In

_Nine Lies About Work_

, co-authors Marcus Buckingham $

_Play To Your Strengths, First Break All The Rules_

$ and Cisco executive Ashley Goodall tell how ideas and practices held as truths at work often frustrate the people theyre meant to serve.

Here, the best quotes from

_Nine Lies About Work._

_When people ask you what its really like to work at your company, you immediately know youre not going to tell them about the solar panels and the cafeteria, but what its really like._

_Beyond explaining the now, culture has become our handle on the next._

_If youre at Goldman Sachs, then never mind the surfing  youd rather be winning. You wear your bespoke suit every day because youre a winner._

_While people might care which company they join, they dont care which company they work for. The truth is that, once there, people care which team theyre on._

Lie # 1 People care which company they work for

_When youre next looking to join a company, dont bother asking if it has a great culture  no-one can tell you that in any real way. Instead, ask what it does to build great teams._

_Its not true that the best plan wins. It is true that the best intelligence wins._

_While team leaders who check in once a week see, on average, a 13% increase in team engagement, those who check in only once a month see a 5% decrease in engagement._

_Trust can never emerge from secrecy. Frequency creates safety._

Lie # 2 The best plan wins

_This pressure to achieve company-imposed goals is coercion, and coercion is a cousin to fear._

_Sales goals are for performance prediction, not performance creation._

_Work makes you feel trusted; goals make you feel distrusted._

_It doesnt have to be SMART, or big, hairy, and audacious. If a goal is going to be useful, if it is going to help you contribute more, then the only criterion is that you must set it for yourself voluntarily._

_The best companies dont cascade goals; the best companies cascade meaning._

_Our people dont need to be told what to do; they want to be told why._

_Dont tell them what you value, show them. What do you actually want them to see and to bump into at work?_

_Stories make sense of the world; they are meaning, made human._

Lie #3 The best companies cascade goals

_As humans we are wired to find joy in seeing someone elses talents in action._

_A strength, properly defined, is not something you are good at. A strengthis an activity that makes you feel strong."_

_The well-rounded high performer is a creature of theory world._

_Growth, it turns out, is actually a question not of figuring out how to gain ability where we lack it but of figuring out how to increase impact where we already have ability._

_The best people are spiky, and in their lovingly honed spikiness, they find their biggest contribution, their fastest growth, and, ultimately, their greatest joy._

_While the outcomes of high performance are visible and clear, the ingredients of high performance vary from person to person._

Lie #4 The best people are well-rounded

_You are weird. You dont seem weird to you because you are with you all the time. But you are weird, to everyone else, and they are weird to you: gloriously, beautifully weird._

_Positive attention is 30 times more powerful than negative attention in creating high performance on a team._

_People dont need feedback. They need attention, and moreover, attention to what they do the best._

_A focus on strengths increases performance. Therefore, a focus on strengths is what creates growth._

_If you want your people to learn more, pay attention to whats working for them right now, and then build on that._

_Theres one thing you can start to do immediately: get into the conscious habit of looking for whats going well for each of your team members._

_You can fix a machine, you can fix a process, but you cant fix a person in the same way  people arent toasters._

_Excellence is not the opposite of failure; we can never create excellent performances by only fixing poor ones._

_If you see somebody doing something that really works, stopping them and replaying it to them isnt only a high priority interrupt, it is arguably your highest-priority interrupt._

Lie #5 People need feedback

_Although we are not reliable raters of others, people can reliably rate their own experience._

_If youre after good data, be on the lookout for questions that only ask that you rate your own experience, or intended actions._

_Any tool that pretends to reveal who you are is false._

Lie # 6 People can reliably rate other people

_So there is no such thing as having potential. Or rather, there is, but it doesnt mean anything. Or rather, it doesnt mean anything beyond being a human._

_Only certain people have potential; everyone has momentum._

_This notion that some people have lots of potential, while others dont, leads us to miss the gloriously weird possibilities lying hidden in each and every team member, even the ones who, at first blush, seem to have little to offer the teams future._

_Our people tools and processes can never compensate for bad team leaders._

Lie # 7 People have potential

_Teams are where we live, and team leaders can make or break that experience for us._

_We need a new way of thinking. About work. About life._

_Neither you nor your life is in balance, nor will you ever be._

_You can, and should, weave love into your work, no matter what role youre in._

_You have a unique relationship with the world, a relationship that reveals things that only you can see._

_Burnout isnt the absence of balance, but the absence of love._

Lie # 8 Work-life balance matters

_$Leadership$: Its like saying your cat has catness because hes a cat: it might be true, but its hardly helpful to your hamster if he dreams, someday, of being a cat._

_If there were more good leaders, we might be just a little less focused on it $leadership$._

_A leader is someone who has followers, plain and simple._

_We follow a leader because he is deep in something, and he knows what that something is._

_Leading and following are not abstractions. They are human interaction; human relationships._

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