What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even… (2007)

Thanks to @chrisfralic for reminding me how good this book is. So many little gems in here that it makes me, as a coach, jealous. Among my favorites:

"Emotional volatility is not the most reliable leadership tool. When you get angry, you are usually out of control. It’s hard to lead people when you’ve lost control. You may think you have a handle on your temper, that you can use your spontaneous rages to manipulate and motivate people. But it’s very hard to predict how people will react to anger. They will shut down as often as they will perk up. Whenever I hear managers justify anger as a management tool, I wonder about all those other leaders who do not need anger to make their subordinates toe the line. Without anger to strike fear in the troops, how do these steady composed leaders ever get anything accomplished? But the worst thing about anger is how it stifles our ability to change. Once you get a reputation for emotional volatility, you are branded for life."

"We can’t see in ourselves what we can see so clearly in others." ( )

I had heard about this book many times before I queued it up on Audible.com. I wish I would have read it sooner. This is a great one for anyone in a career who wants to or has recently changed jobs. Goldsmith provides insight into how past performance does not promise future results.

Goldsmith discusses 20 behaviors that will stifle or derail a successful career. The habits are very common and easily recognized by others, but not necessarily by oneself. These habits are:

1. Need to win at all costs.
2. Desire to add our (my) two cents to every discussion.
3. Need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
4. Needless sarcasm and cutting remarks that we (I) think make us sound witty and wise.
5. Overuse of "No," "But" or "However."
6. Need to show people we (I) are (am) smarter than they think we (I) are (am.)
7. Use of emotional volatility as a management tool.
8. Need to share our (my) negative thoughts, even if not asked.
9. Refusal to share information in order to exert an advantage.
10. Inability to praise and reward.
11. Annoying way in which we overestimate our (my) contribution to any success.
12. Need to reposition our (my) annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
13. Need to deflect blame from ourselves (myself) and onto events and people from our (my) past.
14. Failure to see that we (I) am treating someone unfairly.
15. Inability to take responsibility for our (my) actions.
16. Act of not listening.
17. Failure to express gratitude.
18. Need to attack the innocent, even though they are usually only trying to help us (me).
19. Need to blame anyone but ourselves (me).
20. Excessive need to be "me."
21. Goal obsession at the expense of a larger mission.

He discusses each of these behaviors, how they are damaging and provides guidance and examples of how to overcome each. I found it very helpful to have the list of behaviors, as I can see myself performing some of them. That probably means I perform most of them, as it is sometimes hard to identify ones own faults. In his executive coaching, Goldsmith uses 360 degree feedback from supervisors, peers, subordinates, spouses and children to help him coach his clients.

I found a couple of the methods he suggests for making changes very useful. I have talked about them on my blog. The most helpful I have employed is the coach or accountability buddy. She and I meet once a week to discuss our goals and ask for a report. This accounting has spurred me to better results than anything has before. I am meeting the intermediate steps to my goals and am feeling better about myself. Having someone to hold me responsible has been great. Doing the same for my buddy has been a rewarding experience as well. I spend time thinking about her roadblocks and ways around them. In the process, I have found solutions for myself.

The other method Goldsmith talks about regularly is paying a penalty for bad behavior. He recommends a cash forfeit for every slip. After a couple hundred dollars, you WILL make a change. He knows. His staff told him about one of his foibles and he made the commitment to them to change and backed it up with money. By lunchtime, he had lost so much money, he hid in his office for the rest of the day to avoid losing more. It works. I haven't used this one yet, but I will keep it in mind should the need arise.

I highly recommend this book. I will probably go back and purchase a hard copy of this book so I can make notes. I know it inspired me quite a few times to make notes while I was running - not an easy thing to do and keep up a pace. It is that kind of book. Read it with a pen and paper. You will find important things to capture. ( )

Substance: Useful information about identifying and overcoming career-limiting personality styles and the underlying character flaws. ( )

Provides insight on how your habits may limit you and how to overcome them. Focuses on leadership roles and how you are perceived as well as improving communication skills. ( )

Intersting thoughts...Most successful people possess extraordinary skills;that’s why they do well. But once people attain success, their bad habits or behavioralfoibles move to the forefront. In fact, often, the more successful leaders become, themore their issues relate to their behavior, and the more power a behavioral problem hasto halt their rise or contribute to their downfall.

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. ( )

Had I had access to the ideas in Marshall Goldsmith’s book years ago, I would probably be better off.

At my advanced age, I have spent too much time working for myself. Sure, I recognize the importance of teams and team work. But I refer descending from my aerie, joining the team, completing the project and returning to the solace of personal contemplation Years ago, I found this works best for me.

Goldsmith, an executive coach, argues in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, that success delusion, holds most of us back. We, (read I):

1. Overestimate our (my) contribution to a project.
2. Take credit, partial or complete, for successes that belong to others.
3. Have an elevated opinion of our (my) professional skills and our (my) standing among our (my) peers.
4. Ignore the failures and time-consuming dead-ends we (I) create.
5. Exaggerate our (my) projects’ impact on net profits by discounting the real and hidden costs built into them.

All of these flaws are borne out of success, yet here is where the book becomes interesting. Unlike others, Goldsmith does limit himself to teaching us (me) what to do. He goes the next step. He teaches us (me) what to stop. He does not address flaws of skill, intelligence or personality. No, he addresses challenges in interpersonal behavior, those egregious everyday annoyances that make your (my) workplace more noxious that it needs to be. They are the:

1. Need to win at all costs.
2. Desire to add our (my) two cents to every discussion.
3. Need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
4. Needless sarcasm and cutting remarks that we (I) think make us sound witty and wise.
5. Overuse of “No,” “But” or “However.”
6. Need to show people we (I) are (am) smarter than they think we (I) are (am.)
7. Use of emotional volatility as a management tool.
8. Need to share our (my) negative thoughts, even if not asked.
9. Refusal to share information in order to exert an advantage.
10. Inability to praise and reward.
11. Annoying way in which we overestimate our (my) contribution to any success.
12. Need to reposition our (my) annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
13. Need to deflect blame from ourselves (myself) and onto events and people from our (my) past.
14. Failure to see that we (I) am treating someone unfairly.
15. Inability to take responsibility for our (my) actions.
16. Act of not listening.
17. Failure to express gratitude.
18. Need to attack the innocent, even though they are usually only trying to help us (me).
19. Need to blame anyone but ourselves (me).
20. Excessive need to be “me.”
21. Goal obsession at the expense of a larger mission.

It is too late for me. I am too dysfunction. If there is still hope for you, this book is a witty, well-written start to addressing your unconscious, annoying habits that limit your ability to achieve a higher level of success.

Penned by the Pointed Pundit
January 24, 2007
9:38:12 PM ( )