Marshall Goldsmith

JULY 21, 2014

'Thanking works because it expresses one of our most basic emotions: gratitude. Not an abstraction, gratitude is a genuine emotion. It cannot be exacted or forced. You either feel it or you don’t. Yet, when someone does something nice for you, they expect gratitude and they think less of you for withholding it. Think about the last time you gave someone a gift.

Executive Coaching 176

Executive Coaching Learning-by-Doing Video Magazine 176

Marshall Goldsmith

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

'It’s much harder to change others’ perceptions of our behavior than it is to change our own behavior. People’s perceptions of us are formed when they observe a sequence of actions we take that resemble one another. When other people see a pattern of resemblance, that’s when they start forming their perceptions of us. For example, one day you’re asked to make a presentation in a meeting.

Reputation 176

Reputation Crisis Executive Coaching Video 176

Marshall Goldsmith

NOVEMBER 17, 2014

'Lesson #1: It’s easier to see our problems (let’s call them behavioral challenges) in others than to see them in ourselves. For instance, often when I become self-righteous or angry about some perceived injustice, I realize that the deeper issue is often not with “it”, but in me. Lesson #2: Although we may deny our behavioral challenges to ourselves, they may be very obvious to the people who observe us.

Video 175

Video Class Blog Energy 175

Marshall Goldsmith

JANUARY 6, 2014

'Greetings from the past! One of the greatest thinkers in my field (and in my time) was a man named Peter Drucker. I am very lucky. I got to spend a lot of time with Peter. He always encouraged people to ask, “Who is the customer?” before they do anything. I finally understood the deeper importance of that question when Larissa MacFarquhar, a journalist from the New Yorker wrote a profile about me.

360-Degree Feedback 172

360-Degree Feedback Long-term Drucker Learning-by-Doing 172

Marshall Goldsmith

JULY 7, 2014

'In her book My Life in Leadership , Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of the Girl Scouts, CEO of The Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute, and one of the greatest leaders I’ve ever met, wrote one of the best descriptions of listening and leadership I’ve ever read: “Listening is an art. When people are speaking, they require our undivided attention.

Sports 170

Sports Leadership Learning-by-Doing Active Listening 170

Marshall Goldsmith

JULY 1, 2014

'“Soliciting feedback” is just what the words imply. It is when we solicit opinions from people about what we are doing wrong. As simple as it sounds, it is not always so simple. Most people have two problems dealing with negative feedback. This may not sound like many, but they are big problems. The first is we don’t want to hear it and the second is we don’t want to give it.

Sports 169

Sports Leadership Advice Executive Coaching 169

Marshall Goldsmith

SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

'Your boss is a lousy coach. It culminates in your boss not helping you grow. There are three key reasons: You are smart. You know more than the boss: You are a knowledge worker, who already knows ten times more about what you are doing than the executive does. Your boss is too busy. Your boss may avoid coaching is that she is too busy and she thinks you are busy too!

Learning-by-Doing 168

Learning-by-Doing Report Bottom-up Executive Coaching 168

Marshall Goldsmith

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

'Our greatest challenge as leaders is not understanding the practice of leadership; it is practicing our understanding of leadership. by Marshall Goldsmith. The consistent and ongoing misassumption of almost all leadership development programs is “if they understand, they will do.” This assumption is not valid in any aspect of our lives, and leadership development is no exception.

360-Degree Feedback 166

360-Degree Feedback Follow-up Ethics Learning-by-Doing 166

Marshall Goldsmith

SEPTEMBER 1, 2014

'Even if you are the best coach in the world, if the person you are coaching shouldn’t be coached, the coaching isn’t going to work. The good news is that the “uncoachables” are easier than you think to spot. How do you know when someone is uncoachable? How do you detect a lost cause? Following are four indicators that you are dealing with one of these people: 1.

Executive Coaching 164

Executive Coaching Video Morale Magazine 164

Marshall Goldsmith

NOVEMBER 10, 2014

'Let me start with two well-known phrases: “ All the world’s a stage ” is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare’s As You like It. “ The show must go on” is a phrase in show business, meaning that regardless of what happens, whatever show has been planned still has to be staged for the waiting patrons. Until recently, I always had a dilemma regarding the “stage” of business.

