourself that the person is smart enough, has drive, and can work at it to become a great manager by learning all of the skills that a manager has to have. Deep down if you believe that everything is learnable, then you will continue to promote people into roles that they shouldn't be in. If you deeply understand that people are unique and not everything is learnable, then you will be a little more careful about creating a career ladder where individual contributors don't necessarily have to get promoted into a management role. Most organizations are set up to do just the opposite.

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