AURORA, Colo.–The author of two of the best-selling business books of all time has some advice for credit union leaders when it comes to love, work, creativity, collaboration, and building effective teams, along with one other thing: if someone says, “Do what you love and you’ll never work again,” run in the other direction.
Marcus Buckingham is a researcher and author of 10 books, the most recent being “Love + Work: How to Standout in Work and in Life.”
He shared with an audience at Origence’s Lending Tech Live event what he has learned in 30 years of work, including with the Gallup Organization, and in developing a “strengths finder” analysis, as well as the lessons taken from building his own successful organization. Among those insights: the importance of “red threads.”
Buckingham described the “whole love and work movement” in which he is currently a leader as being focused on how to make people “excited to be at work.”
A School Lesson in Reverse
Buckingham told the meeting he realized one day when his 16-year-old daughter came to him with a question from school that she had spent 10 years studying geometry and math but never a day studying how to live her fullest life. Yet understanding issues related to living a full life and the relationships between love and work and more will have more importance in her life than ever understanding right triangles, he said.
And the same holds true for credit union leaders, including those who lead teams.
“Think about someone in your own life who you would say is thriving. Maybe financially, maybe emotionally or spiritually,” said Buckingham. “I bet when you first think of them it’s ‘lucky them.’ And pretty soon after that you realized that’s the wrong verb. They didn’t find that life. They made that life. They took a generic job and molded it to fit them, took a generic life and molded it to fit them.
Balance! What Balance?
“The second thing you might realize is their life isn’t balanced,” he continued. “We talk a lot about work/life balance, but it’s a weird word, balance. Nothing in nature is balanced. If you found that perfect place where everything is balanced, do you know what would go through your mind? Nobody moves. Balance is stasis, it’s stationary. If you look at that person you think is thriving, they are moving. The healthiest things in the world are moving through their environments and getting nourishment from their environments The same thing is true of your career. How to you get that nourishment? That’s what the thriving people have figured out. We don’t teach how to do that in a world that doesn’t know you like you know you.”
It's a critical issue that goes beyond one’s own personal well-being, according to Buckingham, who noted that due to demographics, unemployment is going to stay low for at least a decade, putting more pressure on attracting and retaining the most effective people.
And how does an organization attract the best, the most effective people? By understanding that really effective people have the following three things in common, according to Buckingham:
They Take Their Own Loves Seriously
“They don’t do what they love. There is no data at all that says the most effective people do all that they love,” Buckingham told the meeting. “If you meet one of those people who say ‘Find the job you love and you’ll never work again,’ run away. Instead, they find the love in what they do.”
As an example, he shared the story of eight housekeepers at Walt Disney World whom he interviewed and who loved their jobs, all for different reasons. None of what they loved was in the job description; in, fact they weren’t supposed to do some of the things they loved, he noted.
“Everyone who excels at a job excels differently,” said Buckingham.
Buckingham pointed to a Mayo Clinic study that was examining turnover among medical workers that discovered if a person can find activities in 20% of their day that they loved, it goes a long way toward satisfaction and fights burnout.
Buckingham asked his audience to think of the last day that “really flew by,” and it was almost certainly a day spent doing something one loves, he said.
The Danger in Oversimplifying
“Faced with the complexity of you, we tend to oversimplify. Extravert, introvert. Organized, disorganized. Or we take a test, like a strengths assessment or Myers-Brigg. Those are good. But the real decoder is your loves.”
Buckingham calls those loves “red threads.” A person has found a red thread when they are performing an activity in which time flies and when the activity is finished, that same person is not only not drained, they are invigorated.
“Everyday your life is putting on a show for you. What about this thread? Pay attention to what your life is trying to show you. You don’t need a red quilt, you need 20%, you need red threads,” he said. “And everyone else is color blind to you. Most feedback is useless as it’s about me telling you you would be better if you were more like me. One of the red threads for me is finding red threads in data. People in every job have red threads they take seriously. No one is like you. You are weird. Start with you. Put your own oxygen mask on first. Try to write three sentences that begin, ‘I love it when I’m doing…’”
The Most Effective People Realize Love Fuels Growth
The second thing really effective people have in common begins with recognizing people are a work in progress, they are not just fixed.
“The challenge for you isn’t ‘Will I grow or not?’ or ‘Will my kid grow or not?’ The question is where will they learn and grow the most? Where will you see exponential growth and where will you see incremental growth? We know the answer. We know you will grow literally more synapses in your brain where you already have the most synapses. You will grow most in those areas where you have red threads. Your brain on love is super-powerful. It’s much more creative and innovative. Loveless innovation is an oxymoron.”
For credit union leaders who are responsible for teams or who have direct reports, Buckingham said they must know all the individual red threads of their team members, as that is where they will grow most.
An ‘Odd’ Focus
“It sounds odd, but when you ask American parents about which grade on a report card deserves the most attention, it will always be on the lowest grade,” he said. “Parents, teachers, students don’t go with the red threads. In the worlds of work we have struggling areas that we call areas of opportunity. But for everyone your areas of opportunity are those areas you love. You have weaknesses, and you can get a little better at them. But you have to take your red threads seriously because that’s where you will grow the most, and we live in a society that believes the exact opposite. If you want to be part of a successful team, you’ve got to buck that belief.”
Finding those red threads won’t just help an individual to thrive, according to Buckingham, it might also help solve problems. Society’s focus on problems isn’t wrong, he added, but “if we just focus more and more about learning about your problems to fix them, you become your problem. Sometimes you can fix the problem using the things you love.”
Love Grows Most in Response to Another Human Being
Just as Buckingham rejects the “Find a job you love…” cliché, he also dismisses “There is no ‘I’ in team.”
“As if the whole point of team is to remind you that you are not as important as the team. No, no, no,” he emphasized. “The whole point of a team is to make a hole for your weirdness. One of the things many CEOs will say is ‘What about chaos? I need predictability and consistency.’ Yes, but we humans have figured out how to make use of everyone’s uniqueness; we form teams. If you really want to build an extraordinary company, build great teams. Become an expert in what great teams are like. Most of us live in HR systems that don’t see the team, we see the org chart. Isn’t that weird? All the great work you do is on teams. If you want to be a great leader, get smart about how to build great teams.”
Buckingham recommended leaders not ask people what they are best at. Instead, they should ask others to complete the sentence, “I’m at my best when…”
“Then the whole team can become a red quilt,” he said.
The Best Leaders
According to Buckingham, every single great team leader has the same ritual.
“They all check in individually with each team member for 15 minutes every week. All people crave attention, attention, attention,” Buckingham stated. “Great team leaders realize that setting a goal at the beginning of the year for the end of the year is irrelevant. Weirdly, the most powerful team activity is an individual activity. Ask, ‘What are you working on and how can I help? What were your red threads last week and what are your red threads this week?’ Some will say, ‘I can’t do that, I’m too busy leading.’ This is the leading bit. Leading is figuring out how to take these individual red threads and turn them into powerful contributions 52 weeks a year.”
And if all that sounds boring to some people, Buckingham said that’s OK, but he has some advice for them: “Just don’t lead anyone.”
If the response to his theory is that you have to many people to check in with individually, then “you have too many people,” he said.
Free Test Available
“The reason we have so many nurses burning out is because the nurse supervisor-to-nurse ratio is 1:60. That makes sense for a CFO, but it doesn’t make sense for a human. Humans need attention. Remember you’re not checking up on people, it’s not surveillance. You’re checking in with them.”
Buckingham said those interested in doing their own strengths assessment to learn more about themselves can go here for a free test.