Motivation 161

Motivation Drucker Video Commitment 161

Marshall Goldsmith

JULY 14, 2014

'Thinking before speaking is a challenge for a lot of people. It might even be hard for you, especially if you are trying to prove to the world how smart you are. Take the following little test and see if you’ve got this bad habit running through your communication with colleagues, friends, and employees. Your assistant rushes into your office with news of an urgent document that needs your attention right away.

Sports 157

Sports Document Leadership Comparison 157

Marshall Goldsmith

DECEMBER 1, 2014

'Last week, I shared with you how to get a handle on your identity. You should now have the answer to the question: “Who do you think you are?” If you don’t, take a few minutes now to go back and review “Why You Should Get a Handle on Your Identity”. Why is understanding your identity so important? Because your Mojo depends on it. To understand how you are relating to any activity, person, place, or thing, you need to understand your identity—who you are.

Airlines 157

Airlines Health Care Learning-by-Doing Video 157

Marshall Goldsmith

OCTOBER 13, 2014

'Strangely enough, the answer is probably both! One night over dinner, I listened to a wise military leader share his experience with an eager, newly minted General, “Recently, have you started to notice that when you tell jokes, everyone erupts into laughter—and that when you say something ‘wise’ everyone nods their heads in solemn agreement?” The new General replied, “Why, yes, I have.

Succession 154

Succession Resistance Discount Positioning 154

Marshall Goldsmith

JUNE 24, 2014

'My career as an executive coach began many years ago with a phone call from the CEO of a Fortune 100 company. I had just given a leadership clinic to the CEO’s human resources department. This is what I was doing in the late 1980s – advising HR departments about identifying future leaders in their companies and creating programs to form them into better leaders.

Sports 154

Sports Leadership Executive Coaching CEO 154

Marshall Goldsmith

OCTOBER 27, 2014

'Can Delegation Kill? Many leaders think they need to delegate more to be more effective as leaders. This is frequently not true. Most often leaders don’t need to delegate more, they need to delegate more effectively! When C-level executives are asked what change they could make to become a more effective leader, one of the most common answers is, “I need to delegate more!”.

Delegation 152

Delegation Morale Report Learning-by-Doing 152

Marshall Goldsmith

MARCH 24, 2014

'Getting angry with other people often means you’re just upset with yourself. by Marshall Goldsmith. On a flight from Zurich to New York, I sat next to a very successful investor who had paid too much for a small high-tech firm. As we talked, he told me how livid he was with the owner of the company. Despite making a powerful initial impression, the entrepreneur lacked motivation and consistently missed important business commitments.

Venture Capitalist 152

Venture Capitalist Due Diligence Learning-by-Doing Energy 152

Marshall Goldsmith

SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

'Recently, I coached a team in a group session. The team members rated the team a 6.1 in terms of working together. I asked each team member to reflect on a challenge that he/she is currently having and share it with me and the group. There were about 10 people and 6 focused on changing what they could not change. It was an epidemic! The team prioritized this behavior as the one to focus on in their team change efforts.

Team 147

Team Survey Follow-up Consensus 147

Marshall Goldsmith

JANUARY 20, 2014

'By becoming aware of how we can improve, involving respected colleagues and following-up, we can get better at the behavior, as perceived by colleagues. by Marshall Goldsmith. We can increase our effectiveness by changing elements of our behavior. By becoming aware of how we can improve, involving respected colleagues and following-up, we can get better at the behavior, as perceived by colleagues.

Self-aware 145

Self-aware Construction Commitment Follow-up 145

Marshall Goldsmith

MARCH 3, 2014

'Everyone has heard motivational speeches that exclaim “You can do it!” and “Follow your dreams!” Abandoning one job or career for another is much easier to say than do. Especially when you are, by any measure, a “winner” in life and the place you’re in is pretty good. In spite of speeches that make it sound easy, changing our lives is tough.

