Marshall Goldsmith Quotes

Fate is the hand of cards we’ve been dealt. Choice is how we play the hand.

getting mad at people for being who they are makes as much sense as getting mad at a chair for being a chair.

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

Mojo” is, “That positive spirit toward what we are doing now, that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside

People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats.

If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.

If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. —Dr. Marshall Goldsmith

Peter Drucker, who said, “Our mission in life should be to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart or right we are.

Never wrestle with a pig—because you both get dirty but the pig loves it

People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.

This leads us to the strengths of being less than confident. Confidence makes it very hard for us to learn and improve. When we think we know all the answers, we stop looking for them. Marshall Goldsmith says, “Although our self-confident delusions can help us achieve, they can make it difficult for us to change.” When

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.

Just because people understand what to do doesn’t ensure that they will actually do it.

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.

To avoid undesirable behavior, avoid the environments where it is most likely to occur.

When we presume that we are better than people who need structure and guidance, we lack one of the most crucial ingredients for change: humility.

people only change their ways when what they truly value is threatened.

inside each of us are two separate personas. There’s the leader/planner/manager who plans to change his or her ways. And there’s the follower/doer/employee who must execute the plan.

The more aware we are, the less likely any trigger, even in the most mundane circumstances, will prompt hasty unthinking behavior that leads to undesirable consequences.

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.

But 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 best solicited feedback is confidential feedback. It’s good because nobody gets embarrassed or defensive.

Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that.

Sometimes the better part of valor—and common sense—is saying, “I’ll pass.

It works because helping people be “right” is more productive than proving them “wrong.

If you keep your mouth shut, no one can ever know how you really feel.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith explained in his book Triggers, “If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.

It’s not about you. It’s about what other people think of you.

Whether you’re leading other people or leading the follower in you, the obstacles to achieving your goals are the same.

People don’t get better without follow-up. So let’s get better at following up with our people.

No one expects you to act on every piece of advice.

Treat every piece of advice as a gift or a compliment and simply say, “Thank you.

Integrity is an all-or-nothing virtue (like being half pregnant, there’s no such thing as semi-integrity).

Improvement is hard. If it were easy, we’d already be better.

If you know what matters to you, it’s easier to commit to change. If you can’t identify what matters to you, you won’t know when it’s being threatened. And in my experience, people only change their ways when what they truly value is threatened.

An excuse explains why we fell short of expectations after the fact. Our inner beliefs trigger failure before it happens. They sabotage lasting change by canceling its possibility. We employ these beliefs as articles of faith to justify our inaction and then wish away the result. I call them belief triggers.

Accepting is most valuable when we are powerless to make a difference. Yet our ineffectuality is precisely the condition we are most loath to accept. It triggers our finest moments of counterproductive behavior.

When you start a sentence with “no,” “but,” “however,” or any variation thereof, no matter how friendly your tone or how many cute mollifying phrases you throw in to acknowledge the other person’s feelings, the message to the other person is You are wrong.

The simplest tool I know to finding fulfillment is being open to fulfillment.

Structure not only increases our chance of success, it makes us more efficient at it.

If you want to change anything about yourself, the best time to start is now. Ask yourself, “What am I willing to change now?” Just do that. That’s more than enough. For now.

In her zeal to be a professional negotiator, she behaved like an amateur human being.

We can change not only our behavior but how we define ourselves. When we put ourselves in a box marked “That’s not me,” we ensure that we’ll never get out of it.

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.

The most thankless decision I make is the one that prevents something bad from happening, because I can never prove that I prevented something even worse.

going backwards is not about creating change. It’s about understanding.

Our quest for a successful outcome may end up doing more harm than good to our organizations, our families, and ourselves.

Warren Buffett advised that before you take any morally questionable action, you should ask yourself if you would want your mother to read about it in the newspaper.

What got you here won’t get you there. Marshall Goldsmith M

Successful people, however, believe there is always a link between what they have done and how far they have come—even when no link exists. It’s delusional, but it is also empowering.

None of this makes sense. At best, you’ve spent a lot of time failing to change someone’s mind. At worst, you’ve made an enemy, damaged a relationship, and added to your reputation for being disagreeable.

There’s nothing wrong with understanding. 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. My experience tells me that the only effective approach is looking people in the eye and saying, “If you want to change, do this.

Marshall Goldsmith, one of the world’s top executive coaches, put it to me this way: “Your biggest challenge [is] customer selection. You pick the right customer, you win. You pick the wrong customer, you lose. Focus on helping great people get better.

