This book really isn't what I thought it'd be from the title. I was hoping it'd be a guide on how to unstick your career -- how to evaluate opportunities and set career goals.

Not at all. This book is for people whose overcompetitiveness and self-centeredness are sabotaging their success, who suffer from one or more of the following habits:

#1 Winning too much: overcompetitive regarding trivial things
#2 Adding too much value: making suggestions that come across as criticism
#3 Passing judgment
#4 Making destructive comments: gratuitous sarcasm
#5 Starting with no, but, however: dismissing others' ideas while pretending to agree
#6 Telling the world how smart we are
#7 Speaking when angry
#8 Negativity, or "Let me explain why that won't work"
#9 Withholding information: being "too busy" to debrief direct reports
#10 Failing to give recognition
#11 Claiming credit we don't deserve
#12 Making excuses
#13 Clinging to the past
#14 Playing favorites
#15 Refusing to experss regret/apologize
#16 Not listening
#17 Failing to express gratitude
#18 Punishing the messenger
#19 Passing the buck: failing to accept responsibility
#20 An excessive need to be "me": accepting the above flaws as "just the way I am"

The tagline "How Successful People Become Even More Successful" is a trick to get successful people to pick up a book that is going to criticize them right and left.

But not for naught. The second half of the book presents a methodology for breaking these habits, by addressing them head-on. Apologize to others for your past mistakes, ask for and accept their honest feedback, and enlist them to hold you accountable in the future. Give those you supervise explicit permission -- or even incentivize them -- to call you on your flaws. Eventually, the hope is that you'll start recognizing these tendencies before you act on them.

Even if you aren't the "type" this book is trying to re-educate, the first half of the book is valuable because everyone can benefit from a greater awareness of the habits. They are the insidious kind that nobody realizes they have.

This is a worthwhile - even important read if you've been a manager for a while. I recommend buying this in print because it will turn into part of your management reference library - like Drucker's "The Effective Executive". You can also get a lot of the content free at Marshal Goldsmith's web site. ( )

A do-it-yourself coaching book to help you review your career, I'm at a point of frustration and stagnation and found it particularly relevant. ( )

Shows me my faults that are hindering my leadership

This is a business book that needs to be on the shelf of anybody who wants to get better at their job, especially those who may not see a direct path to the next step or who realize that they may not be as successful in their current role as they have been in a past one. It's a mature wake-up call that asks you to gather feedback from those surrounding you in your workplace and then to act decisively upon it so that they will know you are addressing your shortcomings and that you have heard and appreciated their input, no matter how brutal it was to receive.

Marshall writes with the practiced ease of somebody used to speaking truth to power. He's a diplomat and a realist who has earned his stripes the hard way - directly coaching executives. He's come up with a way for stalled careers to start rolling again. While it's not easy (in fact, it can be downright painful), it is honest and you may even come out a more insightful person for following through on it. The plan to improve starts through the solicitation of 360-degree feedback. At this phase, you gather feedback from your co-workers, management, and direct reports. There are helpful tips for getting to this in as objective manner as possible in the book. You then aggregate the feedback, own up to what you're going to change in a very public way, and set about fixing it, re-soliciting feedback when it makes sense to do so.

Read the rest of my review at The Puget News. ( )