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the denial mechanisms. Couple them with the very positive interpretations that successful people assign to (a) their past performance, (b) their ability to influence their success (rather than just being lucky), (c) their optimistic belief that their success will continue in the future, and (d) their sense of control over their own destiny (as opposed to being controlled by external forces), and you have a volatile cocktail of resistance to change.
that’s the paradox of success: These beliefs that carried us here may be holding us back in our quest to go there.
Successful people tend to have a high “internal locus of control.” In other words, they do not feel like victims of fate.
Overcommitment can be as serious an obstacle to change as believing that you don’t need fixing or that your flaws are part of the reason you’re successful.
Peter Drucker say, the wisest was, “We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.”
the recognition and reward systems in most organizations are totally geared to acknowledge the doing of something. We get credit for doing something good. We rarely get credit for ceasing to do something bad. Yet they are flip sides of the same coin.
All other things being equal, your people skills (or lack of them) become more pronounced the higher up you go. In fact, even when all other things are not equal, your people skills often make the difference in how high you go.
If the need to win is the dominant gene in our success DNA—the overwhelming reason we’re successful—then winning too much is a perverse genetic mutation that can limit our success.
the higher up you go in the organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make it about winning yourself.
The feedback I’ve collected says that “avoids destructive comments” is one of the two items with the lowest correlation between how we see ourselves and how others see us. In other words, we don’t think we make destructive comments, but the people who know us disagree.
In an environment where everyone’s preaching the value of teamwork and reaching out in the organization, what happens to the quality of teamwork and cooperation when we stab our coworkers in the back in front of other people? It does not go up.
Destructive comments are an easy habit to fall into, especially among people who habitually rely on candor as an effective management tool. Trouble is, candor can easily become a weapon. People permit themselves to issue destructive comments under the excuse that they are true. The fact that a destructive comment is true is irrelevant. The question is not, “Is it true?” but rather, “Is it worth it?”
If we can stop excusing ourselves, we can get better at almost anything we choose.
Understanding the past is perfectly admissible if your issue is accepting the past. But if your issue is changing the future, understanding will not take you there.
the first step I help every successful person take in order to become more successful. I teach them to apologize—face to face—to every coworker who has agreed to help them get better.
when somebody makes a suggestion or gives you ideas, you’re either going to learn more or learn nothing. But you’re not going to learn less. Hearing people out does not make you dumber. So, thank them for trying to help.
A leader who cannot shoulder the blame is not someone we will follow blindly into battle. We instinctively question that individual’s character, dependability, and loyalty to us. And so we hold back on our loyalty to him or her.
Passing the buck is the dark flip side of claiming credit that others deserve. Instead of depriving others of their rightful glory for a success, we wrongfully saddle them with the shame of our failure.
A person who thinks he can do no wrong usually can’t admit that he’s wrong.
Basically, we accept feedback that is consistent with our self-image and reject feedback that is inconsistent.
The Four Commitments. I need them to commit to: 1. Let go of the past. 2. Tell the truth. 3. Be supportive and helpful—not cynical or negative. 4. Pick something to improve yourself—so everyone is focused more on “improving” than “judging.”
Whatever real or imagined sins you have committed against people in the past, they are long past correction. You can’t do anything to erase them. So, you need to ask people to let go of the past. This is simple, but it is not easy.
People are just as likely to suspect or resent their superiors at work as respect and admire them. So you have to remove any and all of their judgmental impulses from the equation.
change is not a one-way street. It involves two parties: the person who’s changing and the people who notice it.
When we ask a friend, “What do you think I should do in this situation?” we are setting up the expectation that we want an answer—and that we will give the answer full consideration and quite possibly use it. We are not announcing that we’re initiating an argument. But that’s exactly what we’re doing when we ask for feedback from someone and then immediately express our opinion.
Treat every piece of advice as a gift or a compliment and simply say, “Thank you.”
feedback comes to us in three forms: Solicited, unsolicited, and observation.