One of the greatest mistakes of successful people is the assumption, “I am successful. I behave this way. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way!” The challenge is to make them see that sometimes they are successful in spite of this behavior.

Whether the subject is climate change or the life span of unicorns, when you cite demonstrable facts to counter another person’s belief, a phenomenon that researchers call “the backfire effect” takes over. Your brilliant marshaling of data not only fails to persuade the believer, it backfires and strengthens his or her belief. The believer doubles down on his or her position—and the two of you are more polarized than ever. If

The only natural law I’ve witnessed in three decades of observing successful people’s efforts to become more successful is this: People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshal Goldsmith.

Successful people never drink from a glass that’s half empty.

Mojo is that positive spirit toward what we are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside.

The greatest challenge in behavioral change is not knowing what to do—the greatest challenge is doing it!

If she wants to be a great leader, she will need to “make peace” with watching what she says and observing how she acts—for the rest of her career.

You can continue doing what you’re doing for a long time. But you’ll never become the person you want to be.

Leadership is not about me. It is all about them.

Excusing our momentary lapses as an outlier event triggers a self-indulgent inconsistency—which is fatal for change.

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.

It’s the little moments that trigger some of our most outsized and unproductive responses:

Getting better is its own reward. If we do that, we can never feel cheated.

The most reliable predictor of what you will be doing five minutes from now is what you are doing now.

Peter Drucker famously said, “Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.

parents must constantly remind their children to say, “Thank you.” It’s one of the last and hardest things to teach naturally rebellious kids.

change is not a one-way street.

Five qualities that you need to bring to an activity in order to do it well are: motivation, knowledge, ability, confidence, and authenticity.

It’s hard to help people who don’t think they have a problem. It’s impossible to fix people who think someone else is the problem.

There is immeasurable satisfaction—even pleasure—in taking a big risk and fighting a battle you believe in. It’s your life, your call. No one else can make it for you. AIWATT

When we regret our own decisions—and do nothing about it—we are no better than a whining employee complaining about his superiors. We are yelling at an empty boat, except it’s our boat.

If we’re satisfied with our life—not necessarily happy or delighted that we’ve exceeded our wildest expectations, just satisfied—we yield to inertia. We continue doing what we’ve always done. If we’re dissatisfied, we may go to the other extreme, falling for any and every idea, never pursuing one idea long enough so that it takes root and actually shapes a recognizably new us.

We can’t admit that we need to change—either because we’re unaware that a change is desirable, or, more likely, we’re aware but have reasoned our way into elaborate excuses that deny our need for change.

If you’ve ever binge-watched a season or two of a TV show on Netflix when you should be studying, or finishing an assignment, or going to sleep, you know how an appealing distraction can trigger a self-defeating choice.

If you want to succeed at goal setting, you have to face the reality of the effort and the payoff before you begin. Realize that the ‘quick fix’ and the ‘easy solution’ may not provide the ‘lasting fix’ and the ‘meaningful solution.’ Lasting goal achievement requires lots of time, hard work, personal sacrifice, ongoing effort, and dedication to a process that is maintained over years. And even if you can pull that off, the rewards may not be all that you expect.

This is a natural response that combines three competing impulses: 1) our contempt for simplicity (only complexity is worthy of our attention); 2) our contempt for instruction and follow-up; and 3) our faith, however unfounded, that we can succeed all by ourselves. In combination these three trigger an unappealing exceptionalism in us. When we presume that we are better than people who need structure and guidance, we lack one of the most crucial ingredients for change: humility.

But for some reason, many people enjoy living in the past, especially if going back there lets them blame someone else for anything that’s gone wrong in their lives. That’s when clinging to the past becomes an interpersonal problem. We use the past as a weapon against others.

Emotional volatility is not the most reliable leadership tool. When you get angry, you are usually out of control. It’s hard to lead people when you’ve lost control. You may think you have a handle on your temper, that you can use your spontaneous rages to manipulate and motivate people. But it’s very hard to predict how people will react to anger.

