Marshall Goldsmith is known as one of the most influential thinkers in the business and coaching world today.
I leverage his books as well as insightful essays with my own clients. I strongly suggest you check out his free library of great stuff.
In his book, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There,” Marshall outlines 20 habits you need to stop now if you want to uplevel your performance.
What I love about Marshall is his messages are straightforward and delivered in a way that anyone can understand.
Having said that, in my work with leaders, changing behavior is not the easiest thing to do. After all, they’ve been behaving a certain way for years, decades, if not their entire lives, and have gotten really good at it!
As I leverage the concepts within “The Leadership Challenge,” asking a leader to change is one thing. Are they willing to change is another story.
The 20 bad habits are:
1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations.
2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our 2 cents to every discussion.
3. Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasm and cutting remarks that we think make us witty.
5. Starting with NO, BUT, HOWEVER: The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone that I’m right and you’re wrong.
6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.
7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.
8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked.
9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to give praise and reward.
11. Claiming credit that that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.
12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
13. Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.
14. Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.
16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.
19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.
I’ll give you my thoughts on the 20 in a series of future posts.
This week, go through this listicle and pick one or two habits which scream out to you “YUP that’s me!”
If you’re willing, over the next month, eliminate these behaviors and notice if and how your performance improves.
Good luck!
I’m a huge fan of Marshall Goldsmith. I’m so excited that he wrote the forward to our ucoming book, Winning Well. I love what he had to say 😉
Wow, how did you get Marshall to write your foreword? Nice.
I have to admit that I’m pretty big on #1. I’ve eased off some as I’ve gotten older, mainly because I finally told myself that having to win all the time was more energy than I wanted to keep having to achieve for my sanity.
Of course, I still want to be right all the time, even though I know that’s not always good either. Small changes; one at a time. lol
Winning at all costs. I hear you Mitch. Today I’m completely focused on clients winning.
Situations determine how much I want the W.