Some New Lies about Work (based on the Buckingham and Goodall book, Nine Lies About Work)
Updated: Aug 6, 2019
Written by Barbara Basel, Strategic Partner and Senior Consultant
What really makes your organization outstanding? Does your organization’s culture cascade through goals for your departments and teams? Do you have highly engaged employees and teams that regularly achieve or surpass their goals? How effective is your strategy for performance management and employee development? Are your employees overwhelmed or unable to cope with the stress and speed in today’s workplace?
If you are not sure about your answers to the questions above, it is well worth your time to read Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World* by Marcus Buckingham and Ashely Goodall.
This book will challenge the leadership and human resources theories that have been drilled into executives and human resources practitioners for years. While you may not agree with all Buckingham and Goodall’s myth busting ideas, there is a good chance that many of what the authors’ have identified as “lies” will resonate and may lead you to adopt new or evolved approaches to leading.
While we won’t go through all the lies and truths today, here are the four most interesting. We’ll continue exploring these four in future posts.
Lie #3: The best companies cascade goals
Truth: The best companies cascade meaning
Lie #5: People need feedback
Truth: People need attention
Lie #7: People have potential
Truth: People have momentum
Lie #8: Work-life balance matters most
Truth: Love-in-work matters most
Most of us in the business world realize and embrace the indisputable fact that employees are the most valuable assets to the organization. As technology continues to proliferate throughout our organizations, the need to develop highly effective teams has become even more essential. If you are willing to explore new ideas about leading, the Nine Lies About Work is well worth reading. Consider exploring Buckingham and Goodall’s Free-thinking Leader’s Coalition website as well that is full of videos and additional information on the Nine Lies About Work. You can even join Buckingham and Goodall are hosting a summer reading series of webcasts at: Free-thinking Leader’s Coalition.
