Marcus Buckingham, called the “founder of the strengths revolution,” is known for encouraging leaders to focus on what they do best, rather than on weaknesses. In a Tuesday keynote at the Association for Talent Development (ATD) international conference in San Diego, CA, Buckingham encouraged the audience to become “students of excellence.”
To explain why, Buckingham pointed to a disconnect: we want health, but we study disease. We want happiness, but we study depression. What would happen, he asked, if we studied excellence instead of studying failure?
“Excellence isn’t the opposite of failure,” he said. “Excellence has its own pattern. You can’t infer what excellence looks like from studying failure.”
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