Transcripts

Marcus Buckingham:
It's an activity that when you're not doing it, you don't look forward to it and when you are doing it you can't wait to stop. Well, you're never going to learn to love that.

Marcus Buckingham, author of the book The One Thing You Need to Know, says you can only be successful when you do something you're good at, however…

Most of us believe that success in life comes from fixing our weaknesses, not building on our strengths. You ask Americans that question and 59% of them say the secret to success lies in fixing flaws. So part of the problem is ourselves. The other part of the problem is our bosses. You ask people "When your manager talks to you about your performance, what do you spend most of your time talking about?" Only 25% of people say strengths, so both our own mindset and those of our bosses says that you shouldn't cut out the things that you don't like to do - you should really work on those things.

But Marcus says just the opposite is true. You should develop your strengths and what you like and cut out what you don't like. How?

The first thing you could try is if there's some activity that grates on you, stop doing it - see if anyone cares. I worked with a salesperson once that was fabulous at building relationships but hated to cold call. Ok, then stop cold calling. No one cares if you cold call. Instead try and build your business by extending your existing relationships. I think a second tactic is, find a partner. Find someone who loves what you hate to do. You look at the most successful people around and you'll see that they're brilliant at finding just the right partner at just the right time.

You can link to Marcus' website from ours: somethingyoushoudlknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.