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They may think (like Chevy Chase’s famous line), “I’m successful and you’re not.” Which is their license to think, “Why change if it’s working?”
That’s what we’re talking about here in the workplace: People who do one annoying thing repeatedly on the job—and don’t realize that this small flaw may sabotage their otherwise golden career. And, worse, they do not realize that (a) it’s happening and (b) they can fix it.
Golfers, like business people, also tend to be delusional about their weaknesses, which they deny. This explains why they spend much of their time practicing what they’re already good at and little time on areas of their game that need work.
We • Overestimate our contribution to a project • Take credit, partial or complete, for successes that truly belong to others • Have an elevated opinion of our professional skills and our standing among our peers • Conveniently ignore the costly failures and time-consuming dead-ends we have created • Exaggerate our projects’ impact on net profits because we discount the real and hidden costs built into them (the costs are someone else’s problems; the success is ours)
If we had a complete grip on reality, seeing every situation for exactly what it is, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. After all, the most realistic people in our society are the chronically depressed.
Successful people have one idea coursing silently through their veins and brains all day. It’s a mantra that goes like this: “I have succeeded. I have succeeded. I have succeeded.” It’s their way of telling themselves that they have the skills and talent to win and keep winning. Whether or not they actually voice it inside their heads, this is what successful people are telling themselves.
Successful people tend to have a high “internal locus of control.”
One of the greatest mistakes of successful people is the assumption, “I behave this way, and I achieve results. Therefore, I must be achieving results because I behave this way.”
“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.”
Likewise, 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.
we lose this common sense in the can-do environment of an organization—where there is no system for honoring the avoidance of a bad decision or the cessation of bad behavior. Our performance reviews are solely based on what we’ve done, what numbers we’ve delivered, what increases we have posted against last year’s results. Even the seemingly minor personal goals are couched in terms of actions we’ve initiated, not behavior we have stopped. We get credit for being punctual, not for stopping our lateness.
Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations—when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.
Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.
Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.
Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked.
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.
As we advance in our careers, behavioral changes are often the only significant changes we can make.
Rather than just pat me on the back and say, “Great idea!” your inclination (because you have to add value) is to say, “Good idea, but it’d be better if you tried it this way.” The problem is, 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’
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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.
“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.
Being smart turns people on. Announcing how smart you are turns them off.
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.”
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 does the floor traffic around your desk compare with other colleagues? Are you a popular item, or are you beginning to gather dust on the shelf? If you get even the vaguest sense that there is an imaginary “Do Not Enter” sign outside your office, you’ve just become a little smarter about what you must change.
Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others.
If we aren’t careful, we can wind up treating people at work like dogs: Rewarding those who heap unthinking, unconditional admiration upon us. What behavior do we get in return? A virulent case of the suck-ups.
Gratitude is a skill that we can never display too often. And yet for some reason, we are cheap and chary with gratitude—as if it were rare Bordeaux wine that we can serve only on special occasions. Gratitude is not a limited resource, nor is it costly. It is as abundant as air. We breathe it in but forget to exhale.
It’s an interesting equation: Less me. More them. Equals success. Keep this in mind when you find yourself resisting change because you’re clinging to a false—or pointless—notion of “me.” It’s not about you. It’s about what other people think of you.
As I say, this is why I’ve given goal obsession its own special corner. It’s not a flaw. It’s a creator of flaws. It’s the force that distorts our otherwise exemplary talents and good intentions, turning them into something we no longer admire.
The journalist/novelist Tom Wolfe has a theory he calls information compulsion. He says that people have an overwhelming need to tell you something that you don’t know, even when it’s not in their best interest. Journalists would have a hard time surviving without information compulsion. People wouldn’t call them with tips on a good story, or agree to be interviewed, or spill secrets about their company, or hand out delicious quotes.
Successful people only have two problems dealing with negative feedback. However, they are big problems: (a) they don’t want to hear it from us and (b) we don’t want to give it to them.
Over 95 percent of the members in most successful groups believe that they perform in the top half of their group. While this is statistically ridiculous, it is psychologically real. Giving people negative feedback means “proving” they are wrong. Proving to successful people that they are wrong works just about as well as making them change. Not gonna happen.
