large quotes TMBC's strengths programs are a gift to each individual who commits to the journey. I have heard from numerous hotel managers and employees that applying the strengths philosophy to uncover what makes them feel strong and what makes them feel weak has had a major impact on their lives—both personally and professionally.
--Gina Valenti
Vice President of Owner Services, Hilton International
large quotes TMBC's strengths program provided my organization with a new and unique platform to approach development planning. The result was a more engaged organization. An unexpected benefit for our team, aside from the personal learning and development, was the team-building that occurred as a result of the program.
--Susan Gambardella
Vice President, Integrated Marketing Operations, The Coca-Cola Company

About Marcus

Once you've broken all the rules and launched your career by writing an instant classic management book, what do you do for an encore? If you're Marcus Buckingham, you dedicate yourself to understanding what makes world-class managers tick, bottling it, and sharing it with the world.

Marcus first conquered the bestseller lists in 1999 with First, Break All the Rules. While the title may imply an iconoclastic streak, his continuing plea for managers to break with tradition has nothing to do with rebellion; instead, he argues, rules must be broken and discarded because they stifle the originality and uniqueness — the strengths — that can enable all of us to achieve our highest performance.

Following up on his highly successful debut book, Marcus continued to drive the message that people's unique personal strengths are the key to unlocking their potential. As a co-author of Now, Discover Your Strengths, he helped create StrengthsFinder, the personal assessment tool that gave millions of individuals a new vocabulary to positively describe their ingrained talents, adding the phrase "Top 5" to the lexicon of managers and business people around the world. (Marcus's Top 5, for the record: Futuristic, Context, Focus, Ideation, Intellection).

In addition to refining and reinforcing his message in subsequent books (The One Thing You Need to Know; Go Put Your Strengths to Work; The Truth About You; Find Your Strongest Life) and keynote addresses worldwide, he founded The Marcus Buckingham Company (TMBC — catchy name, that) in 2007 to create tools and training that would help managers and organizations access the untapped potential of their people's strengths.

His latest project, StandOut, is a book and strengths assessment combination that uses a new research methodology to reveal your top two "strength Roles" — your areas of comparative advantage. StandOut goes beyond description to give people practical innovations that fit their strengths, and provide managers with quick insights on how to get the best from each member of their team.

How does he do it? What's his secret? How has this Buckingham fellow maintained his momentum in spreading his message around the world? We, his crack staff here at TMBC (catchy acronym, that) have wondered the same thing, so we set out to analyze it. Click here for several hypotheses we have entertained.

What makes Marcus effective?

  1. It's the media exposure.
    True, Marcus does seem to get a fair bit of attention from those media folks. He's appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show", "Larry King Live," "The Today Show," "Good Morning America," "The View" and numerous other shows (heck, you can even spot his books adorning the shelves of no less a luminary than Michael Scott of "The Office"). He has also been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review.

    But if media exposure alone made someone an international business guru, then half of Hollywood would be addressing the G8 summit on a regular basis. So we're pretty sure that's not it.
  2. It's the compan(y/ies) he keeps.
    At first, a plausible theory. Sometimes it seems that Marcus has worked with literally every name on the Fortune 500: Toyota, Facebook, Coca- Cola, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Disney, etc., etc. Heady compan(y/ies), to be sure. But those guys don't mess around. We're pretty sure that their wanting to work with Marcus is the result of his effectiveness, not the cause of it.
  3. It's the charming British accent.
    Who doesn't love a British accent? Well, presumably the British aren't all that impressed by one. But the rest of us seem to lap it up. However, as there are roughly 62 million residents of Great Britain, relatively few of whom have been tagged as the leader of the strengths revolution, we're pretty sure that's not the secret, either
  4. It's the data.
    Bingo!

Marcus spent nearly two decades as a Senior Researcher at The Gallup Organization, studying the world's best managers and companies to investigate what drives great performance. A research and statistics addict, he has continued to explore the data behind great performance throughout his career, and that research forms the basis of every tool or training program that TMBC offers. Data-driven, strengths-based management tools and training: that's the secret that makes Marcus (and TMBC) tick.

We still think the accent doesn't hurt, though.