An old Buddhist parable illustrates the challenge—and the value—of letting go of the past. Two monks were strolling by a stream on their way home to the monastery. They were startled by the sound of a young woman in a bridal gown, sitting by the stream, crying softly. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gazed across the water. She needed to cross to get to her wedding, but she was fearful that doing so might ruin her beautiful handmade gown. In this particular sect, monks were prohibited from touching women. But one monk was filled with compassion for the bride. Ignoring the sanction, he hoisted the woman on his shoulders and carried her across the stream—assisting her journey and saving her gown. She smiled and bowed with gratitude as the monk splashed his way back across the stream to rejoin his companion. The second monk was livid. ‘How could you do that?’ he scolded. ‘You know we are forbidden to touch a woman, much less pick one up and carry her around!’ The offending monk listened in silence to a stern lecture that lasted all the way back to the monastery. His mind wandered as he felt the warm sunshine and listened to the singing birds. After returning to the monastery, he fell asleep for a few hours. He was jostled and awakened in the middle of the night by his fellow monk. ‘How could you carry that woman?’ his agitated friend cried out. ‘Someone else could have helped her across the stream. You were a bad monk.’ ‘What woman?’ the sleepy monk inquired. ‘Don’t you even remember? That woman you carried across the stream,’ his colleague snapped. ‘Oh, her,’ laughed the sleepy monk. ‘I only carried her across the stream. You carried her all the way back to the monastery.’ The learning point is simple: When it comes to our flawed past, leave it at the stream. I am not suggesting that we should always let go of the past. You need feedback to scour the past and identify room for improvement. But you can’t change the past. To change you need to be sharing ideas for the future.

The Great Western Disease is “I’ll be happy when…” This is our belief that happiness is a static and finite goal, within our grasp when we get that promotion, or buy that house, or find that mate, or whatever. It’s inculcated in us by the most popular story line in contemporary life: there is a person; the person spends money on a product or service; the person is eternally happy. This is called a TV commercial. The average American spends 140,000 hours watching TV commercials.

The most significant transformational moment in my career was an act of elimination. It wasn’t my idea. I was in my late thirties and doing well flying around the country giving the same talk about organizational behavior to companies. I was on a lucrative treadmill of preserving, but I needed my mentor Paul Hersey to point out the downside. “You’re too good at what you’re doing,” Hersey told me. “You’re making too much money selling your day rate to companies.” When someone tells me I’m “too good” my brain shifts into neutral—and I bask in the praise. But Hersey wasn’t done with me. “You’re not investing in your future,” he said. “You’re not researching and writing and coming up with new things to say. You can continue doing what you’re doing for a long time. But you’ll never become the person you want to be.” For some reason, that last sentence triggered a profound emotion in me. I respected Paul tremendously. And I knew he was right. In Peter Drucker’s words, I was “sacrificing the future on the altar of today.” I could see my future and it had some dark empty holes in it. I was too busy maintaining a comfortable life. At some point, I’d grow bored or disaffected, but it might happen too late in the game for me to do something about it. Unless I eliminated some of the busywork, I would never create something new for myself. Despite the immediate cut in pay, that’s the moment I stopped chasing my tail for a day rate and decided to follow a different path. I have always been thankful for Paul’s advice.

I privately refer to this attitude in my clients as the “dramatic narrative fallacy”—the notion that we have to spice up our day by accepting more, if not all, challenges, as if our life resembled a TV drama where the script says we overcome seemingly insurmountable odds rather than avoid them. That’s okay for recreational pursuits, like training for a triathlon. But life becomes exhaustingly risky if we apply that attitude to everything. Sometimes the better part of valor—and common sense—is saying, “I’ll pass.” Golfers

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.” This belief is sometimes true, but not across the board. That’s where superstition kicks in. It creates the core fallacy necessitating this book, the reason that “what got us here won’t get us there.” I’m talking about the difference between success that happens because of our behavior and the success that comes in spite of our behavior. Almost everyone I meet is successful because of doing a lot of things right, and almost everyone I meet is successful in spite of some behavior that defies common sense.

cognitive dissonance. It refers to the disconnect between what we believe in our minds and what we experience or see in reality. The underlying theory is simple. The more we are committed to believing that something is true, the less likely we are to believe that its opposite is true, even in the face of clear evidence that shows we are wrong. For example, if you believe your colleague Bill is a jerk, you will filter Bill’s actions through that belief. No matter what Bill does, you’ll see it through a prism that confirms he’s a jerk. Even the times when he’s not a jerk, you’ll interpret it as the exception to the rule that Bill’s a jerk. It may take years of saintly behavior for Bill to overcome your perception. That’s cognitive dissonance applied to others. It can be a disruptive and unfair force in the workplace.

