Marshall Goldsmith Blog

Why is asking so important? In the Information Age, leaders must manage knowledge workers. Peter Drucker has defined knowledge workers as people who know more about what they are doing than their boss does. It is hard to tell people what to do and how to do it when they already know more than we do. In today’s rapidly changing world, we need to ask, listen and learn from everyone around us.

When people ask us for our input, listen to us, try to learn from us and follow up to see if they are getting better, our relationship with them improves.

This seems simple and obvious—so why don’t we do it?

Reviews of summary 360-degree feedback involving thousands of leaders from more than 50 organizations have shown that when the item “Asks people what he or she can do to improve” is included in the company’s leadership inventory, it almost always falls near the bottom (if not in last place) in terms of employee satisfaction. As a rule, leaders don’t ask.

I recently asked the vice president of customer satisfaction in a major organization if his employees should be asking their key customers for feedback—listening, learning and following up to ensure service keeps getting better. “Of course,” he replied.

“How important it this to your company?” I asked. “It’s damn important!” he exclaimed.

I then lowered my voice and asked, “Have you ever asked your wife for feedback on how you can become a better husband?” He stopped, thought for a second, and sighed, “No.”

“Who is more important—your company’s customers or your wife?” I asked. “My wife, of course,” he replied.

“If you believe in asking so much, why don’t you do it at home?” I inquired. He ruefully admitted, “Because I am afraid of the answer.”

Why don’t most of us ask—even though we know we should? We don’t ask, because we are afraid of the answers.

Let me give you a personal example. I am in my 50s, and at my age, one type of input that I should be asking for every year is a physical exam. I managed to avoid this exam, for not one or two years, but seven years. How did I successfully avoid a physical exam for seven years? What did I keep telling myself? I will do it when I quit traveling so much. I’ll go after I begin my “healthy foods” diet. I will get that exam after I get in shape.

Have you ever told yourself the same thing? Who are we kidding? The doctor? Our families? No, we are only kidding ourselves.

My suggestions are very simple:

As a leader:

Get in the habit of asking key co-workers for their ideas on what needs to be done. Thank them for their input, listen to them, learn as much as you can, incorporate the ideas that make the most sense and follow up to ensure that real, positive change is occurring.

As a coach:

Encourage the people you are coaching to ask questions, listen to the answers and learn from everyone around them. Be a great role model for learning, then ask the people you are coaching to learn in the same way that you are. As an executive coach, I find that my clients can learn a lot more from their key stakeholders than they ever learn from me.

As a friend and family member:

Ask your loved ones how you can be a better partner, friend, parent or child. Listen to their ideas. Don’t get so busy with work that you forget that they are the most important people in your life.

Improving interpersonal relationships doesn’t have to take a lot of our time. It does require having the courage to ask for important people’s opinions and the discipline to follow up and do something about what we learn.

Who do you need to ask?

What is your first question?

Life is good.

Marshall

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How important is integrity in a business environment?

Enron’s leaders did a wonderful job of preaching the value of challenging the system…so did Andersen’s…so did NASA’s. Everyone seems to know that encouraging upward challenge is a key to maintaining corporate integrity. This is relatively easy to understand; it is just hard to do. After corporate meltdowns, it is amazing how many people claim that they knew there could be huge problems. It is even more amazing how few people effectively expressed these concerns before the problems were reported in the news.

Warner Burke has pointed out that “knows how to influence up in a constructive way” scored last place on managerial effectiveness in all items when people evaluated their managers in NASA – immediately before the Columbia space shuttle exploded. While lack of effective upward challenge was not the only cause of the explosion, it was a clear contributing factor. The same story is true in almost all organizational disasters and examples of corporate wrongdoing.

I’d like to suggest some organizational guidelines aimed at encouraging upward challenge and preserving corporate integrity. None are a reinvention of the wheel, and they certainly are not all encompassing, but I have seen them work in highly respected companies and I hope they can provide you with a good discussion point for reviewing your own organizational processes. While some of them may seem extreme, the organizational cost of integrity violations is — and should be — huge. If the last two years have taught us anything, it should be that ethical violations can kill even the most successful companies. The cost of preventing ethical problems will never exceed the cost of dealing with ethical problems.

Suggested Guidelines for Managers and Employees:

• If you are ever asked to do anything that you believe may be unethical, it is not your right to express your concern – it is your responsibility.

One of the world’s most highly-respected service companies clearly communicates this guideline to all employees, and it is a major message in their new employee orientation. I cannot think of any organization that should not communicate this same clear message, yet very few do.

All employees need to express their concerns if the decision may be unethical. In many cases directives that appear to be unethical are just that. Even the perception of an ethics lapse can be damaging to the entire company. Therefore, employees at all levels need to take responsibility to ensure that their organization engages in ethical business practices. After all, managers cannot read their employee’s minds.

