Many professionals get stuck at a certain level of success. For instance, they manage to climb to a middle-management position at their organization, but always get passed over for promotion to the executive level.
Author and business coach Marshall Goldsmith believes that many professionals’ careers stall in this way because they slip into bad behavioral habits. In other words, they start to treat their colleagues poorly. For instance, they may become so self-important that they refuse to listen to anyone else’s ideas, instead dismissing them outright.
Ultimately, to climb to the top of the corporate ladder, you need to have good people skills. If you’re constantly irritating everyone around you with your bad behavior, your superiors won’t have confidence in your interpersonal skills. Therefore, you won’t get picked for top-flight roles.
In What Got You Here, Won't Get You There, Goldsmith explains how you can reach your full potential by eliminating 21 harmful work behaviors. He argues that while engaging in these behaviors may not have stopped you from getting “here”—to your current level of success—they won’t get you “there”—to the heights of success that you ultimately aspire to.
(Shortform note: We’ve split the 21 habits into five categories to clarify themes and make the habits easier to recall.)
These five habits are rooted in not only believing that you’re “better” than all of your colleagues, but also feeling the need to demonstrate your apparent superiority at every opportunity.
Bad Habit #1: Constantly Needing to Win. This habit becomes problematic when you try to “win” at things that don’t really matter—for example, when you need to win an argument with a colleague about something as trivial as which coffee brand is best. This combative attitude will quickly irritate and alienate your coworkers.
The Healthier Behavior: Evaluate whether “winning” a certain situation will provide any long-term benefits to you or your company. If it won’t, consider whether pursuing this win is really worth the damage you may do to your reputation.
Bad Habit #2: Compulsively “Adding Value” to People’s Ideas. This means trying to improve every idea that’s presented to you because you’re certain you know a better way forward. It’s a sure-fire way to make the person who presented the idea feel inferior—like they’re not good enough to come up with strong ideas on their own.
The Healthier Behavior: Instead of trying to add value, simply thank people for their ideas or suggestions and move on.
Bad Habit #3: Passing Judgment on People’s Ideas and Opinions. Constantly passing either positive or negative judgment on your colleagues’ ideas makes them feel like you’re always grading them on the quality of their input. This puts them under a lot of pressure.
The Healthier Behavior: When people make suggestions or give their opinions, don’t pass either a negative or positive judgment. Just thank the person for their input.
Bad Habit #4: Overusing the Words “No,” “But,” and “However.” Responding to someone’s idea with these words sends them the message, “You’re wrong, I’m right, and I’m about to tell you why.” When you tell people they’re wrong, their first instinct is to fight back and prove they’re right. A bitter argument ensues, which isn’t conducive to a healthy working environment.
The Healthier Behavior: Consider whether the criticism or challenge you want to make is really important enough to risk starting an argument. If it’s not, keep it to yourself.
Bad Habit #5: Letting People Know How Smart You Are. This habit often manifests when someone tries to tell you something you’ve heard before. You may reply, “I already knew that” or “I’m way ahead of you,” the implication being “I had this idea before you did, meaning I’m smarter than you.” This belittles the other person and makes you seem arrogant.
The Healthier Behavior: If someone tells you something you’ve heard before, just say thank you and move on. There’s no need to humiliate them by making your prior knowledge clear.
The next five bad habits all involve either expressing negativity (for example, through anger or criticism) or withholding positivity (for instance, by refusing to praise people).
Bad Habit #6: Making Harmful or Hurtful Comments—for example, telling someone who’s made a sub-par suggestion in a meeting that they’re a waste of space. Making such comments will give you a reputation for being unkind and turn many people against you.
The Healthier Behavior: Keep your hurtful comments to yourself. Remember that being rude to a slacking employee won’t improve their performance—it’ll just make you look like a jerk.
Bad Habit #7: Expressing Anger Towards Others. If you regularly get angry at your colleagues, people will see you as volatile and out of control. You’ll appear too emotionally fragile to be trusted with further responsibilities.
The Healthier Behavior: Quickly remove yourself from any situations that start to make you angry. If that’s not possible, take deep breaths and pause before you react.
Bad Habit #8: Shooting the Messenger. Getting angry at the person who has to tell you something negative, such as bad news, is a sure-fire way to gain a reputation for being an unjust leader. After all, you’re directing your rage at someone who isn't at fault. The messenger didn’t create the bad situation—they’re just telling you about it.
The Healthier Behavior: When someone brings you bad news or criticism, simply thank them for telling you and move on. If you’re too upset or angry to do that, just say nothing at all.
Bad Habit #9: Expressing Relentless Negativity—for instance, whenever someone presents you with an idea, immediately listing all the reasons why it won’t work. Unless you temper critical comments with positive ones, people are going to get sick of you and your negativity.
The Healthier Behavior: Stop before you express your negativity and consider whether it’s actually necessary. If you conclude it’s absolutely imperative to say something negative, temper your criticism with positive comments.
Bad Habit #10: Refusing to Praise or Recognize People. Failing to recognize your colleagues for their hard work sows resentment. You’re going to develop a reputation as an unjust and ungrateful leader who’s unwilling to give others the credit they deserve.
The Healthier Behavior: Set time aside every week to consider your team’s recent achievements and pass on praise accordingly.
These five bad habits all relate to avoiding accountability: in other words, making excuses for your poor behavior and refusing to take responsibility for your actions.
Bad Habit #11: Blaming Others for Your Mistakes—for example, trying to blame the loss of a sale on a colleague, even though you were in charge of that account. Blaming others for your missteps loses you the respect of your colleagues. You’ll seem disloyal, devious, and willing to sacrifice others for your own gain.
The Healthier Behavior: Fully accept the blame for things that are your fault and tell your team members that you’re doing so. Show them that you’re willing to be accountable for your actions.
Bad Habit #12: Blaming Your Past Struggles for Your Current Bad Behavior. While your colleagues may be sympathetic towards your past struggles, they’ll still question why you think it’s appropriate to take them out on other people in the form of bad behavior. If you continue to do so, they’ll lose respect for you.
The Healthier Behavior: Try to develop a healthier relationship with your past and lessen its impact on your present behavior. For instance, you could talk to a therapist about what you’ve been through and how you can move past it.
Bad Habit #13: Making Your Personality the Excuse for Your Bad Behavior. Some people genuinely believe that their poor behavior is an unshakeable part of their personality. However, in most cases, this isn’t true. It is possible to unlearn your bad habits, and if you keep claiming that you can’t, people are going to lose respect for you.
The Healthier Behavior: Consider whether you’re really unable to change your bad behavior, or if you’re just unwilling to try. If the latter is the case, make a commitment to changing. It won’t be easy, but people will respect you for it.
Bad Habit #14: Refusing to Change Under the Guise of “Authenticity.” Some professionals believe that their harmful habits should be celebrated, not changed, because those habits are a part of their “authentic self.” This attitude selfishly disregards the behavior’s impact on other people and consequently harms the professional’s reputation.
The Healthier Behavior: Remember that your feelings aren’t the only ones that matter. Ask yourself, “Is prioritizing feeling authentic worth the damage that I’m currently doing to both other people and my own reputation?”
Bad Habit #15: Never Apologizing. Many professionals find saying sorry painful and humiliating, because they think it makes them look weak. However, if you don’t apologize for your wrongdoings, the people who’ve suffered because of your actions will become bitter. You’ll gain a reputation for being callous, unfeeling, and arrogant.
The Healthier Behavior: When you’ve done something wrong, apologize to the person or people affected by your behavior. Don’t let your pride get in the way of making amends.
Goldsmith identifies the next two bad habits, not saying thank you and refusing to listen to other people, as crucial elements of becoming a good colleague and leader.
Bad Habit #16: Not Saying Thank You. Many leaders avoid expressing gratitude because they see it as a form of weakness. They don’t like acknowledging that they sometimes need other people’s help. However, when you fail to thank others, you appear arrogant and unappreciative.
The Healthier Behavior: Swallow your pride and say thank you whenever people help you.
Bad Habit #17: Refusing to Listen to Other People. Often, successful people feel so confident in their abilities that they think listening to others is a waste of time. Why should they sit around listening to ideas they’ve probably already thought of? However, failing to listen destroys the speaker’s confidence, makes them feel unimportant, and makes them resent you.
The Healthier Behavior: Respectfully listen to any ideas that people put forward to you.
The final four habits don’t really fit into any of the above categories. However, they still negatively impact the people around you and are therefore important to eradicate.
Bad Habit #18: Withholding Information From Your Colleagues. People often do this accidentally—they’re so busy that they forget to pass on important information to their coworkers. However, whether it’s accidental or not, withholding information makes people distrust you. They start to wonder what else you’re hiding from them.
The Healthier Behavior: Take a set amount of time each day to share information with the people who need to know it, either by email, over the phone, or in person.
Bad Habit #19: Taking Undeserved Credit for Other People’s Successes. When you claim that you were responsible for an achievement that you actually had very little part in, you generate rage and bitterness on the part of the person whose credit you’ve stolen. If they tell others about what you’ve done, your reputation will undoubtedly suffer.
The Healthier Behavior: When you’re congratulated for an achievement, consider how others might have contributed to your success. If someone else did help you, publicly credit them.
Bad Habit #20: Engaging in Favoritism. Favoritism is treating some of your team members better than others, not because they’re performing better, but because you like them more. It breeds resentment among the members of your team who work hard and yet see few rewards simply because you don’t like them that much.
The Healthier Behavior: When you find yourself tempted to favor a particular team member, question whether, based on their performance, this person actually deserves a reward. If not, refrain from giving them one.
Bad Habit #21: Becoming Obsessed With Achieving Goals. Becoming too focused on pursuing your goals can lead to ruthlessness: feeling that you need to meet your goals, no matter how much your actions harm other people. Ultimately, being ruthless will gain you a reputation for being a cold-hearted backstabber who’s unpleasant to work with.
The Healthier Behavior: Constantly reflect on the behavior that’s moving you closer to achieving your goals. Consider whether it’s having any negative consequences. If it is, apologize to anyone you’ve harmed and modify your behavior.
