Quincy, see her feature in the august
2019 issue of Pulse. Pitsikalis then
highlighted the eight initial recipients
of Beauty changes Lives’ iSPa
Scholarship before introducing the
winner of the 2019 iSPa Visionary
award: Jeremy mccarthy.
in a succinct and poignant speech,
mccarthy shared the origins of his
career, which began 30 years ago.
Working in spa was the first time that
mccarthy ever felt “a calling,” and he
decided to work in spa until something
better came along. for mccarthy,
“nothing better has ever come along.”
The Freethinking Approach
if Susan cain’s keynote was about how
to adapt to the nature of your team
members, then marcus Buckingham’s
was about how to take those natures
and build upon them.
Buckingham, head of people and
performance at aDP, is a renowned
expert on increasing performance and
employee engagement by amplifying
strengths. his high-energy keynote
began by encouraging everyone in the
room to look at problems with a
“freethinking” approach; that is, setting
aside one’s preconceptions before
examining a problem.
the problem faced by
employers worldwide: only
17 percent of workers are
engaged at work. the
freethinking solution:
“Your strengths
are your sources
of power. All of
you can get
better, but it
doesn’t mean
rewiring your
brain.”
— MARCUS BUCKINGHAM
study how and why those 17 percent
are engaged, not why the other 83
percent aren’t. Buckingham did this
and discovered that many of the ideas
that leaders accept as truth are, in fact
lies. for example, the belief that
people have potential: “no they don’t!”
said Buckingham. “everybody can get
better,” and no one person has more
‘potential’ than another—just a
different skillset.
One Lie and One Big Truth
Buckingham zeroed in on one lie to
cover in-depth with the crowd of nearly
2000: that the best employees are well-
rounded. “When you study
excellence,”
Buckingham said,
“you’ll find that
it is idiosyn-
cratic.
excellence
starts looking
really weird
quickly.” the
way to bring out
excellence in one’s
employees and ignite
their passion is to further develop
their strengths. the goal is to create a
deliberately skilled employee, rather
than a jack-of-all-trades. Doing so,
according to Buckingham, is proven to
increase performance and
engagement.
Buckingham offered a succinct
summation: “Your
strengths are your sources
of power. all of you can get better, but
it doesn’t mean rewiring your brain. it
means taking existing patterns and
sharpening them…. the raw material
for your future goodness is your
current goodness.”
the audience was urged to practice
“strengths replays” with their teams:
rather than correcting poor
performance, look at an employee’s
work and evaluate what they did well.
then, encourage that strength. “We
think good job is the end of the
sentence,” said Buckingham. “But it’s
the beginning.” after saying good job,
one should tell an employee exactly
what it is that they did well.
When one imbalances their life—or
the lives of their employees—towards
their strengths, they’ll begin to “find
love in what [they] do,” noted
Buckingham. finding love in what one
does is key to avoiding burnout and
boosting retention. Buckingham
suggested carrying a blank notepad
around for a week. When one loves
something, they should write it down.
When one loathes something, they
should write that down too. then, they
can use that list to begin shaping their
lives around what they love. if one
loves even just 20 percent of what they
do at work, the risk of burnout is
dramatically reduced. or, as
Buckingham quipped, “a little bit of
love goes a long way.” n
novEmbEr/dEcEmbEr
■
PULSE 2019
29