A variation on this drill is making sure you are the earliest person to arrive at a group meeting. Turn the sound off and observe how people respond to you as they enter. What they do is a clue about what they think of you. Do they smile when they see you and pull up a chair next to you? Do they barely acknowledge your presence and sit across the room? Note how each person responds to you. If the majority of people shy away from you, that’s a disturbing pattern that’s hitting you over the head with some serious truth. You have some serious work to do.
Pick one thing that you want to get better at. It could be anything that matters to you—from getting in shape to giving more recognition to lowering your golf handicap. Then list the positive benefits that will accrue to you and the world if you achieve your goal. For example, “I want to get in better shape. If I get in shape, one benefit to me is that . . .” And then you complete the sentence. It’s a simple exercise. “If I get in shape, I will . . . live longer.” That’s one benefit. Then keep doing it. “If I get in shape, I’ll feel better about myself.” That’s two. “If I get in shape, I’ll be
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I said, “I’m beginning to see a pattern here. As I told you, I can’t help you make more money. But I can get you to confront this question: Do you really want to have a funeral where you’re the featured attraction and the only attendees are people who came to make sure you’re dead? Basically, that’s where you’re headed.” For the first time, Mike looked stricken. “They’re going to fire me, aren’t they?” he asked. “Not only are they going to fire you,” I said, “but everyone will be dancing in the halls when you go!”
The lesson: Your flaws at work don’t vanish when you walk through the front door at home.
When you challenge the accuracy of your self-aggrandizing remarks, you’re flipping your world upside down—and seeing that you’re no different from anyone else.
I tell my clients, “It’s a lot harder to change people’s perception of your behavior than it is to change your behavior. In fact, I calculate that you have to get 100% better in order to get 10% credit for it from your coworkers.”
If you do something wonderful and saintly, I will regard it as the exception to the rule; you’re still an arrogant jerk. Within that framework it’s almost impossible for us to be perceived as improving, no matter how hard we try. However, the odds improve considerably if you tell people that you are trying to change. Suddenly, your efforts are on their radar screen. You’re beginning to chip away at their preconceptions.
Your odds improve even more if you ask everyone for ideas to help you get better. Now your coworkers become invested in you; they pay attention to you to see if you’re paying attention to their suggestions.
JACK NICKLAUS SAID THAT 80 percent of a successful golf shot begins with a proper grip and how you stand over the ball. In other words, success is almost a foregone conclusion before you exert one muscle. It’s the same with listening: 80 percent of our success in learning from other people is based upon how well we listen. In other words, success or failure is determined before we do anything.
Basically, there are three things that all good listeners do: They think before they speak; they listen with respect; and they’re always gauging their response by asking themselves, “Is it worth it?” Let’s examine each one and see if it makes us better listeners.
“Before speaking, I take a breath and ask myself one question, ‘Is it worth it?’ I learned that 50 percent of what I was going to say was correct—maybe—but saying it wasn’t worth it.”
What impressed me was that when he asked a question, he waited for the answer. He not only listened, he made me feel like I was the only person in the room.” I submit that Tom’s last 13 words perfectly describe the single skill that separates the great from the near-great.
Television interviewers like Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, and Diane Sawyer, I’m told by people who’ve met them, have it. When they’re talking to you, on camera or off, you feel as if you’re the only one who matters to them. It’s the skill that defines them.
Eliminate any striving to impress the other person with how smart or funny you are. Your only aim is to let the other person feel that he or she is accomplishing that.
If you can do that, you’ll uncover a glaring paradox: The more you subsume your desire to shine, the more you will shine in the other person’s eyes.
No matter how far along you are in life, think about your career. Who are the people most responsible for your success? Write down the first 25 names that come to mind. Ask yourself, “Have I ever told them how grateful I am for their help?” If you’re like the rest of us, you probably have fallen short in this area.
Writing a thank you note forces you to confront the humbling fact that you have not achieved your success alone. You had help along the way.
