The One Thing You Need to Know: …About Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Personal Success by Marcus Buckingham

Over the last couple of decades, a fascination with “leadership” has eclipsed “managing” and the role of the leader and the role of the manager are utterly different. The talents required to excel at each are different. And the most important thing you need to know about each is the exact opposite of the other. This doesn’t mean that you can’t excel at both. You can, but, if you want to excel at one or both, you need to know the difference. And you need to know if you need a good manager or leader to complement your talents.

The Big Difference

Great managers discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it. Great leaders rally people to a better future.

Great Sales Managers

Great managers excel at turning a person’s talent into performance. The manager’s unique contribution is to make other people more productive. Although charged with other responsibilities, such as selling or leading, when it comes to the managing aspect of the job, the great manager makes employees genuinely believe, that their success is his/her primary goal.
To do their job, the great manager starts with the employee’s feelings. They convince them that their success is paramount. They demonstrate caring about how they can arrange the world so that employees can experience the greatest success possible—commonly known as coaching talent.

A great manager:

• Selects good people
• Defines clear expectations
• Recognizes excellence and praise it
• Shows they care about their people

Great Sales Leading

The future is what it’s all about to a good leader. He carries a vivid image of what the future could be, which drives him on. “You are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo.” Leaders are never satisfied with the present, because they can see a better future, and the friction between “what is” and the “what could be” stirs them.
If the core talent of a great manager is an instinct to coach other toward success, then optimism and ego are the talents underpinning all great leaders. You believe, in every fiber of your being, that you are the one to make this future come true. You are the one to assume responsibility for transforming the present into something better.
“To lead effectively, you must be unfailingly, unrealistically, even irrationally optimistic. Like it or not, this is not learnable.”

Leaders clarify:

• Who we do serve? (target customer)
• What is our core strength? (differentiating value)
• What is our core score? (developing metrics)
• What actions can we take today? (action oriented)

Good Leaders Need Good Managers and Vice Versa:

• If you’re a leader who is dissatisfied with your company’s status quo…
• If you’re a leader with a compelling vision…
• If you’re a leader in need of sales management processes to realize your vision…