We’ve discussed the 21 bad habits that many successful people adopt. Now, it’s time to explore the process of overcoming these bad behaviors.
The first step in overcoming your bad habits is establishing exactly which habits you’ve adopted. The easiest way to do this is to solicit feedback from your colleagues. Approach the people you work with and ask them which elements of your behavior they would like to see improved. If many colleagues say that they’re unhappy with the same two or three behaviors, you’ll know these are the bad habits you’ve slipped into.
Solicited feedback works best if it’s requested confidentially by a third party. If you personally ask people for feedback on your behavior, it’s very unlikely that they’re going to answer honestly. They may be afraid of upsetting you with negative comments or fear retribution if you don’t like what they say. Therefore, they’re going to keep what they say fairly positive. Soliciting feedback confidentially through a third party takes away these reservations and encourages people to share their true opinions.
Goldsmith argues that you should solicit “360-degree” feedback. This means asking people from all levels of your organization for feedback on your performance: your bosses, your peers, and your subordinates.
When it comes to selecting precisely which of your peers, bosses, and subordinates to ask for feedback, each potential candidate needs to fit four requirements:
If you receive feedback that suggests you’ve got multiple bad habits, don’t try to overcome them all at once. You’ll quickly become mentally exhausted and struggle to continue with the process of change. For this reason, it’s best to stick to fixing one behavior at a time.
When choosing which bad habit to address first, pick the one that featured the most prominently in your feedback. For example, if 10% of the people you asked for feedback said you’re a bad listener, but 80% of them said you have an anger problem, tackle the anger issue first.
You’ve gathered feedback from your colleagues and identified which bad habit you’re going to tackle. Now, it’s time to begin the process of change: to start to cut this habit out of your life. In short, this involves replacing your bad behavior with its healthier alternative.
Start the process of change as soon as possible after deciding which bad behavior you’re going to address. Don’t fall into the trap of putting change off until a time when you’re “less busy.” As an already successful person, you’re always going to be busy. Bite the bullet and start to cut out your bad behavior now. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll make progress.
As you begin the process of changing your behavior, there are two obstacles you may face:
Obstacle #1: Feeling overwhelmed. The idea of changing your behavior may seem incredibly overwhelming, especially if you decide to immediately jump from one behavioral extreme to another—for instance, from being a rude jerk who makes destructive comments all the time to being a benevolent boss who’s incredibly polite and kind.
To avoid feeling overwhelmed, start the process of change by shifting into behaving neutrally. Cut out your bad behavior without instantly trying to replace it with something “better.” For example, stop making destructive remarks to your colleagues without immediately switching to making lots of kind remarks. While “just” cutting out a bad behavior still takes a lot of work, it requires considerably less effort than ceasing a behavior and introducing a new one all at once. It’s therefore a much less overwhelming prospect.
Obstacle #2: Resisting change. Successful people often develop the superstitious delusion that their bad habit was a major factor in generating their professional success up to this point. They believe that if they cease their bad behavior, they’ll only experience failure in the future. Therefore, any calls for them to change their behavior are met with extreme hostility.
To overcome superstition and become willing to change, fully analyze how beneficial this bad behavior has actually been to you. List of all of the ways this you think behavior has helped you in the past, and all of the ways in which it’s harmed you—for instance, by giving you a bad reputation or ruining your working relationships. You’ll probably find that your bad behavior does much more harm than good, and you’ll hopefully feel more certain that you do need to change.
Your next move is to frequently and repeatedly talk about your behavioral change. There are three types of conversation that you need to have with your colleagues:
Conversation #1: Apologize for your previous bad behavior. By saying sorry, you’ll show your colleagues that you know you’ve messed up and are willing to take responsibility for your actions. You may also give people the closure they need to move on from your past indiscretions and forgive you. You’ll have gained a small amount of ground in your mission to recover people’s goodwill and restore your reputation.
Conversation #2: Announce your intention to change. Frequently and consistently tell your colleagues exactly what you’re going to do to overcome your harmful habit and reassure them that you’re fully committed to changing. Doing so will further erode your colleagues’ negative perceptions of you. They’ll start to believe that you’re serious about making up for your past mistakes and really do intend to behave in a healthier way.
Conversation #3: Follow up and request “feedforward.” Approach your colleagues on a regular basis—say, once a month—to ask them how they think you’ve progressed in your attempts to change so far. Following up in this way gives you a way to measure your progress so far. It also helps to improve your colleagues’ opinions of you even more, as it forces them to think about how much better your behavior has become.
While following up with your colleagues, you should ask them for two pieces of “feedforward.” Feedforward is practical advice on what you can do to improve your behavior even further moving forward. This type of advice is beneficial because it focuses on creating a positive future, not punishing yourself for the mistakes of the past.
Are you a professional who’s already seen a lot of success in your working life, but is struggling to progress any further? For instance, are you a middle manager who always seems to get passed over for promotion to the executive level? Are you a top executive who can’t seem to make the jump to becoming a CEO?
Many people get stuck at a certain level of success. This isn’t because of a lack of direction—lots of these professionals know exactly where they want to be. Likewise, it’s not because of a lack of self-esteem. Many successful people have excessive self-esteem and are arrogant. According to business coach and author Marshall Goldsmith, the problem lies in successful people’s bad behavior.
Goldsmith believes that as high-fliers chase and ultimately achieve success, they become so obsessed with gaining results and so convinced of their importance that they slip into harmful behavioral habits. In short, they start to treat other people badly. For instance, they become so focused on closing sales that they put extreme pressure on their team. They become so self-important that they refuse to listen to anyone else’s ideas and dismiss them outright.
Compounding this issue is the fact that many people don’t even realize that their behavior is bad. Instead, they see their flaws as the secrets to their success. For instance, they think that constantly interrupting people’s presentations is simply a way to give helpful feedback. Meanwhile, everyone else sees this behavior as rude and patronizing.
Ultimately, to climb to the top of the corporate ladder, you need to have good people skills. Executives and CEOs need to be able to lead and inspire people. They also need to be able to respectfully interact with their subordinates, important clients, and stakeholders. If you’re constantly irritating everyone with your bad behavior, your superiors won’t have confidence in your ability to fulfill these requirements. Therefore, you won’t get picked for these top-flight roles.
In What Got You Here, Won't Get You There, Marshall Goldsmith explains how you can reach your full potential by eliminating harmful work behaviors. First, he explores the 21 bad habits that many professionals slip into and healthier alternatives to these problematic behaviors. Then, he discusses how to identify, overcome, and make amends for your bad habits. He argues that while engaging in these behaviors may not have stopped you from getting “here”—to your current level of success—they won’t get you “there”—to the heights of success that you ultimately aspire to.
(Shortform note: We’ve reordered and reorganized many of the book’s chapters to add coherency and avoid repetition. Likewise, we’ve split the 21 habits of successful people into five categories to clarify themes and make the habits easier to recall.)
Do you want to get from “here” to “there”? Reflect on the habits holding you back and what you hope to gain from this book.
What are your career goals? Be as specific as possible.
What external obstacles are keeping you from achieving your goals? (For example, did you recently get passed over for a promotion? Do your managers fail to take you seriously?)
Which of your own behaviors might be contributing to the problem?
What do you hope to learn from this book?
In this section, we’re going to explore the 21 bad habits that successful people often slip into. These habits aren’t deep personality flaws that would take extensive psychiatry to change. Instead, they’re the everyday annoying traits that many successful people—especially those in leadership positions—tend to develop.
Most of these bad behaviors harm others at our own expense. Some professionals wouldn’t characterize harming others for personal gain as a bad thing. Instead, they might see these bad habits as a useful way to gain an advantage over their rivals. However, Goldsmith argues that the key to becoming successful isn’t pushing other people down on your way to the top. Instead, it’s gaining allies who will back you and help to lift you up to further success. Therefore, it’s important to overcome these harmful behaviors.
Before we get started on exploring these habits, there are two important points to address:
Second, don’t be too hard on yourself if you start to recognize yourself in any of the behaviors outlined below. Having these bad habits doesn’t make you a bad person. You just have the opportunity to become an even better person by addressing and fixing your bad behavior and making a commitment to personal growth.
The first five behaviors we’re going to look at fall under the category of flaunting your apparent superiority: in other words, not only believing that you’re “better” than all of your colleagues, but feeling the need to demonstrate how much better you are at every opportunity.
In the context of this bad habit, “winning” could mean a lot of things. For instance, it could mean being right about something. It could mean your idea being selected over a colleague’s. Or it could mean meeting a goal quicker than your peers.
Chasing “wins” isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes, having healthy competition with your colleagues can drive you to get great results. For instance, it might push you to close a lot of deals, or bring on as many prestigious new clients as possible, just to “beat” your coworkers. Ultimately, these “wins” are beneficial to you and your employer.
However, the need to win becomes a problem when you make everything into a competition and strive to “win” at things that don’t really matter. For example, unhealthy winning is needing to be right whenever you talk to your peers, even if the conversation is about something trivial like which brand of coffee is best. It’s also gloating about these small, trivial wins at every given opportunity, just to remind the people around you that you “beat” them.
This attitude is quickly going to irritate and alienate your colleagues. It suggests you believe your need to come out on top is more important than the feelings of the team. It also suggests that you relish making other people feel “lesser.” Neither of these perceptions is going to earn you much respect.
The Healthier Behavior: Evaluate whether “winning” a certain situation will actually provide any long-term benefits to you or your company. Is this “win” actually about making tangible progress, such as winning a sale or improving the quality of a project, or is it just about boosting your ego? If the latter, is this temporary ego boost worth the lasting damage you may do to your colleagues’ confidence and your reputation? Probably not.
“Adding value” means trying to improve someone else’s idea—for instance, responding to every suggestion that’s presented to you with “That’s a great idea, but here’s how to do it better,” or “I think this would be improved if…”
Successful people are often tempted to do this because they’re arrogant. They believe that since they’re so successful, they must be smarter than everyone else around them. Therefore, they must be capable of improving every idea presented to them by their “lesser” colleagues.
