Marshall Goldsmith speaks at AHRI National Convention #AHRINC
May 18
Apologies that my notes from the Seminar has taken some time, but I promise my in-depth notes on a few of the speakers will be headed your way this week.
To get things started, here are my notes from the bestselling author and world-reknowned thought leader in leadership development, coaching and human resources, Marshall Goldsmith.
NB. He spoke for a quite a while so these will come in a couple of posts!
In 2009 Dr Goldsmith was recognised as one of the 15 most influential business speakers in the world in the Global Bi-Annual Study sponsored by the London Times and Forbes. The American Management Association named him as one of the 50 great thinkers and leaders who have influenced the field of management over the past 80 years. Dr Goldsmith teaches executive education at Dartmouth’s Tuck School and frequently speaks at leading business schools. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources and that is America’s top HR honour and his work has been recognised by almost every professional organisation in his field.
Marshall started out by introducing himself. He’s from Kentucky, went to school in Indiana, got a PHD at UCLA, was a College Professor and Dean, and for 45 years- did three things.
- Speaking or teaching (the part of his job that he loves the most)
- Coaching Executives- for clients like CEOs or could be CEOs of huge companies and that is really where he learns everything-having the privilege to work with these people.
- Writing/Editing Books & Articles- His website is called www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com and he encouraged everyone to visit his website as he gives everything away. He joked about how people criticise him for putting up word documents in case people use and change them. He doesn’t care- he wants you to have them!
He then went on to explain that he had the privilege of spending over 50 days with Peter Drucker before he died and was on his advising Board for 10 years. According to Marshall, Peter Drucker was the world’s greatest authority on management.
“Drucker said we spend a lot of time helping leaders learn what to do, we do not spend enough time helping leaders learn what to stop. He said half the leaders I meet don’t need to learn what to do, they need to learn what to stop”.
Pretty interesting concept but you’ll all know what he is talking about when he goes into some examples.
Using “what to stop” as a coaching tool
When Marshall was interviewed by the Harvard Business Review and asked the question “What is the number one problem with successful people that you work with?”, his answer was simply: “winning too much”.
What does this mean? Marshal says “if it is important we want to? Win. If it is meaningful, we want to? Win. If it is critical, we want to? Win. Trivial, we want to? Win. And not worth it, we want to? Win anyway.
Winners like to win!! It is very difficult for smart, successful people who constantly go through life winning, not to win”.
He then gave us a case study in which he said that 75% of his successful clients fail.
Here’s the scenario:
You want to go to dinner at restaurant X. Your partner or significant other wants to go to restaurant Y. You have a heated argument. You go to restaurant Y. It’s not your choice. The food tastes awful. The service is terrible.
Option A: Critique the food. Point out your partner was wrong. This mistake could have been avoided if they had have listened to you.
Option B: Shut Up! Eat the stupid food! Try to enjoy it and have a pleasant evening.
What would you do? Most of us say truthfully that we would critique the food. What should we do? Shut up. Is critiquing the food smart of stupid? Incredibly stupid.
Marshall then goes on to give an example which he says is so hideously stupid, it will make the previous example pail in comparison, and he predicts that half the people in the room have done this.
Scenario Two:
You have a hard day at work. Bosses are so mean: push, push, push. Your muscles are sore. You go home and your partner is there. Your partner says, “I had such a hard day today. Such a terrible day”. To which you reply “Do you have any idea what I had to put up with today etc. You think you had a hard day etc…”.
Marshall says we are so competitive, we even have to prove we are more miserable than the next person.
Lesson Learned: Help leaders (and high achievers) to stop having to win. You’ve probably heard this one before in the phrase ‘pick your battles’ etc. However, most of us don’t practice this very well in our professional or personal lives. As you may remember, I am a huge Dr Phil fan also and he would similarly call this ‘right fighting’ or describe it as ‘fighting to win’. Bottom line is, we need to help leaders to stop doing it.
