Nine Lies About Work Book Review

This article will take you through my top highlights from the book Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall.

This is the best book I have read regarding leadership and management. As a result of reading it, some of my fundamental beliefs about work have changed. I believe this book will make me a better business leader and could do the same for you too.

The Nine Lies

Do you believe any of the following statements? If so, this book is for you.

1. People care about which company they work for
2. The best plan wins
3. The best companies cascade goals
4. The best people are well-rounded
5. People need feedback
6. People can reliably rate other people
7. People have potential
8. Work-life balance matters most
9. Leadership is a thing

Engage with your employees

One of the biggest problems that many businesses face is ensuring we have engaged employees.

According to research from Gallup, only 36% of employees are actively engaged, whereas the rest are either not engaged (51%) or actively disengaged (13%) meaning they are miserable at work and spreading their misery to coworkers around them.

If you want engaged employees you have to give them attention.

Team leaders who check in every week on a one-on-one basis see a 13% increase in productivity vs team leaders who check-in monthly who achieve -5%.

Interestingly, this rule of weekly one-on-one touchpoints with your team also acts as a guide to team sizing. If you don’t have time to perform these catchups then your team is too large for you to manage effectively.

The truth then is that people need attention. When you give it to us in a safe and non-judgmental environment we will come and stay and play and work…

Do you have a high performing team?

Most employee surveys are ineffective. They tend to have very vague questions about the company or management which are subjective and hard to use to take positive actions.

The book provides the following 8 key questions to ask your people to determine if you have built a high performing team:

1. I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.
2. At work I clearly understand what is expected of me.
3. In my team I am surrounded by people who share my values
4. I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work
5. My teammates have my back
6. I know I will be recognized for excellent work
7. I have great confidence in my company’s future
8. In my work I am always challenged to grow

These questions focus on how each employee feels which is the only thing they can rate. The questions utilise strong wording (e.g. always or excellent) which will drive more insightful scoring.

Try these with your team.

Cascading goals do not work

In many organisations, managers are told to cascade their goals to their team. The team will therefore be given a clear set of objectives and metrics to perform against. This methodology is a control mechanism.

If you consider your team to be a group of experts with individual strengths and interests you should rather cascade meaning. They don’t need a list of instructions and actions, rather give them the vision, meaning and methods to allow them to define their actions where they can most effectively contribute and excel. Your job as a leader is to inspire action not instruct it.

The downsides of feedback and focussing on development needs.

This “Lie” struck a chord with me, as I had been pushing my team to build a “culture of feedback”. As an individual, I am constantly looking to improve myself and fix issues around me, both in my professional and personal life. I mistakenly thought that constant feedback (of all kinds) was the route to do this.

If you are looking to achieve outsized returns or outcomes then you must focus on your team’s strengths. If you try to address only the negatives or development areas of your team you will build an average organisation.

For example, if your best data analyst is a weak public speaker and does not show any interest in speaking, then what is the benefit of focusing your attention on “fixing” this weakness? Should you not rather encourage and explore their insights into data? Logically, the latter will produce a better long-term outcome for your team.

Instead, look for great performance and every time you see something special make sure to stop what you are doing and highlight it. The normal behaviour for this type of “feedback interrupt” is to do this when you see errors. Organisational growth will follow the focus of your attention… so focus on the positive and your team will accelerate.

You must have all experienced this situation where your boss says one good thing and one bad… the brain tenses and you invariably focus on the negative. This is a natural reaction as it triggers the fight or flight reflex.

With children, instead of asking how they can improve their homework which will likewise trigger fight or flight, ask what they aspire to achieve and how they can do this.

3-1 or 5-1

This is the best ratio of positive highlights vs addressing mistakes

People are poor at rating others so why do we do it?

Another common exercise we go through at work is to rate our team, particularly around salary planning time.

Unfortunately, many research studies have shown that humans are particularly bad at rating others. Just think about the judging at your favourite sporting event (UFC, Ice Skating, Gymnastics etc).

One study looked at 4000 managers who went through a 360 survey and were rated by direct reports, managers and peers. After examining all this data the majority of variation in ratings (54%) was driven by the unique personality of the rater and followed their rating pattern.

Ratings reveal more about the rater than the people being rated.

This phenomenon is called the idiosyncratic rater effect. Next time you get rated at work as them how they are adjusting for this effect… you will probably get blank stares.

The love / loath balance

You will often see companies talking about work/life balance and how it is important for their employees. They might provide additional rest days or yoga lessons at lunchtime. This makes the implicit assumption that work-time is bad and non-work-time is good.

This is a fundamentally flawed thought process and one which is detrimental to the performance and the health of your team.

A better way of thinking about this topic is examining your love/loath balance. This is the amount of time you spend in a given week doing things you love vs. things you loath.

Those who reported they spent at least 20% of their time doing things they loved had a dramatically lower risk of burnout. Each percentage point reduction below this 20% level resulted in a commensurate and almost linear increase in burnout risk.

A piece of advice they gave which I like is to take a notepad with you for a week and every time you experience a task you love or loath, write it down.

Next time you are talking with a team member, ask them what they love doing at work. Your focus should be to make sure they spend more time loving their work.

Defining what it takes to be a leader

The final “lie” covered is the concept of what it takes to be a great leader.

The only determinant of whether anyone is leading is whether anyone else is following. 

So the question about what makes a great leader is simply, do they make people want to follow them?

People follow leaders for many reasons, there is no 4-blocker of attributes that define the perfect leader. Look at all the great leaders you know, they have flaws and idiosyncrasies. But for one reason or another, they inspire others. They can lay out a compelling vision and drive people to spend their time and energy for that individual.

People follow others if they are good at something. We like the “spikes” in their personalities and follow mastery if it is relevant to us. We follow someone who we can trust to guide us into the future.

The Truths

1. People care which team they’re on because that’s where work actually happens
2. The best intelligence wins because the world moves too fast for plans
3. The best companies cascade meaning because people want to know what they all share
4. The best people are spikey because uniqueness is a feature not a bug
5. People need attention because we all want to be seen for who we are at our best
6. People can reliably rate their own experience because that’s all we have
7. People have momentum because we all move through the world differently
8. Love in work matters most because that is what work is really for
9. We follow spikes because spikes give us certainty

I hope you have enjoyed this book review, please subscribe to my mailing list if you want more content on leadership and sustainability.

Please comment with your thought and share with others who might benefit from this great book.