These successful people often believe they’re being helpful. They’re only trying to share their superior knowledge and ideas with other people—what’s wrong with that? What they don’t realize is that “adding value” only demoralizes the person who originally presented the idea. It makes them feel they’re not good enough to come up with ideas without needing extra help. It also makes them resent the person who’s made them feel so inadequate.
Likewise, “adding value” makes the person who came up with the idea feel they’ve lost ownership of it. It’s not just their idea anymore—it contains someone else’s thoughts, too. This is demotivating. People would much rather work on an idea entirely their own, rather than pursue one that’s been hijacked and added to by someone else.
The Healthier Behavior: Before you try to “add value” to an idea, evaluate whether doing so is actually worth it. Is what you’re about to suggest so vitally important that it justifies damaging someone’s confidence? Likewise, is showing off how smart and full of good ideas you are worth making people resent you? Arguably, it’s not. Instead of trying to add value, simply thank people for their suggestions and move on. You’ll protect both their feelings and your reputation.
Have you ever asked for your team’s ideas on a certain subject, and then passed judgment on every response—for instance, telling one person “great idea,” and another “that idea needs work”? Many leaders believe passing judgment on ideas and opinions is a positive thing. It gives some of their team members encouragement and others the push they need to improve.
However, in the long run, passing judgment—even when that judgment is positive—leads to a tense and uncomfortable working atmosphere. Your team members begin to believe that every time they make a suggestion or give an opinion, they’re going to be graded on it. This puts a lot of pressure on them to make “good” suggestions all the time. They feel that if they don’t, they’re going to be called out for it—a humiliating prospect.
Passing judgment may even make your team members reluctant to suggest things at all for fear of being “graded” harshly. Their confidence will fall, their stress levels will rise, and they may become afraid of you.
The Healthier Behavior: When people make suggestions or give their opinions to you, don’t pass either a negative or positive judgment. Just thank the person for their input and move on. Doing so will protect the self-confidence of the person you’re talking to and will make you seem like a kinder, less judgmental person.
Overusing the words “no,” “but,” and “however” involves constantly challenging the validity of people’s ideas and suggestions. For example, it’s listening to one of your team members outlining a new possible sales strategy and responding with, “That’s a great idea, but…” or “What you’re saying makes sense. However…”
This habit breeds conflict. If you respond to someone’s suggestion with a “no,” a “but,” or a “however,” you send them the message, “You’re wrong, I’m right, and I’m about to tell you why.” When people are told they’re wrong, their first instinct is to fight back: to demonstrate that actually, they’re the one in the right. More often than not, an argument over who is correct ensues, which isn’t conducive to a healthy and positive working environment.
The Healthier Behavior: Learn to hold your tongue. Consider whether the criticism or challenge you want to make is important or justified enough to risk starting an argument. If it’s not, keep it to yourself.
This habit is rooted in the desire to always seem like you’re the cleverest person in the room. Some successful people genuinely believe in their own intellectual superiority. They think that to get as far as they have, they must be smarter than everyone else. Others try to make themselves look clever because they feel insecure.
People frequently slip into this habit when someone presents them with an idea that they’ve heard or thought about before. In such situations, the person will reply, “I already knew that,” “I’m way ahead of you,” or maybe even, “Why would you bother telling me that?” All of these phrases imply: “I had this amazing idea before you did, which means I’m smarter than you.”
Making your prior knowledge of an idea clear in this way may well make you look smart. However, it’ll also make you look callous, arrogant, and rude. In the process of trying to make yourself look clever, you’ve put down the person you’re talking to and tried to make them feel stupid. Nobody is going to respect you for that.
The Healthier Behavior: If someone tells you something you’ve heard before, just say thank you and move on. There’s no need to humiliate them by making your prior knowledge clear. Doing so may give you a temporary ego boost, but it’s only going to harm your reputation and the other person’s confidence.
The next five bad habits center on either expressing negativity (for example, through anger, criticism, or hurtful comments) or withholding positivity (for instance, by refusing to praise people).
Making harmful or hurtful comments to your colleagues means insulting or belittling them in some way. For example, you might tell someone who’s made a sub-par suggestion in a meeting that they’re stupid and a waste of space, or humiliate someone by publicly mocking a time when they failed or made a mistake.
Many leaders think harmful comments serve a purpose. For instance, they believe that being rude or harsh to an underperforming employee will shock them into finally improving. Likewise, they may think that putting other people down is an effective way to build themselves up and gain more power as a leader.
But any possible “benefits” of being rude pale in comparison to the harm it does. If you’re hurtful to the people around you, they’ll quickly lose respect for you. You’ll gain a reputation for being unkind—a reputation that won’t serve you well when you look to progress in your career. This reputation will persist even if you apologize to the people you’ve hurt. Ultimately, these colleagues will never see you in the same way again, permanently damaging your working relationship.
The Healthier Behavior: If you find yourself tempted to make a hurtful or harsh comment, consider what the benefits of doing so will be versus the costs. For example, will being incredibly rude to a slacking employee actually improve their performance? Probably not. It’s more likely that the employee will get upset and you’ll look like a jerk. Therefore, being rude to this person probably isn’t worth it.
All of us get angry in the workplace from time to time—for instance, when a decision doesn’t go our way, or when a colleague negatively interferes with our work. However, you’ll create problems if you regularly express this anger—especially if you direct it at your colleagues.
If you frequently lose your temper in the workplace—for example, if you shout at your team members, or rant and rave to your manager about your problems—your reputation will suffer. People will see you as volatile and out of control, not a dependable and respectful employee. Unfortunately, in Goldsmith’s experience, volatility is a reputation that lingers. It often becomes a person’s defining trait, with their strengths being forgotten.
Some leaders argue that anger can, at times, be a useful management technique. For example, they claim that getting angry at underperforming employees may drive them to change their behavior. In reality, most people don’t respond to anger with contrition and renewed hard work. Instead, they respond with anger of their own—specifically, fury that their leader would treat them in such a way. This leads to resentment growing and working relationships being fractured.
The Healthier Behavior: When you feel yourself getting angry in the workplace, try to remain calm and refrain from expressing your emotions. For example, quickly remove yourself from the anger-inducing situation. This will give you time to cool down before responding. If this isn’t possible, take deep breaths and pause before you react. Remind yourself that getting angry is only going to make you look bad and probably isn’t going to resolve the frustrating situation.
An extension of expressing anger towards others is “shooting the messenger.” This means getting angry at the person who’s been tasked with telling you something you don’t want to hear, such as bad news or criticism. For instance, if your assistant tells you that your boss can’t make time to see you, “shooting the messenger” is shouting at the assistant in frustration.
In situations such as these, the messenger is just passing on information that someone else has given them. It’s ultimately not their fault that you’ve received bad news or been criticized. Therefore, directing your anger at them isn’t really fair. However, you do so anyway, because you feel you’ve got to get your frustrations out somehow. The messenger is an immediately available scapegoat.
Ultimately, “shooting the messenger” will make people wary of you and give you a reputation for having a temper. Likewise, it’s going to make you seem like an unjust leader. After all, you’re directing your rage at someone who isn't at fault.
The Healthier Behavior: When someone brings you bad news or criticism, simply thank them for telling you and move on. If you’re too upset or angry to do that, just say nothing at all. It’s better to stay silent than lash out. Remember that it’s not the messenger’s fault that they’ve had to tell you something you didn’t want to hear, so they don’t deserve your anger.
Some leaders become what Marshall Goldsmith’s wife refers to as “negatrons.” “Negatrons” are walking, talking manifestations of negativity. Whenever anyone presents them with a suggestion or an idea, they immediately jump to explain why it won’t work. They do this even when nobody has actually asked for their input—they can’t resist adding their negative two cents into every conversation.
Often, “negatrons” tell themselves that they’re highlighting the problems with people’s ideas to be helpful. In reality, this behavior is often more about the “negatron” making themselves feel superior. By criticizing an idea, they’re demonstrating that they know better—that they’re perceptive enough to spot problems the idea’s creator didn’t consider.
Becoming a “negatron” is a sure-fire way to alienate the people you work with. People aren’t going to ask for your input if all you’re going to do is spread doom and gloom. While negativity does sometimes have its place—for instance, if someone’s idea is truly, irredeemably disastrous—unless you temper occasional negative comments with lots of positive ones, people are quickly going to get sick of you.
To illustrate a “negatron” in action, Goldsmith relates the example of Terri, a woman who used to organize his corporate lectures. Terri would spend a lot of time trying to convince Goldsmith that speaking at certain companies wouldn’t be a good idea. For instance, she would claim that a certain company “couldn’t afford” Goldsmith, or that its employees “won’t listen to you anyway.” Eventually, Goldsmith got sick of Terri’s negativity and stopped working with her.
The Healthier Behavior: Self-monitor to ensure you’re predominantly putting positivity out into the world. If you find yourself slipping into “negatron” habits, stop before you express your negativity and consider whether doing so is actually necessary. Is the person’s idea really that bad, or are you putting them down just to feel better about yourself? If you conclude it’s absolutely imperative to say something negative, try to temper your criticism with positive comments.
Successful people often lose sight of the importance of praising or recognizing others for their achievements—for example, congratulating a team member for making a great sale. This reluctance to praise develops for a number of reasons. First, managers might feel that good work should be a “given” among their subordinates and is therefore not worthy of celebration. Second, they may believe they’re too busy to waste time giving out kind words. Finally, they may think that since they’ve never been praised for their good work, nobody else deserves praise, either.
Ultimately, refusing to praise the people around you is unjustifiable. Not only is it unkind, but it’s also going to sow resentment and disrespect among your colleagues. You’ll develop a reputation as an ungrateful and self-absorbed leader who won’t give others the credit they deserve.
Likewise, withholding praise denies people the positive emotional payoff they usually get from working hard and succeeding. People will start to think that putting effort into their tasks isn’t worth it since they won’t be rewarded for doing so. They’ll lose motivation, and their job performance will suffer. You’ll no longer get good results out of your team—something that will damage your reputation even further.
The Healthier Behavior: Set time aside every week to consider your team’s recent achievements and pass on praise accordingly. Follow the example of one of Goldsmith’s clients, who made a list of all the people he managed or worked with. Twice a week, he looked at the list and considered if any of these people had done anything worth recognizing. If they had, he sent them a quick email or called them to say well done.