Engineering 144

Engineering Middle Management Learning-by-Doing Follow-up 144

Marshall Goldsmith

AUGUST 25, 2014

'By Marshall Goldsmith. Leaders have to give feedback and performance appraisals have to be made. This is a given. Yet, there are many times when feed forward is preferable to feedback in day-to-day interactions. Feed forward is a group exercise, the purpose of which is to provide individuals with suggestions for the future and to help them achieve a positive change in the behaviors as selected by them.

Construction 143

Construction Video Participative Efficiency 143

Marshall Goldsmith

FEBRUARY 17, 2014

'Reflections for Leaders during a War. by Marshall Goldsmith. In many ways war can be seen as a metaphor for much of what happens in daily business life. In fact, ten different versions of The Art of War by Sun Tzu are currently listed in the top 1% of all books on Amazon.com. Corporate leaders, not military people, are the major buyers of these books.As organizational leaders reflect upon the ongoing war in Iraq, it might be a good time to look for learnings from combat that we can all apply i

Learning-by-Doing 142

Learning-by-Doing Open-book CEO Execution 142

Marshall Goldsmith

AUGUST 11, 2014

'Clearly, affirmatively, I can tell you that you will not get better if you do not follow-up. Once youve mastered the subtleties of asking, listening, thanking, apologizing, involving, and initiating change in your behavior, you must follow-up relentlessly! If you dont, all your hard work is just a flash in the pan, a program of the month, and another reason why people dont trust that anything ever really changes.

Follow-up 140

Follow-up Executive Coaching Sports Video 140

Marshall Goldsmith

APRIL 14, 2014

'Like many young Ph.D. students, while I studied at UCLA, I was deeply impressed with my own intelligence, wisdom and profound insights into the human condition. I consistently amazed myself with my ability to judge others and see what they were doing wrong. Dr. Fred Case was both my dissertation adviser and boss. My dissertation was connected with a consulting project with that involved the city government of Los Angeles.

Advice 138

Advice Learning-by-Doing Consultative CEO 138

Marshall Goldsmith

APRIL 7, 2014

'My friend, Dr. David Ulrich, is a highly respected thought leader, wonderful person and perhaps the world’s top HR consultant. Dave once taught me that effective performance can be seen as a function of the quality of an idea times the employee’s commitment to make it happen (EP = QI x C). One hundred percent commitment to a good idea will often result in higher performance than 50 percent commitment to a great idea.

Commitment 138

Commitment EPS Ulrich CEO 138

Marshall Goldsmith

APRIL 28, 2014

'When C-level executives are asked what change they could make to become a more effective leader, one of the most common answers is, “I need to delegate more!” My caution to these executives is always the same: Don’t delegate more. Delegate more effectively. Delegation is not a quality like “demonstrating integrity” or “complying with the law.” Honest, ethical and legal behavior is always appropriate – delegation isn’t.

Delegation 137

Delegation Report Consensus Learning-by-Doing 137

Marshall Goldsmith

MAY 19, 2014

'Yes, change takes longer than we thought, and the process is harder. Acknowledging that from the get-go can make a big difference in helping us stick to the plan. by Marshall Goldsmith and Kelly Goldsmith. Why do we set New Year’s resolutions that seldom last through January, much less for the entire year? Think about the ones you set for yourself.

Short-term 137

Short-term Long-term Crisis Goal 137

Marshall Goldsmith

FEBRUARY 24, 2014

'The corporate credo. Companies have wasted millions of dollars and countless hours of employees’ time agonizing over the wording of statements that are inscribed on plaques and hung on walls. There is a clear assumption that people’s behavior will change because the pronouncements on plaques are “inspirational” or certain words “integrate our strategy and values.” There is an implicit hope that when people – especially managers – hear great words,

Ethics 137

Ethics Pharmaceuticals PR Execution 137

Marshall Goldsmith

APRIL 21, 2014

'Why is asking so important? In the Information Age, leaders must manage knowledge workers. Peter Drucker has defined knowledge workers as people who know more about what they are doing than their boss does. It is hard to tell people what to do and how to do it when they already know more than we do. In today’s rapidly changing world, we need to ask, listen and learn from everyone around us.

