What Got You Here Won't Get You There
Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter, 2007
Why do successful people so rarely change, even when everyone around them can see it's time? Marshall Goldsmith, a coach to the leaders of major companies, believes that what holds successful people back isn't a lack of knowledge but small habits in how they deal with people. Here are twenty of those habits and his way of getting rid of them: from coworkers' honest feedback to a simple “thank you.”
Who it is for
For leaders, and for anyone who has achieved a lot at work but feels that something is holding them back. And for those who want to understand why their words land with colleagues so differently from what they meant.
It's not about you. It's about what other people think of you.
When the boss's suggestion sounds like an order
Carlos runs a successful company that makes snacks. He started out on the factory floor and rose all the way to the top. He's smart, he works hard and he loves people. One day his designers showed him the packaging for a new line. Carlos liked all of it. He only suggested making it baby blue: blue looks expensive. A month later the team brought in the finished blue packaging. Carlos was pleased, but he said thoughtfully that red might look better.
The designers left the meeting upset. Carlos believed he was just sharing an idea. But to the team, a word from the CEO sounded like an order. The higher your position, the more often people take your suggestions as instructions.
Marshall Goldsmith sees stories like this all the time. He's an executive coach, a mentor who helps bosses work better with people. Goldsmith has worked one on one with more than a hundred top executives. Almost all of them are talented and successful. But many of them have a habit that annoys their colleagues, and they don't notice it themselves.
Goldsmith believes that the skills that brought a person to success don't always help them climb higher. That's where the book's title comes from: “What Got You Here Won't Get You There.”
Next you'll learn why successful people resist change so stubbornly and which twenty habits hold them back the most. You'll also learn Goldsmith's way of changing: it's simple, but it isn't easy. Let's start with how success fools us.
Successful in spite of, not because of
Harry, one of Goldsmith's clients, was a brilliant executive. He always hit his numbers, came up with new solutions and helped turn his company around. Everyone respected him. But his colleagues, his wife and his kids all said the same thing: Harry doesn't listen. Once he has made up his mind, there's no point arguing.
Goldsmith told Harry that he was successful because of his talent, hard work and luck, but in spite of being such a poor listener. Harry didn't agree. He was sure he had succeeded precisely because he didn't listen: bad ideas clutter the mind, and he wasn't going to pretend to hear them out. So Goldsmith asked whether Harry really thought his colleagues and his family were fools. Harry was embarrassed and admitted that sometimes he was the fool himself. Then he got scared that he would start listening too much and lose his own ideas. Goldsmith answered that a man who hadn't listened to others for all of his 55 years was hardly going to start listening too much all of a sudden. In the end Harry decided it was more useful to hear people out than to justify his habit.
Goldsmith believes success makes us a little superstitious. The psychologist Skinner saw something similar in hungry pigeons. If food happened to drop right after a certain movement, the pigeon would start repeating that movement, as if it brought the food. Successful people reason in a similar way: “I am successful. I behave this way. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way!” But success often comes in spite of a habit, not because of it.
What also makes this hard to see is that successful people tend to overrate themselves. Goldsmith asked more than 50,000 people in his programs to rate themselves against their peers. Between 80 and 85% of them put themselves in the top 20% of their peer group. And when he asked three business partners what share of the firm's profits each of them brought in, their answers added up to more than 150%.
So what makes a person like that change? Goldsmith sees only one law: people change when it serves their own interests and matches what they value. Usually that's money, power, status or popularity. One of his clients, John, agreed to change only when he realized that otherwise he would lose out to a longtime rival.
Try applying this to yourself. Pick a habit that annoys the people close to you, and ask yourself honestly: “Does it help me, or do I succeed in spite of it?”
About the author
Marshall Goldsmith is an American executive coach. He earned his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles. Forbes named him one of the five most respected executive coaches. He wrote this book with Mark Reiter.
All books by this author: Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter
Terms from the book
- Coach
- Skinner
- John
- Drucker
- Feedback
- Williams
- Carlos: The CEO of a food company, one of Goldsmith's clients. The author uses him to show how a boss's suggestion turns into an order.
- Harry: The name Goldsmith gives one of his clients, a talented executive who didn't listen to people and believed this was the reason for his success.
- Beth: One of Goldsmith's clients, a senior executive at a large corporation. Her story shows how an apology turns an opponent into an ally.
- Harvey: A division head at Beth's company, with whom she had been at odds for a long time.
- Sam: One of Goldsmith's clients, an executive at a media company who was used to shifting the blame for failures onto others.
- Feedforward: Goldsmith's name for advice about the future, as opposed to feedback about the past.
All terms
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