Marshall Goldsmith Quotes
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Life is short. Do whatever you can to help people - not for status, but because the 95-year-old you will be proud if you did help people and disappointed if you didn't.
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In one of the largest studies ever done on the effects of executive coaching - over 70,000 respondents - we learned that the biggest mistake coaches make is in not following up. It didn't matter who the coach was or what method they used. Failing to follow up made any approach to coaching ineffective.
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I have a lot of deficiencies, but gratitude is not one of them.
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We deify willpower and self-control - and mock its absence. People who achieve through remarkable willpower are 'strong' and 'heroic.' People who need help or structure are 'weak.' This is crazy - because few of us can accurately gauge or predict our willpower.
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When we stop thinking about ourselves, when we stop being so devoted to 'me,' we can start behaving in a way that actually benefits others!
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Remember that when criticism is difficult to accept, there is probably some truth to it.
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Americans get fatter and fatter and buy more and more diet books, but you don't lose weight by buying diet books - you go on a diet. It's easy to read a diet book, but it's hard to go on a diet.
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People that have integrity violations should be fired, not coached. How many integrity violations does it take to ruin the reputation of your company? Just one. You don't coach integrity violations. You fire them.
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Coaching works best with high potential people who are willing to make a concerted effort to change, not as a religious conversion activity.
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The only thing I don't think people don't understand about good leaders is that they're both good and lucky. A lot of it is timing.
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If we really want to make change, we have to make peace with the fact that we cannot self-exempt every time the calendar offers us a more attractive alternative.
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Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others.
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I regard gratitude as an asset and its absence a major interpersonal flaw.
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Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, Richard Beckhard, The organization of the future, Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management. Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997; Book summary
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All of us have people in our lives who drive us crazy. We've spent hours reliving the unfair, unappreciative, inconsiderate treatment they have inflicted on us. But getting mad at this person makes just about as much sense as getting mad at a chair for being a chair.
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Once you get a reputation for emotional volatility, it can take years of model behavior to change how others see you.
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It can be more productive to help people learn to be 'right' than prove they were 'wrong.'
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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.
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To me, the #1 key to success is 'creating lasting positive change in yourself and others.' That is what is most rare, most difficult, and most valuable about leading people.
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How to prepare for 'breakdowns' and create the nimble, change-adept company
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As I've gotten older, I've gotten simpler - my level of aspiration has actually gone down and down. But my level of impact has gone up and up.
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People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats.
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If somebody is going in the wrong direction, behavioral coaching just helps them get there faster. It doesn't turn the wrong direction into the right direction.
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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.