In addition to his insight about making a positive difference, Peter Drucker had five other rules that are applicable for earning credibility. At first they may strike you as self-evident, even trite, but smarter people than I have had the same initial reaction and now are quoting them back to me on a regular basis. If you want to elevate your credibility, start by committing these Druckerisms to memory: Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that. If we need to influence someone in order to make a positive difference, that person is our customer and we are a salesperson. Our customer does not need to buy; we need to sell. When we are trying to sell, our personal definition of value is far less important than our customer’s definition of value. We should focus on the areas where we can actually make a positive difference. Sell what we can sell and change what we can change. Let go of what we cannot sell or change. Each of these rules assumes that acquiring recognition and approval is a transactional exercise. Note the frequent reference to selling and customers. The implication is that we must sell our achievements and competence in order to have them recognized and appreciated by others. These Druckerisms not only endorse our need for approval, they emphasize that we can’t afford to be passive about it—not when our credibility is at stake.

As an experiment, I tweaked the questions using Kelly’s “Did I do my best to” formulation. • Did I do my best to be happy? • Did I do my best to find meaning? • Did I do my best to have a healthy diet? • Did I do my best to be a good husband? Suddenly, I wasn’t being asked how well I performed but rather how much I tried. The distinction was meaningful to me because in my original formulation, if I wasn’t happy or I ignored Lyda, I could always blame it on some factor outside myself. I could tell myself I wasn’t happy because the airline kept me on the tarmac for three hours (in other words, the airline was responsible for my happiness). Or I overate because a client took me to his favorite barbecue joint, where the food was abundant, caloric, and irresistible (in other words, my client—or was it the restaurant?—was responsible for controlling my appetite). Adding the words “did I do my best” added the element of trying into the equation. It injected personal ownership and responsibility into my question-and-answer process. After a few weeks using this checklist, I noticed an unintended consequence. Active questions themselves didn’t merely elicit an answer. They created a different level of engagement with my goals. To give an accurate accounting of my effort, I couldn’t simply answer yes or no or “30 minutes.” I had to rethink how I phrased my answers. For one thing, I had to measure my effort. And to make it meaningful—that is, to see if I was trending positively, actually making progress—I had to measure on a relative scale, comparing the most recent day’s effort with previous days. I chose to grade myself on a 1-to-10 scale, with 10 being the best score. If I scored low on trying to be happy, I had only myself to blame. We may not hit our goals every time, but there’s no excuse for not trying. Anyone can try.

The reality for leaders of the past and leaders in the future is that in the past very bright people would put up with disrespectful behavior, but in the future they will leave!

Marshall Goldsmith, one of the world’s top executive coaches, put it to me this way: “Your biggest challenge [is] customer selection. You pick the right customer, you win. You pick the wrong customer, you lose. Focus on helping great people get better.” Ultimately, this is your business. It’s up to you to run your business as you see fit, and serve the customers you want to serve. In our experience, business is the most fun (and most profitable) when you focus on helping great people get better.

Feedback—both the act of giving it and taking it—is our first step in becoming smarter, more mindful about the connection between our environment and our behavior. Feedback teaches us to see our environment as a triggering mechanism. In some cases, the feedback itself is the trigger.

If I change I am “inauthentic.” Many of us have a misguided belief that how we behave today not only defines us but represents our fixed and constant selves, the authentic us forever. If we change, we are somehow not being true to who we really are. This belief triggers stubbornness. We refuse to adapt our behavior to new situations because “it isn’t me.

In the words of leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith, “What got you here won’t get you there.” Market share and revenue growth earn headlines, but you can’t achieve customer and revenue scale without scaling up your organization, in terms of the size and scope of your staff, as well as your financial, product, and technology strategy. If the organization doesn’t grow in lockstep with its revenues and customer base, things can quickly spiral out of control. For example, during a period of blitzscaling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Oracle Corporation focused so single-mindedly on sales growth that its organization lagged badly on both technology (where it fell behind archrival Sybase’s) and finance and nearly went bankrupt as a result. It took the turnaround efforts of Ray Lane and Jeff Henley to stave off disaster and reposition Oracle for its later success.

As a general rule, people in their 20s want to learn on the job. In their 30s they want to advance. And in their 40s they want to rule. No matter what their age, though, understanding their desires is like trying to pin down mercury.

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, He said to me, “You must not ask for so much.” And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, She cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?” —Leonard Cohen, “Bird on a Wire

we feel regret’s sharp sting when we reflect on the opportunities squandered, the choices deferred, the efforts not made,

Regret is the emotion we experience when we assess our present circumstances and reconsider how we got here. We replay what we actually did against what we should have done—and find ourselves wanting in some way. Regret can hurt.

Lamenting the past is a waste of time. I learned my lesson. Let’s move on.” That’s one way of looking at regret—if only as a form of self-protection from the pain of knowing we missed out. We’re comforted by the fact that no one is immune to regret (we’re not alone) and that time heals all wounds (the only thing worse than experiencing pain is not knowing if and when the pain will go away).