360-Degree Feedback 136

360-Degree Feedback Follow-up Learning-by-Doing Bottom-up 136

Marshall Goldsmith

FEBRUARY 9, 2014

'To make resolutions that matter, don’t look forward. Look back. by Marshall Goldsmith. It is February – half of all New Year’s resolutions have already been broken. It is probably a good time to revisit your goals and think about what you really want to change. Take a deep breath. Take a deeper breath. I want you to imagine that you’re 95 years old – and on your death bed.

Advice 136

Advice Follow-up Sports Learning-by-Doing 136

Marshall Goldsmith

JUNE 22, 2014

'An easy habit for people who like to win to fall into, and a surefire shortcut for killing conversations, is to start a sentence with “no,” “but,” or “however”. It doesn’t matter how friendly your tone is or how honey sweet you say these words, the message to your recipient is “You are wrong.” It’s not “Let’s discuss,” “I’d love to hear what you think,” it’s unequivocally, “You are wrong and I am right.

Video 135

Video Executive Coaching Open-book Blog 135

Marshall Goldsmith

JUNE 19, 2014

'As a 10-year board member of the Peter Drucker Foundation, I had many opportunities to listen to Peter Drucker, the world’s authority on management. During this time, Peter taught me some very important lessons about life and leadership. One of the greatest lessons he taught me is this: “We spend a lot of time helping leaders learn what to do. We do not spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop.

Drucker 135

Drucker Video Learning-by-Doing Executive Coaching 135

Marshall Goldsmith

AUGUST 5, 2014

'If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, did it make a sound? This is the general conundrum behind why it is critical that you take the next two steps of the Leadership Is a Contact Sport behavioral change model very seriously. You’ve absolutely got to do them or this whole process just isn’t going to work. So, what are they? They are involve and change.

Advertising 133

Advertising Commitment Executive Coaching Sports 133

Marshall Goldsmith

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

'My mission is to help successful leaders achieve positive, long-term, measurable change in behavior. The following process is being used by coaches around the world for this same purpose. When these steps are followed, leaders almost always achieve positive, measurable results in changed behavior – not as judged by themselves, but as judged by pre-selected, key co-workers.

Follow-up 133

Follow-up CEO Review Process 133

Marshall Goldsmith

AUGUST 18, 2014

'Coaching for Behavioral Change: Learning from a Great Leader. I believe that many leadership coaches are paid for the wrong reasons. Their income is a largely a function of “How much do my clients like me ?” and “How much time did I spend in coaching?” Neither of these is a good metric for achieving a positive, long-term change in behavior. In terms of liking the coach—I have never seen a study that showed that clients’ love of a coach was highly correlated with their change in behavior.

Long-term 130

Long-term Learning-by-Doing Executive Coaching Metrics 130

Marshall Goldsmith

JUNE 23, 2014

'The higher up you go in your organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make your job about winning yourself. This is a hard concept for people who like to win to grasp. The more successful you become, the more helping others win is how you win! For those in leadership positions, this means closely monitoring how you hand out encouragement and how you “help” others improve.

Video 130

Video Class Executive Coaching Blog 130

Marshall Goldsmith

MAY 12, 2014

'In my younger days, as a newly minted Ph.D. and organizational behavior consultant, I would challenge my clients to pick one to three areas for personal improvement. As I grew more experienced, I began to realize that three was too many. The problem was not a lack of motivation or intelligence – these were brilliant, dedicated leaders. The problem was that they were just too busy.

Conference 130

Conference Participative Organizational Behavior Goal 130

Marshall Goldsmith

JUNE 19, 2014

'The origin of the word mentor goes back to ancient Greece–specifically, to the character of Mentor in Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey.” As Odysseus departs for the Trojan War, he leaves his trusted friend Mentor in charge of both the palace and the care and education of Odysseus’ teenage son– a role that combined sensitivity and the sharing of wisdom.

Mentor 127

Mentor Govindarajan Management Handbook 127