These five bad habits all relate to avoiding accountability: in other words, making excuses for your poor behavior and refusing to take responsibility for your actions.
This bad habit is also known as “passing the buck.” If you’re a leader, “passing the buck” may mean trying to entirely blame your subordinates for their poor performance when, as the person in charge, you should be taking responsibility for at least a part of the failure.
Often, leaders are drawn to blaming others for their mistakes because they can’t bear the thought of appearing flawed. They think admitting they’re imperfect and mess up from time to time will make them look weak.
In reality, the opposite is true. Admitting that you’ve made a mistake takes strength and courage. It’s a humbling gesture that people generally respect. In contrast, if you blame others for your missteps, you’ll lose the respect of those around you. You’ll seem disloyal, devious, and willing to sacrifice others for your own gain.
The Healthier Behavior: Fully accept the blame for things that are your fault and tell your team members that you’re doing so. Show them that you’re willing to be accountable for your actions. You’ll gain respect in the process.
Things from our past undeniably affect who we are today. For example, if you have low self-esteem, it may be because your parents didn’t praise you enough. If you struggle to interact with or respect authority figures, it may be because your parents were overly controlling.
However, you can’t use the troubles of your past to absolve yourself of responsibility for bad behavior in the present. Although people may be sympathetic towards your past struggles, they’ll still question why you think it’s appropriate to take them out on other people in the form of bad behavior. If you continue to do so, they’ll lose respect for you.
For example, imagine you get criticized by a superior for being overly aggressive with your team members. You believe you’ve developed this aggressive aspect of your personality because your father was frequently aggressive during your childhood, and you explain this to your boss.
You might think that your boss will be so sympathetic to your plight that they’ll give you a “free pass” to keep acting harmfully. After all, your aggression isn’t really your fault. In reality, your boss will probably express sorrow that you were treated that way, but question why you haven’t taken steps to deal with your past in a healthy way. Ultimately, your troubled relationship with your father isn’t your coworkers’ problem. Why should they suffer because of it?
The Healthier Behavior: Try to develop a healthier relationship with your past and lessen its impact on your present behavior. For instance, you could talk to a therapist about what you’ve been through and how you can move past it. This isn’t by any means a quick or easy fix, but it’s a necessary step to take if you want to stop sabotaging your present and future. Likewise, consistently remind yourself that being treated badly in the past doesn’t give you an excuse to behave badly in the present. If your past does drive you to act in a destructive way, take accountability, apologize, and work to do better in the future.
This habit involves trying to excuse your bad behavior by blaming it on an innate personality trait that you can’t control. For example, you may try to excuse getting angry at others by saying, “Sorry I shouted at you, I have a naturally quick temper.” You may try to shirk responsibility for lateness by saying, “Sorry, I’m just really bad at time management. It’s who I am.”
Some people genuinely believe that their poor behavior is an unshakeable part of their personality. They may have been acting in this negative way for so long that they can’t imagine a different way of living. For instance, tardiness may have started in childhood with being consistently late for school.
However, in most cases, change is possible. We’re not born lazy, tardy, or rude—we’ve learned these behaviors over our lifetimes. This means that we can unlearn them, too. If you refuse to do this, people are going to lose respect for you. They’re going to see you as someone who’s too lazy or too uncaring to bother to improve themselves.
The Healthier Behavior: If you find yourself excusing a harmful behavior because you think you’re irredeemably bad at something, challenge this thought. Honestly consider whether you’re actually unable to change this behavior, or if you’re just unwilling to try. If the latter is the case, make a commitment to changing. It won’t be easy, but people will respect you for it.
Many self-help manuals laud the importance of “living authentically”: accepting and letting loose the “real you.” In theory, living authentically isn’t a bad thing. Expressing your real self is much healthier—emotionally and mentally—than pretending to be someone you’re not. However, some leaders take this principle a little too far. They start to use “authenticity” as a justification for their bad behavior.
Leaders who adopt this bad habit become fiercely protective of their right to behave badly. They believe that their harmful habits should be celebrated because they’re a part of their “authentic self”—a part of what makes them uniquely special. In their eyes, abandoning their poor behaviors would be disingenuous and disloyal to themselves, so they refuse to do so.
For example, an executive Goldsmith worked with refused to give his subordinates praise because he believed that praising people just wasn’t “him.” He argued that giving his colleagues encouragement would make him feel like a “phony.”
People who engage in this habit become so focused on protecting their own feelings—specifically, their feelings of being authentic and true to themselves—that they stop caring about how their behavior makes other people feel. This selfishness and lack of care for others severely harm their reputation.
The Healthier Behavior: Stop seeing the idea of changing your bad behavior through the lens of “how will doing this make me feel? Will it make me feel like a phony?” Remember that your feelings aren’t the only ones that matter. Instead, think “how will changing my behavior make others feel? Is remaining “authentic” to myself worth the damage that I’m currently doing to both other people and my own reputation?”
Many successful people deeply struggle with the idea of apologizing. They find saying sorry painful and humiliating, because they think it makes them look weak. They believe people will look down on them if they admit they’re fallible.
However, Goldsmith argues that apologizing actually puts you in a strong position because it gets people on your side. It’s the first step in encouraging people to forgive you for your past transgressions. It helps both parties to overcome the hurt of the past and move forward together. Apologizing also makes people respect you more. It demonstrates that despite your success, you’re humble enough to recognize that you’re not above accepting accountability.
In contrast, if you don’t apologize for your wrongdoings, the people who’ve suffered because of your actions will become bitter. They’ll think you don’t care about them or their feelings. You’ll gain a reputation for being callous, unfeeling, and arrogant enough to think that your harmful actions don’t matter.
The Healthier Behavior: When you’ve done something wrong, apologize to the person or people affected by your behavior. Don’t let your pride get in the way of making amends. If you do, you’ll only upset people further and damage your reputation. We’ll explore apologizing and its importance further in Chapter 8.
The next two bad habits we’re going to discuss are not saying thank you and refusing to listen to other people.
(Shortform note: We’ve given these two bad habits their own chapter because Goldsmith discusses them in great detail and gives them great importance. He identifies the processes of learning to listen and learning to express gratitude as crucial elements of becoming a good colleague and leader. Even if you don’t think that these bad habits are issues for you, it’s important to at least consider how you might build upon and improve your already strong listening and gratitude skills.)
One of the simplest tenets of good etiquette is saying thank you when people compliment you or give you a helpful suggestion. Yet when it comes to putting politeness into practice, many leaders fall short. They fall into the bad habit of not expressing gratitude for other people’s help.
People may refrain from saying thank you for a number of reasons. First, they may do so because they’ve fallen into one of the other bad habits we’ve covered. While these leaders know that saying thank you is important, their compulsion to engage in their bad habit trumps their need to be polite. For instance, imagine you’re someone who feels the need to “add value” to people’s suggestions. If you’ve fallen into this bad practice, you’re automatically going to respond to people’s ideas with a suggestion of improvement, not a simple thank you.
Second, some leaders avoid gratitude because they see it as a form of weakness. When we thank someone, we acknowledge that they’ve helped us in some way. Many leaders would prefer to appear self-sufficient and “good enough” without needing others’ help. They think that cultivating this image will give them an air of superiority and help them to maintain power over their subordinates. In reality, it’ll only make them appear ungrateful, arrogant, and unappreciative of other people’s efforts.
Third, some leaders rarely express their gratitude because they feel they have to wait until the “right time” to do so. This “right time” is usually a big event—for instance, one of their team members completing a huge project, or their team hitting their annual target. These leaders think that the phrase “thank you” becomes less impactful the more it’s said, and should therefore be saved for “special occasions.”
However, this simply isn’t true. People will never get sick of being thanked—it makes them feel appreciated and valued. So, you might as well thank them as often as possible (provided they deserve this effusive gratitude).
The Healthier Behavior: Say thank you, and do so often. When someone compliments you or gives you a suggestion, fight the urge to say anything but those two short words.
If you think you’ll struggle to get used to the idea of expressing gratitude after years of not doing so, Goldsmith suggests completing what he calls a “gratitude drill.” This drill has two simple steps:
Not only will doing this give you valuable experience in thanking people and hopefully make you more comfortable with doing so, it’ll also stop you from becoming arrogant—from thinking that you and your amazing abilities have been the only factors in your success. It’ll remind you that actually, you’ve had a lot of help along your career journey—a realization that will keep you humble.
Often, successful people feel so confident in their abilities and cleverness that they think listening to others is a waste of time. They believe that they already know all the answers and the best approaches to every situation. Why should they sit around listening to ideas they’ve probably already thought of?
People may display this attitude in two main ways. First, they might simply zone out of conversations and stop taking in what other people are saying. This is probably the less harmful of the two behaviors since a lot of the time, the person speaking won’t realize that their conversational partner has mentally checked out. They’ll remain oblivious to the fact that they’re not being listened to.
The second, more harmful way that people display that they don’t want to listen to people is by actively trying to hurry the person who’s talking. For example, they may look at their watch, tap their fingers impatiently, or even tell the person to hurry up and get to the point.
These actions send the message, “you’re not good or clever enough for me to bother listening to you, so I want to get you out of the way quickly.” Not only will this destroy the speaker’s confidence, but it’ll also make them resent you. Nobody likes being made to feel like an unimportant annoyance.
The Healthier Behavior: Respectfully listen to any ideas that people put forward to you, no matter how busy you are. Giving people the time of day is the only way to maintain their respect and make them feel valued.
To become a truly good listener, you need to put the following three principles into action:
Principle #1: Let the other person speak. It’s impossible to listen to someone effectively if you’re the one doing all the talking, or if you keep interrupting the other person. Just keep quiet and let the person get their point across. Once they’ve finished, ask them a question about what they’ve just said. This will demonstrate that you’ve been listening. Plus, it’ll give the person the opportunity to start talking again as they answer your question.
You might worry that keeping quiet throughout a conversation will make you appear like you have nothing interesting to say. However, Goldsmith argues that this is rarely the case. The other person will be so grateful to have been given the chance to speak that they’ll see you in nothing but a positive light.