• Employees that are not satisfied with their manager’s response to any ethical challenge should have the responsibility to continue this challenge to the next level of management.

If a resolution cannot be reached with the immediate manager, the employee should continue to challenge up. This type of challenge should not be viewed as an indictment of either the manager or the employee. Honest, well-meaning people can have very different views of the ethical dilemmas that surround the same decision.

• Any manager that threatens concerned employees or knowingly discourages upward challenge should be fired.

If only one employee is punished for honestly expressing ethical concerns, the word will quickly spread throughout the organization. Honest upward communication cannot be treated as an option. It needs to be a requirement. Managers at all levels need to understand that there are severe and immediate consequences for blocking the flow of vitally needed information.

• Consideration of integrity violations should be conditions of employment and have nothing to do with job performance.

One of the organizations that I respect the most has a clear rule: “All employees who knowingly lie, cheat or steal will be immediately dismissed, regardless of their performance on the job.” In this organization, every employee is taught that even the best performer, if found to have committed an ethics violation, will still be fired. Their logic is simple — If we allow small amounts of lying, where do we draw the line? Many of the well-publicized corporate scandals happened not merely because of one event. They happened because of the “creeping dishonesty” that can occur when small violations are ignored and increasingly corrupt practices evolve over time.

• Employees who do not feel comfortable using the normal chain of command should be provided with an alternative mechanism for upward communication.

In spite of the best corporate guidelines, the best training, and the best intent, some individual managers may still be very intimidating. Every employee needs a way to go around the system when they feel threatened by line management. They must be trained on how and when to use these alternate channels.

• Managers should proactively ask for suggestions on how to improve the organization, rather than passively waiting for employees to express concerns.

As Peter Drucker has said, “The leader of the past knew how to tell. The leader of the future will know how to ask.” If employees don’t feel free to communicate openly on business concerns, it is highly unlikely that they will feel free to communicate openly on ethical concerns. If they have an open dialogue about business concerns, any ethical concerns will probably emerge as part of the ongoing conversation.

• Both managers and employees should be trained on how to encourage and provide upward challenge.

Providing traditional ethics training may be a waste of time for many employees. The vast majority of employees are probably ethical in the first place! They merely need to learn how to recognize potential integrity issues and effectively communicate these in a way that can prevent ethics problems.

The corporate scandals of the last few years have resulted in a lack of trust for major organizations. The conditions that led to ethics issues will not be fixed by having employees attend training programs or listen to motivational talks. Organizations that establish and implement clear processes for encouraging upward challenge can do a great deal to prevent problems involving ethic, integrity and values. Trust is easy to lose and hard to regain. For many employees and for the public at large, it may take years of concerted effort to rebuild the credibility of large corporations. From both a business and values perspective, it is worth it!

Life is good.

Marshall

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In Leader to Leader’s Premier Issue, I discussed retaining high-impact performers.

The workplace is changing. Job security isn’t what it used to be. We tend to focus, understandably, on the profound impact these and other workplace changes are having on the lives of individuals. But too often leaders overlook the equally profound impact these changes are having on their organizations.

The fact is, the “new work contract”- employees taking responsibility for their own careers, and corporations providing them with career-enhancing but impermanent opportunities-can be as difficult for organizations to manage as for individuals. We as leaders still understand little of the mechanics of retaining essential high-performers in turbulent times.

Our task is complicated by four additional, less widely acknowledged trends:

* The reduced status of working for a “Fortune 500″ corporation.

* The frequent lack of connection between pay and contribution.

* The decline in opportunities for promotion.

* The rise in the influence of the “knowledge worker”.

Peter Drucker has noted the dramatically increased importance of the knowledge worker in modern organizations. Yet we are often still unsure what that means for how we should lead. Bill Gates has said that Microsoft would do “whatever it takes” to attract and retain the brightest software developers in the world.

Innovative high-technology corporations (such as Sun Microsystems) pay employees large bonuses to recruit top talent. In tomorrow’s world the “intellectual capital” brought in by high-knowledge employees will be a major, if not the primary, competitive advantage for many corporations. As the perceived value of key knowledge workers increases, the competition to hire these workers will intensify.

A Strategy for Retaining High-Impact Performers

Leaders can no longer afford to let the vagaries of the job market determine who leaves and who stays with the organization. We must learn to manage our human assets with the same rigor we devote to our financial assets. The following seven steps can help you accomplish that task:

1) Clearly identify whom you want to keep.

In recent years many organizations have focused on those people they should get rid of rather than those they should keep. Many downsizing “packages” give all employees with similar levels of experience the same incentive to leave. Unfortunately-for the organizations-the employees who decided to leave were often the high-impact performers who could find other work quickly.

2) Let them know that you want to keep them.

