What got you here won’t get you there

by Marshal Goldsmith

8/10

Key Ideas:

What gets someone promoted is counter productive when leading others.
We should avoid these habits and tendencies.
To do better, ask for feedback, apologise, listen, thank people, and follow up.

Other interesting notes:

Habits to avoid:

  1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations – when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point
  2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion
  3. Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them
  4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty
  5. Starting sentences with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone, “I’m right. 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 praise and reward
  11. Claiming credit 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 when 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 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
  21. Goal obsession happens when a particular goal becomes more important than your overall mission

Thoughts on the book:

Great book for any leader. Particularly useful for leaders that lack empathy.

Longer summary/notes: Long Summary, JC, Sivers

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