Principle #2: Give the other person your full attention while they’re talking. Don’t multitask when someone’s talking to you. For example, don’t start to type out an email mid-conversation. Likewise, don’t let yourself get distracted by events going on around you. For instance, don’t start paying close attention to what your boss is doing across the room and subsequently “zone out” of your conversation. All of these actions give the impression that you don’t really care about the person who’s speaking or what they’re saying, and therefore can’t be bothered to pay full attention to them.
Principle #3: Be mindful when deciding how to respond to the other person. Ask yourself whether what you’re about to say is going to make the other person feel respected, appreciated, and listened to. If it’s not—for example, if your initial instinct is to dismiss what the person’s said outright and immediately change the subject—consider whether there’s a better way forward. Should you maybe hold your tongue in order to spare the other person’s feelings and protect your reputation as a good listener?
The final four habits we’re going to discuss don’t really fit into any of the above categories. However, they still negatively impact the people around you and are therefore important to eradicate.
Withholding information from your colleagues can take various forms. For example, you might exclude them from information-sharing meetings, not copy them on important emails, or fail to update them on changes in policy.
You might think that people withhold information from their peers deliberately and maliciously. They know that not having access to certain information—for example, data about the most promising client leads, or information about which markets are most open to prospecting at the moment—will put their peers in a weaker position than themselves.
However, Goldsmith argues that such maliciousness is rare. In reality, most people withhold information accidentally. They’re simply too busy or too forgetful to pass it on. For instance, a busy executive simply may not find the time to share the latest company updates with their assistant. Someone with many tasks to juggle may not have the focus to remember to reply to an email request for information.
Even accidental failures to share information have tangible negative effects. If someone finds out you didn’t tell them something important, they’ll trust you less. They’ll start to wonder what else you’re hiding from them. To successfully progress in the workplace, you need people to be loyal to you, not distrust or be suspicious of you.
The Healthier Behavior: Take a set amount of time each day to share information with the people who need to know it. For instance, spend a few minutes emailing all relevant people with company updates or meeting requests. Set up a daily meeting with your assistants and subordinates to inform them of any key updates. Not only will this get the required information across, but it shows that you actually care about your colleagues—that you actively want to keep them in the loop.
This habit involves unfairly claiming that you were responsible for an achievement that you actually had very little part in. For example, it’s claiming the credit for making an amazing sale when, in reality, a different member of your team did most of the work.
Stealing credit is most frequent when people have been working on a team project that has an unclear division of labor. When you’ve been sharing tasks with colleagues, it’s difficult to know who deserves what credit when the project comes to a close. Some people capitalize on this uncertainty. They claim that they’re the main driving force behind the project’s success, even if this isn’t true. They become so focused on impressing their superiors that they’re willing to throw their peers under the bus.
This generates rage and bitterness on the part of the person whose credit you’ve stolen. That person will see your behavior as unforgivable, and their opinion of you will be forever tainted. They may tell other people about the injustice they’ve suffered, thus changing others’ opinions of you, too. You’ll find yourself gaining a reputation for being an unjust, selfish back-stabber.
The Healthier Behavior: Whenever you find yourself being congratulated for an achievement, consider how someone else might have contributed to your success. If someone else was involved, make sure that you share the credit with them. For instance, if you make an insightful point in a meeting, consider whether this was entirely your idea or if someone else in the meeting inspired you with their own insightful comment. If it’s the latter, make sure to give credit to the other person if someone praises your idea.
Favoritism is treating some of your team members better than others based on factors other than their job performance. For example, it’s giving a particular team member the most prestigious and fulfilling projects to work on, not because they’re the best worker you have, but because you like them as a person. It’s depriving another team member of opportunities for advancement, not because they perform badly, but because your personalities just don’t “click.”
This bad habit is problematic for a number of reasons. First, it breeds resentment among the members of your team who work hard and yet see few rewards simply because you don’t like them that much. If these people start to share their concerns with others, your reputation may suffer. Second, if someone on your team is spending lots of time trying to get you to like them as a person and therefore favor them, this diverts their focus from their work. If enough people become distracted from their work in this way, your team’s overall performance will decline.
Many leaders believe they’re well aware of favoritism’s pitfalls and would therefore never engage in it. However, in Goldsmith’s experience, many of them do so anyway. Goldsmith argues that this disconnect between intention and action occurs because favoritism is often a subconscious process. It’s an automatic response to people praising us and expressing their admiration for us. These people have made us feel good, so we instinctively want to make them feel good in return—even if they’re not actually a good enough worker to deserve our praise.
The Healthier Behavior: When you find yourself tempted to favor a particular team member, analyze why you’re doing so. For instance, are you only feeling positively towards this person because they’ve recently complimented or fawned over you? Based on their performance, does this employee actually deserve a reward? If not, refrain from giving them one.
In and of itself, being goal-focused isn’t necessarily a flaw. Constantly working to achieve your goals is the only way you’re going to move forward in your career.
However, Goldsmith argues that becoming too obsessed with pursuing your goals can lead to ruthlessness: feeling that you need to meet your goals, no matter how much your actions harm other people. This may lead you to engage in some of the other bad habits we’ve already discussed—specifically, those that involve you pushing others down while building yourself up.
For instance, Goldsmith once worked with an executive named Candace. Candace was incredibly successful in her role and frequently met all of her performance goals. However, none of Candace’s staff ever stayed in their positions for long. Goldsmith’s job was to find out why Candace was so bad at retaining her staff. He discovered Candace was unpopular because she frequently took credit for her subordinates’ success. She was so focused on making it to the top of the corporate ladder that she was willing to sacrifice and hurt other people in the process.
Ultimately, pursuing your goals ruthlessly will only hinder your ability to progress. The more people you hurt on the way up to the top, the more enemies you’ll make along the way, and the less popular you’ll become. You’ll gain a reputation for being cold-hearted, unpleasant to work with, and someone who only seems to alienate the people they work with. These qualities won’t serve you well in your future endeavors.
The Healthier Behavior: At every stage of meeting your goals, actively reflect on the behavior that’s moving you forward and consider whether it’s having any negative consequences. If it is, apologize to anyone you’ve harmed and modify your behavior. Only by constantly reflecting on your behavior will you be able to identify harmful goal obsession before it does you too much damage.
We’ve discussed the 21 bad habits that many successful people adopt. Now, it’s time to explore how to overcome these bad habits and improve your reputation in the wake of the damage you’ve caused.
Overcoming your bad habits is a process consisting of three steps:
Following this process and overcoming your habits isn’t going to be quick or easy. It could take a year or more for you to totally cut out your bad behaviors, and doing so will require a lot of work. Likewise, it may take a long time for your reputation to fully recover from the damage your bad habits have inflicted.
However, this process is well worth the time and effort it demands. If you pursue it to its conclusion, you’ll develop the people skills and the good reputation required to progress to the top of the corporate ladder.
The first step in changing your bad habits is identifying which of the 21 bad behaviors you’ve actually adopted. Goldsmith argues that the easiest way to do this is to solicit feedback from your colleagues. Actively approach the people you work with and ask them which elements of your behavior they’re unhappy with and would like to see improved. If many colleagues say that they’re unhappy with the same two or three behaviors, you’ll know that these are the major bad habits you’ve slipped into.
You might think that you don’t need to ask your colleagues what your bad habits are, because you’ve already identified them yourself. Even if this is the case, it’s still helpful to ask your colleagues for their views on your behavior. Ultimately, even the most self-aware of people can be totally blind to some of their flaws. Your colleagues may help you to identify a bad behavior that you weren’t aware of.
There are several ways to solicit feedback. One option is to simply ask your colleagues the open-ended question, “What do you think I need to do to improve as a colleague, team member, or leader?” This gives people free rein to describe your bad behaviors and areas for improvement.
Another option is to distribute a questionnaire in which your colleagues score you on how well you fulfill certain criteria—for instance, how good of a listener you are, or how good you are at sharing information with people. If you consistently get low scores on certain positive behaviors, or high scores on negative behaviors, you’ll know that these are your “problem areas.”
No matter which approach you take to soliciting feedback, make sure that your questions specifically ask for comments on your behavior, not simply people’s opinions of you as a person. For example, don’t ask general questions such as “What do you like and dislike about me?” or “How do you feel about me?”
While the responses to these questions will give a good indication of whether your colleagues like you or not, they probably won’t include information on why exactly they dislike you and which of your behaviors they take issue with. In short, these questions won’t help you to figure out which bad habits you’ve developed and what you need to do to change.
Once you’ve decided how you’re going to ask for feedback, you need to figure out who you’re going to ask. Goldsmith argues that the most effective way to solicit feedback is to take a “360-degree” approach. This means asking people from all levels of your organization for feedback on your performance: your bosses, your peers, and your subordinates. Solicit feedback from multiple people at each level to make sure you receive a diverse array of opinions.
(Shortform note: You can find many sample 360-degree feedback forms and tools online. Here’s one example.)
Soliciting feedback from colleagues at every level will ensure that you identify all of your bad habits, including the ones that only display themselves when you’re dealing with a certain type of coworker—for instance, just your subordinates. For example, imagine your bad habit is failing to listen to your subordinates specifically. If you only solicited feedback from your bosses and your peers, you might not ever realize that this habit is a problem.
When it comes to selecting precisely which of your peers, bosses, and subordinates to ask for feedback, each potential candidate needs to fit four requirements:
If you’re struggling to find anyone who fits these criteria, start with your closest work friend. It’s probable that they’ll already fit at least some of these requirements because of your close relationship. For example, it’s unlikely that they’ll be bitterly holding past events against you, because if they were, surely they wouldn’t be your friend. Likewise, since they care about you as a friend, they’ll naturally be more likely to offer supportive advice than harsh words.
Now that you know who to ask for feedback, it’s time to figure out who’s going to do the asking. Goldsmith argues that solicited feedback works best if it’s not requested by you, but confidentially by a third party. If you personally ask people for feedback on your behavior, it’s very unlikely that they’re going to answer honestly. They may be afraid of upsetting you with negative comments or fear retribution if you don’t like what they say. Therefore, they’re going to keep what they say fairly positive.
