What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

by Marshall Goldsmith

faulty behavior,

are not flaws of skill.

What we’re dealing with here are challenges in interpersonal behavior, often leadership behavior. They are the egregious everyday annoyances that make your workplace substantially more noxious than it needs to be. They don’t happen in a vacuum. They are transactional flaws performed by one person against others.

it’s hard to find successful people who embody too many of these failings. That’s good—because it simplifies our task of achieving long-term positive change.

These faults are simple to correct.

Although this stuff is simple, it’s not easy (there’s a difference).

Whittle the list down to the one or two vital issues, and you’ll know where to start.

behavioral issues become so important at the upper rungs of the corporate ladder. 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.

we assume our doctor knows medicine, so we judge him on “bedside manner” issues—how he tolerates our questions, how he delivers bad news, even how he apologizes for keeping us cooling our heels too long in his waiting room. None of this is taught in medical school.

When people ask me if the leaders I coach can really change their behavior, my answer is this: As we advance in our careers, behavioral changes are often the only significant changes we can make.

you may have improved the content of my idea by 5 percent, but you’ve reduced my commitment to executing it by 50 percent, because you’ve taken away my ownership of the idea. My idea is now your idea—and I walk out of your office less enthused about it than when I walked in. That’s the fallacy of added value. Whatever we gain in the form of a better idea is lost many times over in our employees’ diminished commitment to the concept.

the higher up you go in the organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make it about winning yourself.

One of my clients, who’s now the CEO of a major pharmaceutical, said that once he got into the habit of taking a breath before he talked, he realized that at least half of what he was going to say wasn’t worth saying. Even though he believed he could add value, he realized he had more to gain by not winning.

no matter how well-intentioned the CEO’s comments are, the net result is that grading people’s answers—rather than just accepting them without comment—makes people hesitant and defensive. People don’t like to be critiqued, however obliquely. That’s why passing judgment is one of the more insidious ways we push people away and hold ourselves back from greater success. The only sure thing that comes out of passing judgment on people’s efforts to help is that they won’t help us again.

One of the awkward situations in my line of work is clients being concerned about whether I approve or disapprove of their behavior—and by extension how I feel about the change they’re trying to make. I try to disabuse them of this thinking immediately.

You are not allowed to judge any helpful comment offered by a colleague or friend or family member. No matter what you privately think of the suggestion, you must keep your thoughts to yourself, hear the person out, and say, “Thank you.”

Try this: For one week treat every idea that comes your way from another person with complete neutrality. Think of yourself as a human Switzerland. Don’t take sides. Don’t express an opinion. Don’t judge the comment. If you find yourself constitutionally incapable of just saying “Thank you,” make it an innocuous, “Thanks, I hadn’t considered that.” Or, “Thanks. You’ve given me something to think about.”

If you can’t self-monitor your judgmental responses, “hire” a friend to call you out and bill you hard cash every time you make a judgmental comment. It could be your spouse at home, your assistant, or a buddy at work. If you’re docked $10 for each incident of gratuitous judgment, you’ll soon feel the same pain you’ve been inflicting on others—and stop.

Press people to list the destructive comments they have made in the last 24 hours and they will quite often come up blank. We make destructive comments without thinking—and therefore without noticing or remembering. But the objects of our scorn remember. Press them and they will accurately replay every biting comment we’ve made at their expense.

for his fortieth birthday, his colleagues and friends held a “roast” where the evening’s theme required everyone to recite one biting remark that he had made over the years at their expense.

“Of the dozens of nasty funny comments I heard that night, I didn’t remember saying one of them. That’s how thoughtless they were. Also, my friends didn’t hate me for it. They may be called ‘destructive’ comments but in my group they didn’t do any destruction. People considered it a part of who I am, and it wasn’t a problem.”

How do we stop making destructive comments?

If you ever hear me make another destructive comment about another person, I’ll pay you $10 each time you bring it to my attention. I’m going to break this habit.”

they would trick me into making nasty comments because they wanted the $10. They’d mention names of people guaranteed to bring up some bile—and I took the bait each time.

My experience proves a simple point: Spend a few thousand dollars and you will get better!

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?”

Before speaking, ask yourself: 1. Will this comment help our customers? 2. Will this comment help our company? 3. Will this comment help the person I’m talking to? 4. Will this comment help the person I’m talking about?

If the answer is no, the correct strategy does not require a Ph.D. to implement. Don’t say it.

The general response from the other person (unless he or she is a saint willing to turn the other cheek) is to dispute your position and fight back. From there, the conversation dissolves into a pointless war. You’re no longer communicating. You’re both trying to win.

Pay extra-close attention to those moments when you use these words in sentences whose ostensible purpose is agreement with what the other party is saying.

in addition to self-monitoring, it’s easy to monetize the solution. Do what I did with the manufacturing COO. Ask a friend or colleague to charge you money every time you say “no,” “but,” or “however.”

