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 ( )