In contrast, soliciting feedback confidentially through a third party takes away these reservations. People will no longer worry about how you’re going to respond to what they say because ultimately, you won’t know that they said it. Therefore, people will be encouraged to share their true opinions.
We’ve gone into great detail about how to directly solicit feedback from your colleagues. However, directly asking for feedback isn’t the only way to gather information about your colleagues’ perceptions of you and your behavior. There are two other forms of feedback that may help you to figure out what your problem areas are:
Unsolicited feedback is, in simple terms, feedback that you didn’t ask for or necessarily want. It’s someone telling you that you need to improve in a manner that, to you at least, seems totally unprompted. In reality, your continued bad behavior is probably what triggered the person’s outburst. They probably became so frustrated with the way you were acting that they could no longer keep their opinions to themselves.
For example, imagine you’re hosting a meeting and, for what seems like the hundredth time, you fail to listen to what a colleague is saying. This colleague may finally snap and suddenly call you out for your poor listening skills. This spontaneous “call-out” is unsolicited feedback.
When we receive unsolicited feedback, we’re often completely shocked by the news that someone is upset with our behavior, and may even feel ashamed that our actions have been awful enough to trigger such an unexpected outburst. Goldsmith argues that these emotions may push us to actually change our bad behavior. We may be stunned into realizing that we can’t keep acting in a manner that upsets people this much.
The major downside of this form of feedback is that it usually takes a long time for people to become so frustrated with your behavior that they can no longer hold their tongue. This makes unsolicited feedback very infrequent and therefore unsuitable as a consistent source of information about your bad habits. For this reason, it’s a form of feedback that should probably only be used in conjunction with the others, not by itself.
Observational feedback is feedback about your reputation that you can gain by watching how people behave in your presence. It involves analyzing cues such as people’s body language, their tone of voice, and what they say to you to deduce whether or not you’re well liked.
For example, if you notice in a meeting that a certain colleague refuses to look you in the eye when you’re talking to them, or responds to all of your ideas in a brusque or rude manner, this would imply that you’ve upset the person in some way. Likewise, if a subordinate constantly acts in a closed-off manner around you—for instance, keeping their arms folded and directing their body away from you—they probably don’t like you very much.
Goldsmith argues that if, after gathering observational feedback, you notice that many people are acting in a way that implies they dislike you, this may be a sign that you’re engaging in a bad habit that’s alienating everyone around you.
The good thing about observational feedback is that you can collect it whenever you encounter another person in the workplace. You can quickly and thoroughly build up a picture of what people think of you.
However, the downside of this type of feedback is that it isn’t very specific. While it may indicate to you that you’re doing something to upset your colleagues, it won’t necessarily tell you exactly what you’re doing wrong. You’ll need to use a different type of feedback to figure out this missing piece of the puzzle.
Once you’ve requested and received feedback from your colleagues, your next step is to interpret and act on their recommendations. If you’re lucky, their feedback will indicate that you only have one bad habit. In this case, your next steps forward will be simple: figure out what you’re going to do to overcome that habit, and get started.
However, if your feedback suggests you’ve been engaging in two or three bad behaviors, the process of starting to change becomes a bit more complex. You’ll need to decide which of your bad habits to address first.
If you receive feedback that suggests you’ve got multiple bad habits, your initial instinct may be to try to overcome them all as quickly as possible. You may think that ceasing all of your bad behaviors at once will be the most effective and efficient way to become a better colleague and repair your reputation.
However, if you take this approach, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed. Unlearning even one bad habit is challenging—it takes a lot of time and energy. Overcomplicating this process by trying to change multiple habits at once will divide your time and energy in too many directions for you to make real progress. You’ll quickly become mentally exhausted and struggle to continue with the process. For this reason, it’s best to stick to fixing one behavior at a time.
So if you should only fix one behavior at a time, which should you choose to tackle first? Goldsmith advises choosing the flaw that featured the most prominently in your feedback. For example, if 10% of the people you asked for feedback told you that you were a bad listener, but 80% of respondents said you have a problem with anger, tackle your anger issue first.
Goldsmith argues that the more people bring up a flaw, the more likely it is to be a serious problem. Therefore, frequently mentioned issues should always be at the top of your list of things to change.
When you receive and start to interpret your feedback, it’s important to resist the urge to get defensive. In other words, don’t immediately jump to discredit the feedback and claim, either privately or publicly, that it must be incorrect.
In many ways, getting defensive following criticism of your behavior is a natural reaction. Nobody likes to hear that they’ve been acting in a way that other people disapprove of. It knocks your confidence and reminds you that you’re fallible—a concept that, as we’ve already discussed, successful people often struggle to accept. Therefore, you’ll likely do anything to avoid having to accept that you’re not perfect and may need to change your behavior—including outright rejecting your negative feedback.
Ultimately, when you receive your feedback, you need to accept it as both truthful and probably accurate. Look at the situation logically. If you’ve followed the process outlined above, you’ll have only asked for feedback from people who’ve promised to be honest. Therefore, it’s highly unlikely that what they’ve said about you is untrue. Likewise, if multiple people have given feedback that highlights the exact same problematic habits, it’s highly unlikely that they’re all wrong.
Accepting that your feedback is correct and that you’ve developed bad habits will likely be a humbling and painful process. However, remind yourself that ultimately, this pain will be worth it. Admitting to and overcoming your bad behaviors will enable you to both progress further in your career, and grow as a person.
Consider which of the 21 bad habits of successful people you might have adopted, and identify a healthier way to behave.
Identify one of the bad habits of successful people that you think you might have adopted. Why do you think you engage in this bad behavior?
Describe in full the most recent time you engaged in this bad habit. What do you think triggered your bad behavior? (Consider factors such as who you were with, what time of day it was, and how you were feeling at the time.)
Consider how this most recent instance of engaging in your bad habit might have affected those around you. Did your behavior upset anyone or harm your relationships with your coworkers? Did you experience backlash for your actions?
Imagine you encountered a similar situation again. How might you behave differently? What could you do instead of engaging in the bad habit?
Even if you think you’ve identified your bad habits, asking your colleagues for feedback on your behavior may highlight a bad behavior you hadn’t noticed before. Consider who you could ask for feedback and how you might do so.
List 3 to 5 colleagues who you think you could ask for feedback on your behavior, including a sentence explaining why you picked them. (Remember: Ideal candidates for giving feedback are honest, supportive, willing to let go of the past, and committed to changing their own behavior, too.)
Who will be your “third party” who asks these colleagues for feedback on your behalf? (For instance, could you ask someone from your organization’s human resources department to take on this role?) Outline why you’ve chosen this person.
Consider the precise method of soliciting feedback that you’ll ask this “third party” to use, and detail why you’ve chosen this method. (For instance, will you ask the third party to conduct face-to-face interviews with your colleagues in which they can freely express their opinions? Will you ask them to distribute a feedback questionnaire that involves your colleagues “scoring” you on certain criteria?)
After brainstorming, are you confident that you’ll succeed in gaining thorough and useful feedback from your colleagues? Why or why not?
You’ve gathered feedback from your colleagues. You’ve used that feedback to identify which bad habit you’re going to try to overcome. Now, it’s time to actually start the process of change: to begin to cut your bad habit out of your life.
It’s important that you start the process of change as soon as possible after deciding which behavior you’re going to tackle. For example, don’t fall into the trap of putting change off until a time when you’re “less busy.” As an already successful person, you’re always going to be busy. Bite the bullet and start to cut out your bad behavior now. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll begin to make progress.
Goldsmith doesn’t provide much information on the practicalities of making a behavioral change: for example, the steps you can take each day to reduce your temptation to engage in your bad habits and replace bad behaviors with healthier ones. Here are some practical tips we’ve devised to help you with this process:
The idea of changing your behavior may seem incredibly overwhelming, especially if you decide to immediately jump from one behavioral extreme to another—for instance, from being a rude jerk who makes destructive comments all the time to being a benevolent boss who’s incredibly polite and kind. Making such a huge personality change might seem too difficult to achieve or too daunting to even attempt.
To avoid feeling overwhelmed, you could start the process of change by shifting into behaving neutrally— in a way that’s neither harmful nor “good.” In practice, this means cutting out your bad behavior without instantly trying to replace it with something “better.” For example, you could stop making destructive remarks to your colleagues without immediately switching to making lots of kind remarks.
While ”just” cutting out a bad behavior still takes a lot of work, it requires considerably less effort than ceasing a behavior and introducing a new one all at once. It’s therefore a much less overwhelming prospect.
The one caveat to this option is that it’s not always possible. Some behaviors simply don’t have a “neutral” option—you must either engage in the bad behavior, or switch to its positive equivalent. Take the example of the bad habit of refusing to listen to other people. The only way to overcome this bad behavior is to actively start listening to people. There’s no neutral, in-the-middle alternative action to choose here.
If you find yourself in a situation where you’re feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of transforming your behavior but have no “neutral” option to fall back on, try to remind yourself that while the change ahead of you will be difficult and take a lot of effort, it’ll be worth it in the end. With time and hard work, you will be able to successfully cut out your bad habit and introduce your new, healthier behavior.
Likewise, don’t put pressure on yourself to fully change your behavior overnight. Even if, at first, you only successfully implement your new, healthier behavior once each day, that’s still progress. This is a big transformation you’re making. Permit yourself to take your time with it.
You might think that once successful people learn that they’re behaving in a harmful way, they immediately decide that they want to change for the better. They want to quickly eradicate their bad habits so that they stop hurting their colleagues and their own reputation.
However, this isn’t always the case. Often, successful people find the idea of changing their behavior very difficult to accept. Goldsmith argues that this is due to successful people developing the superstitious delusion that their bad habit was a major factor in generating their professional success up to this point. They believe that if they cease their bad behavior, they’ll only experience failure in the future. Therefore, any calls for them to cut out the bad habit are met with extreme hostility.
To illustrate this superstition in action, Goldsmith relates the example of a past client of his named Harry. Harry was a respected executive who got great results for his company. However, he had one flaw: He was a terrible listener. This damaged Harry’s working relationships and made people reluctant to share ideas with him, since they knew he wouldn’t pay attention to them.
