First, Break All The Rules

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman expose the fallacies of standard management thinking in First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. In seven chapters, the two consultants for the Gallup Organisation debunk some dearly held notions about management, such as "treat people as you like to be treated"; "people are capable of almost anything"; and "a manager's role is diminishing in today's economy." "Great managers are revolutionaries," the authors write. "This book will take you inside the minds of these managers to explain why they have toppled conventional wisdom and reveal the new truths they have forged in its place."

The authors have culled their observations from more than 80,000 interviews conducted by Gallup during the past 25 years. Buckingham and Coffman outline "four keys" to becoming an excellent manager: finding the right fit for employees, focusing on strengths of employees, defining the right results, and selecting staff for talent--not just knowledge and skills. First, Break All the Rules offers specific techniques for helping people perform better on the job. For instance, the authors show ways to structure a trial period for a new worker and how to create a pay plan that rewards people for their expertise instead of how fast they climb the company ladder. "The point is to focus people toward performance," they write. "The manager is, and should be, totally responsible for this." Written in plain English and well organised, this book tells you exactly how to improve as a supervisor. --Dan Ring

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Great to Dip - Rated
Not the most engaging of page-turning reads and more of a "dipper"! Keep it in your briefcase for those 20 minute journeys for insights from some great leaders and find yourself striving to weave patterns from the threads of best practice (as you should........).

Great self awareness - Rated
Certainly a book that goes against the grain of what many people are told to do. First, Break All The Rules is a must read for those who want to take advantage of their natural strengths and talents rather than focus on the weaknesses that we all have. A must read to take the next step in personal improvement.

Bill Chambers

Focus on your strengths - Rated
I strongly believe in focusing on your strengths, not your weaknesses. Any time you spend on improving your weaknesses is wasted, because you're not spending time doing what you do best, and you can get your weakness to improve from a 5 to a 7, but it won't become a 9 ever.

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman focus on the same. As a manager you should focus people on their strengths to get the most out of them. It means changing the way you hire them, the way you train them, the way you reward them and the way you team them up.

For me and many of my participants (I'm a management trainer), this book is a great relief. No more competence management, which tells you which gaps you still need to close to become all-round perfect. An exhausting message to hear, by the way, because you will NEVER get a natural eye for detail or be a great out of the box thinker... unless that was your given talent.

The art, so say the writers, is to create a safety net for a person's weakness, so it stops being a problem. Such as teaming them up with someone who has complementary skills, or rearranging their task to never get them to come in touch with their weakness. A leader, in short, must do anything possible to allow his or her people to focus fully on their strengths.

I find this book hugely inspirational, not just for leaders, but also for employees. It relieves you from the pressure of having to be all-round perfect. It makes a powerful step towards personal branding.

Interesting way of linking good management to company performance - Rated
Given how many business management books there are, it is refreshing to see a research-based attempt to link specific aspects of management theory to company performance.

As a manager, I found this book to be helpful in backing up some things that made intuitive sense and in challenging some basic assumptions I had. It's a very positive way of thinking about how you bring out the strengths of the individuals on a team.

No book has the answers. This one has some thought-provoking findings that I've used to improve the way I manage.

A classic case of oppinionated tripe - Rated
The entire Gallup 'strengths-finder' philosophy is, by any definition no more than "theory". There seem to be no meaningful psychological studies available to back these ideas up. The data are exrapolated from laughably flawed research criteria and without use of universally recognised experimental requirements. Flying in the face of established experimental design and accepted stipulations for accuracy, the results are proffered as absolute. Scandalous. This book is is quite simply outrageous, unprofessional and in some respects even dangerous. The title of the book sums up its own contents rather nicely - 'First Break All The Rules'. So beautifully stated, of course and so completely accurate! The Gallup Organisation seems to be yet another tedious pop psychology outfit, setting itself up with all the credibility and authority to infiltrate society and tinker around with human thinking and thus gifting itself with dominance on the subject. Speaking as a psychologist, I don't agree with them! A strangely arrogant, superficial and slightly disturbing read.