What Got You Here Won’t Get You There teaches successful and ambitious executives how to go from an already high level of career success, to an even higher level.
Often, explains author Goldsmith, it’s about overcoming the false belief that one’s own success justifies doing the same things we’ve always done.
TPM Strategic Takeaway: Some good reminders, but the main focus must be on power and strategies
Goldsmith focuses on political pitfalls and self-development, which are, of course, valid. However, progress at the highest levels is power-focused, not just ‘being a better human’. Including exuding executive skills (ie. ‘coming across as a competent, high-agency ‘alpha male type‘), forging alliances, and smart strategies.
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Notes
About the Author:
Marshall Goldsmith is an American leadership coach. He learned and trained under famed management consultant Peter Drucker, author of “The Effective Executive“. Goldsmith is the author of several career and management-related books, including “How Women Rise“.
If You’re Stuck, Personal Change Is What You Need
Successful people can get stuck because they believe that:
Since I succeeded, I must be good. Hence, all I’m doing must be good
So sometimes it can be hard to make successful and driven people understand that they can improve… By changing this or that.
TPM Note: You may need to change company, instead of changing yourself
Remember that this is a catch-all generic advice that many not apply to everyone. You may already be a top-contributor that would be better rewarded somewhere else. If you’re stuck in the same company, the issue is not necessarily you, but a lack of opportunities, or someone above you who’s blocking you. A lateral move may be your best next bet. Or a new opportunity that gives you negotiation leverage
What’s Stopping Top-Execs From Getting to The Next Level
Goldsmith’s tips come down to avoiding disempowering others and showing more respect, including:
- Winning too much: The need to be the alpha male or alpha female at all times. The need win at all costs and in all situations, even when it doesn’t matter, or when the costs outweigh the benefits.
- Adding too much value: This isn’t really about adding value, but to always add opinions and overpowering others
- Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them
- Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasm and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty <— TPM Note: remember that criticism is a powerful tool to display superior competence or thinking. It’s how about how and when you do it, not about not doing it
- Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: It’s the opposite of low-power talk, these secretly says to everyone, “I’m right. You’re wrong”.
See: how to speak with power. - Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are
- Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool
- Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked
- Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others <— TPM Note: this is a dangerous generalization. Be strategic, not naive
- Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward
- Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success
- Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it
- Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly
- Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others
- Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues
- Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners
- Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us
- An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are
The author says that Machiavelli might turn these habits around and say it’s exactly what makes these people succeed.
But that’s not the case, because enlisting people as allies, in the long run, is a better strategy for success.
Also read:
TPM Note: Effective Machiavellianism isn’t about over-selfishness and cynicism; it’s about strategic effectiveness
While it’s true that over-doing selfishness and dominance undermines you, true Machiavellianism is never over-doing it, but in contextual application. And of course, while not disempowering others is crucial (‘power protecting‘), some men must focus on getting more respect.
Read:
To Change People, Leverage Their Self-Interest
Robert Greene, author of “The 48 Laws of Power” said that you’d better appeal to self-interest.
And Goldsmith says that to help people change, you must present change in a way that helps them get more of what they want.
As the author put it, “you”, that’s their “hot button”.
Luckily, he says, successful people all have the same hot buttons.
Successful People Want Power
Says the author:
Fortunately, successful people make it easy to find the button.
If you press people to identify the motives behind their self-interest, it usually boils down to four items: money, power, status, and popularity.
These are the standard payoffs for success. It’s why we will claw and scratch for a raise (money), for a promotion (power), for a bigger title and office (status). It’s why so many of us have a burning need to be liked by everyone (popularity).
People Get Rewarded for What They Do, Rarely For What They Avoid
People usually get promoted and rewarded for what they do, but not for all the equally positive things they stop doing, or for the bad deals they stall.
The CEO of Warner made history for the worst merger in US history when, at the height of the .com bubble merged with AOL.
The funny thing?
If he had stopped that merger at the last minute, everyone would have soon forgotten about it.
Ask for Feedback, Especially With Your Most Important Relationships
It’s funny how some people manage to muster the courage to ask for feedback at work.
But they still never ask for feedback in the relationships that matter the most to them, with their parents, children, or spouses.
There is a psychological stumbling block stopping us: We figure if we don’t ask for critiques of our behavior, then no one has anything critical to say.
The author, for example, asked his daughter what she’d like to see more from him.
The answer shocked him: they didn’t complain that he wasn’t home for business trips, but that when he was home, he wasn’t spending quality time with them, but instead watching sports or being generally absent.
TPM Note: Mix self-promotion with seeking critical feedback
The truth is that focusing on ‘what we must improve’ only frames you as a learner-beginner, and beginners don’t advance. High authority, self-confident experts advance.
See: smart self-promotion strategies ↗
You Don’t Need to Become The Best At It, You Just Need to Improve It
Some people don’t work on themselves because they think they will never get great at it.
Well, fuck that, you don’t necessarily need to become great at it, you just need to get better.
That message alone bumped this book up to 4 stars.
Say the author:
The same applies to your task of changing your behavior.
Pick one issue that matters and “attack” it until it doesn’t matter anymore. If you’re a bad listener, choose to become a better listener—not the best listener in the world (whatever that means!). If you don’t share information, get better at sharing until it’s not an issue anymore
More Wisdom
- The higher you go, the more it’s about people skills: says the author: “who would you rather have as a CFO? A moderately good accountant who is great with people outside the firm and skilled at managing very smart people? Or a brilliant accountant who’s inept with outsiders and alienates all the smart people under him?”
- If you ask for feedback, don’t give your opinion right away: or it will seem like you never wanted to consider their opinion anyway. Instead, ask questions to let them share even more
- What people want changes by age: People in their 20s want to learn on the job. In their 30s they want to advance. And in their 40s they want to rule.
- Bosses prefer praise to criticism: so watch for giving “radical candor” feedback
Quotes
On withholding information to accrue power:
The problem with not sharing information—for whatever reason—is that it rarely achieves the desired effect.
You may think you’re gaining an edge and consolidating power, but you’re actually breeding mistrust. In order to have power, you need to inspire loyalty rather than fear and suspicion. Withholding information is nothing more than a misplaced need to win.
How the author convinced an executive to start the coaching relationship:
As I told you, I can’t help you make more money. But I can get you to confront this question: Do you really want to have a funeral where you’re the featured attraction and the only attendees are people who came to make sure you’re dead?
Basically, that’s where you’re headed.
Some good realpolitik wisdom some people need to hear:
Criticizing the boss, no matter how ardently he or she tells you to “bring it on,” is rarely a great career move.
On the relativity of top performance:
I take great comfort in the fact that Michael Jordan, to many the best basketball player to ever play the game, was a mediocre baseball player in the minor leagues and, as a golfer, would have a tough time keeping up with at least twenty golfers who live within an 800 yard radius of my home in San Diego.
What’s Missing: Optimized Power
While the advice is solid, the book tends to be a ‘be a better human’ guide, applying general self-help to career success.
The problem with generic self-help is that it’s often naive self-help, missing out foundational personal and interpersonal power with body language and behavior, and the more strategic aspects of power intelligence, including optimized dark-triad traits, strategic thinking.
And while Goldsmith is right that many men who come close to the top tend may tend to be overly-dominance, that’s not always the case.
The issue may still be respect, of course.
What may be holding some men back instead is not necessarily respecting others more, but getting more respect and being more positively dominant.
Review
“What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” is a good book for already successful people who’d like to improve.
It only focuses mostly on personal self-development and preventing largely beginner-like interpersonal mistakes though, missing office politics, interpersonal dominance, and strategies.
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