When people suggested to Harry that he should improve his listening skills, he became very defensive. At the root of this defensiveness was superstition. Harry believed that refusing to listen to others was the secret to his success because it meant his mind didn’t become cluttered with other people’s bad ideas. Instead, he could focus on his own, good ideas. He fundamentally believed that if he changed his behavior and started to listen to others, his performance would suffer.
Of course, this almost certainly wasn’t true. Harry could probably cope with the mental strain of both contemplating his own ideas and listening to other people’s. His performance wouldn’t suffer if he cut out this bad habit, and his reputation would definitely improve. But, his superstitious belief had convinced him that changing would be a disaster.
If you find that you’ve become superstitious about a bad habit and therefore feel reluctant to change it, Goldsmith suggests that you take the time to fully analyze how beneficial this behavior has actually been to you. You could start by making a list of all the ways in which you believe this behavior has helped you to succeed. For instance, Goldsmith’s client Harry would probably note down his belief that refusing to listen to people has helped to keep his mind clear of other people’s bad ideas.
Then, you could make a list of all the ways that your behavior has damaged your potential to progress—for instance, the ways in which it’s harmed other people, hurt your reputation, and stunted your growth as a person and a leader. For example, in this list, Harry might note that his refusal to listen has made his employees feel marginalized and ignored, and has consequently given him a bad reputation. Likewise, he might add that by refusing to hear other people’s suggestions, he’s not only shut himself off from their bad ideas, but from their good ones, too.
Once you’ve made these two lists, you’ll probably find that your bad behavior does much more harm than good, and you’ve succeeded in spite of it, not because of it. You’ll hopefully feel more certain that you do need to change.
Goldsmith provides two tips on how to motivate yourself to start and continue the process of change:
Tip #1: Find a way to measure your progress. For example, you could track how many times each day you engage in your bad behavior—for instance, get angry, or add value to someone’s ideas. Hopefully, as you progress, that daily number will go down—an achievement that will motivate you to continue. We tend to feel much more willing to continue the process of change if we can tangibly see the results of our hard work.
Tip #2: Monetize the process of change. Devise a rule that states you have to pay a fine every time you engage in your bad behavior. Set this money aside and tell yourself that you can’t get it back until you’ve consistently stopped behaving badly. This financial penalty for your bad behavior will motivate you to cut it out.
Sometimes, the idea of switching straight from a “bad” behavior to a “good” one can seem too difficult to achieve. Identifying a neutral behavior to practice instead can stop you from becoming overwhelmed.
Think of a bad habit that you’ve adopted. Describe the two behavioral extremes of this habit: the bad behavior you’re engaging in and its “good” alternative.
How confident do you feel about the idea of transitioning from this bad behavior to its positive alternative? Do you feel it's a change you could achieve with ease, or are you overwhelmed at the prospect of making such a big behavioral transition?
What’s a “neutral” behavior you could practice as you transition to your ideal behavior? (A neutral behavior is one that is neither harmful nor actively positive. Even if you already feel confident that you can switch to your ideal behavior immediately, it’s good to have a neutral behavior as a back-up if things get tough.)
Now that you’ve identified a neutral behavior, do you feel more confident in your ability to change your behavior and cut out your bad habit for good? Why or why not?
A major barrier to self-improvement is resistance to change. Learn how to overcome this obstacle and develop a willingness to change your bad behavior.
Think of a bad habit that you’re currently struggling with. What factors might make you resistant to changing this harmful behavior? (For example, do you believe that your bad behavior benefits you in some way? Are you superstitious that if you cut out the bad behavior, you won’t be as successful in the future?)
Now, list all of the possible positive consequences of ceasing your bad habit. (For example, consider how cutting out your bad behavior may improve your relationships with your colleagues, your reputation, and your ability to do your job to a high standard.)
Now that you’ve considered the possible positive and negative consequences of cutting out your bad habit, do you feel willing to make that change? Why or why not?
Once you’ve decided how you’re going to change your bad habit and kick-started the process of self-improvement, your next move is to frequently and repeatedly discuss your behavioral change with your colleagues. Specifically, you need to:
The first conversation you need to have with your colleagues regarding changing your bad habit is an apology for your previous bad behavior. Say you’re sorry to everyone who your actions negatively impacted.
Apologizing is an important step because it’s the easiest way to make clear to your colleagues that you know you’ve messed up and that you’re going to do better in the future. It shows them that you’re willing to take responsibility for your actions, and they’re likely to respect you for doing so.
Likewise, apologizing gives people closure about the bad behavior you’ve inflicted upon them. It indicates that this behavior is in the past now and won’t be repeated. Once people have closure, they can begin to move on—and they might even start to forgive you. You’ll have gained a small amount of ground in your mission to recover people’s goodwill and restore your reputation.
When you say sorry to your colleagues for your past misdemeanors, it’s important that your apology be sincere and meaningful. The best way to achieve this is to keep your apology simple. Just say “I’m sorry. I’ll try to behave in a better way in the future.”
If you start to qualify or overcomplicate your apology—for example, if you try to justify why you acted in the way you did, or make a long speech about all of the events in your life that led up to you behaving badly—it’ll sound like you’re trying to explain away your behavior, not actually express regret and move on from it. Your apology will no longer feel sincere, and people will be less likely to accept it.
Once you’ve apologized to your colleagues, your next step is to announce your intention to change. Tell your colleagues exactly what you’re going to do to overcome your harmful habit and reassure them that you’re fully committed to doing so.
Crucially, you should announce your intention to change frequently and consistently. If you only tell your colleagues of your plan to overcome your habit once, there’s no guarantee that what you tell them will stick in their minds. However, if you tell your colleagues about your intention to change again and again, over days, weeks, or even months, the message is more likely to sink in.
Announcing your intention to change is important for two reasons. First, it adds accountability to your journey of self-improvement. If you tell your colleagues that you’re going to make a change, they’ll start to monitor your efforts to see if you actually follow up on your word. The knowledge that people are checking up on you and expecting you to make progress will add extra pressure to the process of changing. This pressure will motivate you to actually get started on improving your behavior.
Second, frequently and consistently telling people you’re going to change further erodes their negative perceptions of you. They’ll start to believe that you’re serious about making up for your past mistakes and really do intend to behave in a healthier way. Slowly, their perception of you will start to become more positive.
Once you’re a little way into the process of changing your bad habit, it’s time to instigate the next type of discussion with your colleagues: following up and requesting “feedforward,” practical advice on what you can do to improve your behavior even further moving forward.
Following up involves approaching your colleagues on a regular basis—say, once a month—to ask them how they think you’ve progressed in your attempts to change so far. For example, you could ask your colleagues the following question:
“You might remember that last month, I made a commitment to make fewer harmful or hurtful comments to colleagues. In your opinion, how well am I doing in my efforts to change? Do you think I’ve made progress or not?”
Following up with your colleagues has two major benefits. First, it gives you a way of measuring your progress so far. Based on your colleagues’ responses, you’ll be able to tell whether you’re heading in the right direction in terms of eradicating your bad behavior, or if you need to start putting a bit of extra effort into the process.
Second, following up helps to improve your colleagues’ opinions of you. By asking for their thoughts on your behavior, you’re demonstrating that you value their input. People are much more likely to think well of you if you make them feel valued and appreciated.
Likewise, following up with your coworkers gets them thinking about how much better your behavior has become—assuming it has gotten better, of course—and helps to quash any lingering skepticism they may have about whether or not you can really change. Once your colleagues realize that you really have improved upon your prior bad behavior, their opinion of you is likely to become more positive.
Goldsmith argues that as well as following up with your colleagues, it’s important to follow up with yourself—to constantly reflect on how you think you’re doing with the process of change, possibly as frequently as daily. Doing this has two main benefits:
If you think you’ll struggle to find the time to follow up with yourself or that you won’t be disciplined enough to regularly self-reflect, enlist someone—someone who is supportive, and who you can easily get in contact with—to act as your self-reflection “coach.” This “coach” could be a colleague, a manager, a friend, or even a family member. Their role is to contact you regularly—for example, Goldsmith’s coach calls him every day, but you could make it a once-or-twice a week meeting—and ask you how you think you’re doing with the process of changing your bad habit. This frequent questioning will force you to follow up with yourself and evaluate your progress.
At the same time as following up with your colleagues, you should ask them whether they have any “feedforward” for you. “Feedforward” is practical advice on what you can do to improve your behavior even further moving forward. It differs from feedback because while feedback focuses on identifying the mistakes of your past, feedforward considers how you can behave better in the future.
When soliciting feedforward, you should ask your colleagues to identify two actions they think you should take going forward to further tackle your bad habit. For example, you could say, “My bad habit is getting angry. While I’ve already improved a bit on this score, what are two things I can do in the future to avoid this behavior even more effectively?” The person’s response might be “First, use breathing exercises to remain calm in stressful situations. Second, leave situations that you feel are starting to aggravate you.”
Goldsmith insists that you’re not allowed to respond to feedforward in any other way than simply saying “thank you.” For instance, don’t pass judgment on how good the person’s ideas are, or argue with their suggestions for improvement if you think they’re bad. As you’ve already learned, responding in such ways are bad habits in themselves! Just show gratitude for your colleague’s input, note down the ideas they’ve given you, and move on.
Soliciting feedforward has two main benefits. First, it gives you access to the knowledge of your colleagues: people who are probably full of good ideas on how you can further improve your bad behavior, but who won’t share these ideas unless they’re directly prompted to do so. They may worry that giving unsolicited advice, especially on such a sensitive topic as bad behavior, will come across as rude, arrogant, or uncalled for. Therefore, they’ll keep this useful advice to themselves unless you directly request it. Asking for feedforward gives your colleagues the opportunity to express their ideas in a socially acceptable way, thus giving you access to their insight.
