Reflections on Marcus Buckingham's Love + Work

Marcus Buckingham is a global researcher and New York Times bestselling author focused on unlocking people’s strengths, increasing their performance, and defining a better future for how people work. He is the author of two of the bestselling business books of all time, and he wrote two of Harvard Business Review’s most circulated articles. He co-created The StrengthsFinder and StandOut strengths assessments, taken by over ten million people worldwide. To say that Marcus has had an important impact on business in the 21st century is an understatement.

I speak from personal experience. After nineteen profitable years as a #CEO and twelve years as a Fortune 500 corporate executive, I successfully raised money for an internet startup, moved from Michigan to New York, and found myself unexpectedly reconsidering my life choices when that startup failed. At a time in my life when I’d taken the most risks and expected to reap the most rewards, I was struggling to identify the next steps. I read Marcus’ work and followed his suggestion to spend time noting what I loved, what I loathed, and figuring out what that meant about what I should do professionally. Taking the time to understand and value what I love led me to become a #Vistage Chair, the most fulfilling and meaningful work of my life.

Marcus recently spoke at Vistage #ChairWorld2024, specifically about Love + Work and the incredible transformative power it can have in satisfaction, retention, and impact.  

Love is about noticing and valuing the unique qualities and contributions of individuals. It’s about truly seeing someone for who they are, appreciating their strengths, and enabling them to shine. In #leadership, Buckingham’s view transforms the traditional corporate environment. It suggests that a #leader’s role is not just to manage but to engage with their team members on a deeper level, recognizing and cultivating their unique talents.

“The goal of school and work—and parents—should be to help very different people put ever-increasing detail to the specificity of their loves and loathes, what strengthens them and depletes them. For each of them, these details will lead to great fulfillment and agency, yes, but also performance and resilience.”

In my journey through #leadership and coaching, this interpretation has been pivotal. It aligns with the principles of positive intelligence and self-awareness.

Marcus writes that:

“In all of my research, it has been crashingly obvious that the most successful people found roles that a) fulfilled their sense of purpose—they believed in the why of the role, b) allied them with colleagues they trusted and admired—they connected to the who of the role, and c) contained activities they loved—they enjoyed the role’s what. But be mindful that of the three, the what is the most significant. In study after study, those people who reported that they had a chance to do something they loved each and every day were far more likely to be high performers and to stay in the role than those who reported that they believed in the mission of the company or liked their teammates.

Any day that goes by without you finding something to love, something to get excited about, raises the chance that you will, over time, become less engaged and less productive. No, you won’t ever find the perfect job, a job you love 100 percent of the time. You won’t ever do only what you love. But you can—every single day—find some activity or situation or moment or event that you love.”

Marcus calls these activities, situations, moments, events that we love our red threads.

As a Vistage Chair, I still have to do things that I don’t love to do but every single day, I am doing things I love to do (my red threads), and that’s what makes it the perfect job for me, and makes it possible for me to have the energy and drive to make a positive contribution every single day in the lives of my members.

Action tip: Marcus encourages us to “devote a little attention at the beginning of each day to pick out your loves for the day.”

Some people resist the idea of combining love and work as if it will somehow make employees more demanding or less productive. As if there is no room in work for love. The opposite is true.

“Recent research by the Mayo Clinic into the well-being of doctors and nurses reveals that 20 percent is the threshold level: spend at least 20 percent of your time at work doing specific activities you love and you are far less likely to experience burnout. Research by colleagues at the ADP Research Institute reinforces this finding. According to their recent global study of twenty-five thousand workers, if you have a chance to do something you love each and every day (even if you aren’t good at it yet), you are 3.6 times more likely to be highly resilient.”

Marcus Buckingham views love as an action rooted in the deep appreciation and recognition of individual strengths and uniqueness. This perspective is not only transformative in professional leadership but also enriches personal relationships and self-awareness.

“Only 14% of people feel that their job gives them a chance to do their best work every day (but) 73% of workers say they have the chance to modify their role to fit their strengths better.”

Leadership in the 21st century requires that we run companies where people, in their spectacular individuality, can love what they do and do what they love.