Stopping this behavior is not hard—a three-step drill in which you (a) pause before opening your mouth to ask yourself, “Is anything I say worth it?” (b) conclude that it isn’t, and (c) say, “Thank you.”

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. Pretty soon that is all people know about you.

We save a special place in our minds for our chronically angry colleagues. No matter what else they do, we brand them as easily combustible. When we talk about them, the first words out of people’s mouths are, “I hear he has a temper.” That hothead image is tough to live down. Given the fact that our efforts to change are judged not by us but by the people around us, you may need years of calm, collected behavior to shake such a reputation. How do you stop getting angry?

anger is rarely someone else’s fault. It’s a flaw that’s solely our own.

A Buddhist legend tells of a young farmer who was covered with sweat as he paddled his boat up the river. He was going upstream to deliver his produce to the village. He was in a hurry. It was a hot day and he wanted to make his delivery and get home before dark. As he looked ahead, he spied another vessel, heading rapidly downstream toward his boat. This vessel seemed to be making every effort to hit him. He rowed furiously to get out of the way, but it didn’t seem to help. He yelled at the other vessel, “Change direction, you idiot! You are going to hit me. The river is wide. Be careful!” His screaming was to no avail. The other vessel hit his boat with a sickening thud. He was enraged as he stood up and cried out to the other vessel, “You moron! How could you manage to hit my boat in the middle of this wide river? What is wrong with you?” As he looked at the other vessel, he realized that there was no one in the other boat. He was screaming at an empty vessel that had broken free of its moorings and was going downstream with the current.

USA battleship talking to the Canadians (supposedly, on a ship), and ordering them to change directions in order to prevent a collision! It turns out that the Canadians were on an island.

The lesson is simple. There is never anyone in the other boat. When we are angry, we are screaming at an empty vessel.

Getting angry doesn’t improve the situation and life’s too short to waste on feeling bad. A sage would say that the person making us so angry cannot help who he is. Getting mad at him for being who he is makes as much sense as getting mad at our desk for being a desk. If we had his parents, his genes, and his background, we would be him. That’s easier said than done, but it comes closer to the real issue: More often than not, we might as well be him because we are really angry at ourselves.

I can help you lose your reputation as a person who gets angry with one simple piece of advice. It is this: If you keep your mouth shut, no one can ever know how you really feel.

The next time you start to speak out of anger, look in the mirror. In every case, you’ll find that the root of your rage is not “out there” but “in here.”

We employ it (or its variations such as “The only problem with that is . . .”) to establish that our expertise or authority is superior to someone else’s. It doesn’t mean that what we say is correct or useful. It’s simply a way of inserting ourselves into a situation as chief arbiter or senior critic. The only problem with that (to coin a phrase) is how little we like or respect our critics. They’re annoying. And over time, we treat them as if they’re carrying avian flu. We avoid them. We stop working with them. We refuse to help them.

yokels

The problem with not sharing information—for whatever reason—is that it rarely achieves the desired effect. You may think you’re gaining an edge and consolidating power, but you’re actually breeding mistrust. In order to have power, you need to inspire loyalty rather than fear and suspicion. Withholding information is nothing more than a misplaced need to win.

inviolate.

In withholding your recognition of another person’s contribution to a team’s success, you are not only sowing injustice and treating people unfairly but you are depriving people of the emotional payoff that comes with success. They cannot revel in the success or accept congratulations—because you have choked off that option. Instead they feel forgotten, ignored, pushed to the side. And they resent you for it. If you really want to tick people off, don’t recognize their contributions.

Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others.

One of my clients taught me a wonderful technique for improving in the area of providing recognition. 1. He first made a list of all of the important groups of people in his life (friends, family, direct reports, customers, etc.). 2. He then wrote down the names of every important person in each group. 3. Twice a week, on Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon, he would review the list of names and ask himself, “Did someone on this page do something that I should recognize?” 4. If the answer was “yes” he gave them some very quick recognition, either by phone, e-mail, voice mail, or a note. If the answer was “no” he did nothing. He didn’t want to be a phony.

larceny.

Once you’ve assembled the list, take apart each episode and ask yourself if it’s in any way possible that someone else might deserve the credit for “your” achievement. If you showed up on time for a meeting across town, is it because you are heroically punctual and thoughtful? Or was it because your assistant hounded you that morning about the meeting and actually chased you off a phone call and made sure you were out the door to get across town in sufficient time? If you came up with a good idea in a meeting, did it spring unbidden from your fertile imagination? Or was it inspired by an insightful comment from someone else in the room? As you go through your list, consider this make-or-break question: If any of the other people involved in your episodes were looking at the situation, would they accord you as much credit as you are claiming for yourself? Or would they hand it out to someone else, perhaps even themselves? It’s possible as you review your list that you conclude you deserve all the credit. But I doubt even the most self-involved among us would see things this myopically. We have a strong bias to remember events in a light most favorable to us. This drill exposes that bias and makes us consider the possibility that someone else’s perspective is closer to the truth.

There simply is no excuse for making excuses.