Second, requesting feedforward forces you to stop thinking about the past and instead focus your efforts on building a better future. When you realize that you’ve been engaging in a bad habit and harming other people, it’s easy to spend a lot of time ruminating on the hurt you’ve caused and dissecting every mistake you made. However, this way of thinking isn’t that helpful in the long run. It won’t help you to figure out a positive path forward—it’ll just make you dislike yourself and your past actions. Meanwhile, feedforward encourages you to put the past behind you and instead implement people’s ideas about how you can improve in the future. It’s all about becoming a better person, not punishing yourself for who you were in the past.
Learn how to effectively communicate with your colleagues about the process of cutting out your bad habit.
When you start the process of changing your bad habits, it’s important to apologize to your colleagues for your previous bad behavior. Identify 3 to 5 colleagues who you think it’s particularly important for you to apologize to, and describe why you’ve chosen each colleague.
The next type of communication you need to have with your colleagues is announcing your intention to change. Describe how you plan to do this. (For instance, will you announce your intention to change in public meetings, or in private conversations with your coworkers?)
Your colleagues are more likely to believe that you’re going to change if you announce your intention to do so frequently and consistently. How will you make sure that you fulfill these criteria? (For example, you could set a weekly reminder to announce your intentions, or schedule a monthly meeting where you talk about your plans.)
As you make progress with your behavioral change, it’s important to follow up with your colleagues and ask them if they think you’ve improved. Likewise, you should request “feedforward”—advice on how you can improve even further in the future. List 3 colleagues who you think you could turn to for follow-up and feedforward, and explain why you’ve chosen these individuals.
(Shortform note: In the final chapter of What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There, Marshall Goldsmith provides various pieces of miscellaneous advice on how to improve as a leader. Most of these ideas don’t link to the book’s overall premise of identifying and addressing your bad habits. However, we’ve included them here for completeness.)
As we’ve already mentioned, the process of ending your bad habits will likely take a while to complete—months, or possibly even years. While you’re still in the process of trying to change—and are therefore still engaging in your bad habits, even if only occasionally—you should help your colleagues by directly and honestly telling them about the possible poor behavior they can expect from you, and apologizing for it in advance.
For example, if you know you have a problem with anger, warn the people around you about your short temper. Reassure them that if you do snap at them, it’s nothing personal, and preemptively apologize for doing so. Let them know that this is an issue you’re working on, and that you understand that it’s not acceptable behavior.
Forewarning your colleagues about your bad behavior will benefit you because your honesty will earn you at least a degree of respect. Your colleagues will appreciate that it takes courage and humility to admit that you’re behaving badly, and will think better of you for doing so. They won’t be completely happy with you—after all, you still haven’t fully shaken off your bad habit—but their opinion of you may improve a little.
It’s important to note that warning people about your bad behavior in this way shouldn’t be used as a substitute for actually changing the behavior in question. You still need to work to overcome your bad habits. This is simply a technique you can use to try to mitigate the damage to your reputation while you still haven’t quite gotten out of the habit of behaving badly.
As a leader or manager, it’s important that you give your subordinates the opportunity to seek your advice, get your opinion on major decisions, and ask for support when they need it. You can’t simply leave your staff to their own devices and expect things to run smoothly. You need to provide your team with some direction, inspiration, and guidance.
However, it’s important not to go too far the other way, and make your staff too dependent on your input or reassurance. For instance, your subordinates shouldn’t become totally incapable of making a decision or completing a task without asking you for advice or encouragement. If you let your staff become dependent on you in this way, you’re quickly going to find yourself overwhelmed by mountains of work. Not only are you going to have to complete your own tasks, you’re also going to have to help your subordinates with all of their tasks, too—a time-consuming and draining process.
How can you strike a balance between not giving your subordinates enough help, and making them too reliant on your help? One possible approach is that taken by one of Goldsmith’s former clients, a magazine editor who wanted to leave work earlier each night to spend time with her family, but whose subordinates felt abandoned when she suddenly made this change. They’d become too dependent on their editor, and felt that they needed her advice on almost every task they were assigned.
To encourage her staff to become more independent, the editor asked each member of her team to identify the tasks that, upon reflection, they could easily complete on their own, and which ones they absolutely needed her help with. In essence, the editor forced her staff to acknowledge that they didn’t need her around all of the time, and were actually much more capable than they gave themselves credit for. Coming to this realization made the staff much less reliant on her input—and enabled the editor herself to go home a little bit earlier each night.
According to Goldsmith, one of the most common mistakes made by managers is believing that what works for them, works for their staff. In other words, these leaders believe that because they like to be managed in a certain way—for example, with a hands-off approach that gives them lots of freedom to act as they wish—their subordinates must also like to be managed in that same way. They fail to consider that actually, everyone has different opinions on how they like to be managed, and that just because a certain approach works for one person doesn’t mean it’ll work for everyone.
For example, imagine you’re someone who likes to be managed in a somewhat aggressive way. You like it when your superiors criticize or make harsh remarks about you. Criticism gives you the motivation you need to work even harder, and anyway, most of the harsh comments sent your way are just banter—you know your superiors don’t mean what they say.
Because you personally enjoy being managed in this aggressive way, you assume that this is the “right” way to manage everyone—including your subordinates. Unfortunately, most of your subordinates find your aggression and constant criticism hurtful and demoralizing. They would prefer a kinder style of management, with more encouragement and fewer hurtful comments. Because you give them the exact opposite of what they want, they end up thinking that you’re a bit of a jerk.
To avoid a situation like this, constantly remind yourself that every person on your team is a unique individual with a different personality and a different preference on how they like to be managed. Remember that nobody you manage will be an exact clone of you, so you can’t just treat them in the way you would like to be treated. Instead, it’s important to get to know every member of your team, figure out what style of management they respond best to, and treat them accordingly.
In Goldsmith’s view, another common error by managers is assuming they only have to give their subordinates a message once for that message to sink in. These leaders engage in what Goldsmith calls “checking the box.” They communicate the message they want to get across once, tick this task off their to-do list, and never return to it again. They never check whether their message was either received or comprehended.
In reality, it sometimes takes multiple attempts for a message to be paid attention to and absorbed. Goldsmith argues that to ensure their message sinks in, leaders must follow up with each of their subordinates and repeat their message until they’re absolutely certain that it’s been both heeded and fully understood.
For example, a team leader may think that if he wants to communicate a new team mission, he can simply send one mass email to all of his team members and then tick this task off his to-do list. He assumes that all of his team members will immediately understand and adopt the team’s new vision, and he’ll never have to explain it again.
However, what this leader fails to consider is that there’s no guarantee that all of his team members will fully understand what the new team mission entails the first time they hear about it. They might need more clarity on what this new vision means for the team and the way that they work—clarity that, if the leader simply moves on from his task of sending the email and never thinks about it again, they won’t get.
What the leader really needs to do in this situation is send his initial email communicating the new mission, then, a day later, send another message asking his team members whether they all read and understood this first email. This gives his subordinates the chance to request further explanation of the leader’s message if they need it.
This piece of advice applies particularly to managers who’ve been in the workforce for some time now—for instance, for multiple decades. Goldsmith argues that many leaders who’ve been in business for a long time hold outdated assumptions about how their employees think, feel, and work—assumptions that they need to abandon if they want to have any chance of retaining these employees. Specifically, Goldsmith believes that these managers hold the following four misguided assumptions:
Assumption #1: “All my employees ever want is more money. If I pay them more, they’ll stay at my company.” This may have been true in the past, but these days, many employees take much more than just their salary into account when deciding whether or not to move on from an employer. They consider factors such as whether their work is challenging enough, whether they’re learning anything new from what they’re doing, and whether there’s any chance of them progressing at their current company. If you want to keep your employees, you need to make sure that needs such as these are fulfilled—that they gain satisfaction from their job, not just lots of money.
Assumption #2: “I could easily do all of my employees’ jobs.” This probably isn’t true due to the fact that technology is constantly advancing and every new generation brings a new set of technical skills to the workplace. Unless you’ve kept up with every technological advance in your field—and undertaken training on each new technology—there’s a high chance that recently- qualified workers possess knowledge that you don’t and use technical skills that you don’t have. Your employees have learned techniques during their training that simply didn’t exist when you were a student—and you should respect them for that.
Assumption #3: “My employees are selfish because they want satisfaction from their job. I don’t pay them to be happy—I pay them to work hard.” In the past, employees were expected to sacrifice their own needs for the good of their employer. They were expected to do as they were told, regardless of whether they liked it or not, because the company’s success was what mattered, not their personal enjoyment of their role. Many managers who’ve been in their job for decades have internalized these now-outdated views, and try to cling to them. This creates a clash with newer generations of workers, who tend to put their happiness above the success of their employer.
If you find yourself on the more traditionally-minded side of this clash, it may be time for you to come to terms with the fact that the working world has changed considerably since you first entered it. If you refuse to respect and accept the changing priorities of your employees, you’re going to lose them to competitors who will.
Assumption #4: “All of my employees are easily replaceable, so I can treat them however I want. It doesn’t matter if they leave.” This may be true of some of your employees—for instance, those who have commonly-held skills, or whose work isn’t exceptional. However, every company—including yours—has a handful of star employees whose talent simply cannot be matched. These individuals are so skillful (and, frequently, so charismatic) that no matter how hard you tried, you probably wouldn’t be able to find a replacement who’s at their level. While you should treat all of your workers well and with respect, it’s especially important to keep your star employees happy. If you don’t, they’ll move elsewhere. Not only will you lose their incredible skills, but one of your competitors will gain them.
Goldsmith believes that some employees are, for want of a better word, unsalvageable. They simply don’t have the skills or the attitude required to succeed at your company. Perhaps they’re convinced that there’s nothing wrong with the way they work, and you’re simply being too harsh of a boss. Maybe they don’t have the required knowledge to do their job properly and have no inclination to gain that knowledge. Whatever the case, they’re clearly not a good fit for your organization.
When you come across an employee like this, Goldsmith argues that you shouldn’t keep trying to get them to change. It’s okay to maybe give them two or three opportunities to improve, but if, after these chances, they still haven’t made any attempt to change for the better, it’s fine to just give up. Ultimately, employees like this have absolutely no inclination to modify their behavior. They’re happy with the way they are, and nothing you say or do can change that. Your best option is to wish such employees well, but let them go.