Amazing as it may seem, many high-impact performers who are asked why they’ve left an organization report, “No one ever asked me to stay! ” Many organizations have deliberately not told high-impact performers that they were special in any way for fear of alienating others. In the future it will become increasingly easy to retain “average” performers and increasingly difficult to retain high-impact performers.

3 ) Provide recognition.

Although compensation is an important factor for retaining high-impact performers, several studies indicate that it is currently not “the” most important factor. Typically, the chief reasons great people leave major organizations are lack of recognition, lack of involvement, and poor management The CEO of a leading telecommunications company has recently embarked on an innovative approach.

Division-level executives provide a quarterly report on high-impact performers who should be recognized. The CEO calls these individuals personally, thanks them for their contributions, and asks for their input on how the corporation can increase effectiveness. The CEO believes this process not only helps retain key talent but also generates great ideas for continuous improvement.

4) Provide opportunities for development and involvement.

One of the world’s largest consulting/ accounting firms has embarked on an original program to identify and cultivate high-potential leaders. As part of the process, young leaders engage in an “action learning” project in which they work on real-life problems facing the firm.

This gives young leaders a fantastic developmental opportunity and gives the firm valuable input on solving real problems. It also enhances the young leaders’ commitment to stay with the firm. The firm’s leaders say that such a process would not have been tried just a few years ago, for fear of alienating other partners, but that today the firm has no choice but to identify and retain high-impact partners.

5) Challenge the compensation plan.

Organizations unwilling to make performance rather than mere seniority the key driver of pay will face an increasing challenge in keeping top talent, especially young talent. One Fortune 500 industrial company recently refused to implement a variable, performance-based compensation plan because half the employees felt uncomfortable with the concept.

The corporation neglected to measure which half felt uncomfortable with more differentiated pay; but my guess is that it was the lower performers. High-impact performers of the future will be able to demand and receive substantially more pay than their lower performing peers. A “socialistic” compensation plan combined with lowered potential for promotion leads to an “average” workforce.

6) Relax the culture.

In addition to reducing bureaucracy, high- performing, high-tech companies like Netscape, Sun Microsystems, and AT&T Wireless (formerly McCaw Cellular) are known for providing freedom in dress code, scheduled hours, and lifestyle choices. While employees work very hard, they appreciate the lack of rules, regulations, and restrictions that can inhibit their freedom without increasing their productivity.

7) Provide intrapreneurial opportunities.

Gifford Pinchot (inventor of the term intrapreneur) has shown how major corporations can provide opportunities for semiautonomous enterprises to operate within the larger corporate structure.

By allowing high-potential leaders to “run a business” inside a larger business, corporations can gain commitment while simultaneously developing people. People who see opportunities for “ownership” and personal development are much more likely to stay with the organization.

In the past when a high-impact performer in a major corporation was offered a position at another company, the employee was likely to say no. Most managerial and professional jobs offered good pay, job security, promotion potential, and status.

Today the high-impact employee is much more likely to say yes. To retain such talent in the future, organizations will need to take decisive action.

Only those organizations able to create a dynamic new human resource model will retain the high-knowledge talent needed to succeed in tomorrow’s globally competitive environment.

Life is good.

Marshall

UPCOMING EVENTS:

July 25, 2008: Join me for a special live conversation on Friday July 25th with Learn From My Life. This 60 minute will be driven by your questions and will enable us to drill deeper into the key behavioral changes that will make you a better leader and more accomplished individual.

August 1, 2008 - Dartmouth - Tuck Executive Program

August 25-26, 2008 - Indian School of Business - Hyderabad

September 15, 2008 - New York - SHRM - contact Marshall if interested

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I was privileged to hear General Mills CEO Steve Sanger tell 90 of his colleagues: “As you all know, last year my team told me that I needed to do a better job of coaching my direct reports. I just reviewed my 360-degree feedback. I have been working on becoming a better coach for the past year or so. I’m still not doing quite as well as I want, but I’m getting a lot better. My coworkers have been helping me improve. Another thing that I feel good about is the fact that my scores on ‘effectively responds to feedback’ are so high this year.”

While listening to Steve speak so openly to coworkers about his efforts to develop himself as a leader, I realized how much the world has changed. Twenty years ago, few CEOs received feedback from their colleagues. Even fewer candidly discussed that feedback and their personal developmental plans. Today, many of the world’s most respected chief executives are setting a positive example by opening up, striving continually to develop themselves as leaders.

In fact, organizations that do the best job of cranking out leaders tend to have CEOs like Steve Sanger who are directly and actively involved in leadership development. That has certainly been my experience.  This has also been confirmed by Hewitt Associates, one of the largest HR consulting firms. Hewitt and Chief Executive magazine put General Mills on their latest list of the top-20 companies for leaders, among such familiar names as IBM and General Electric.

Hewitt found that these organizations tend to more actively manage their talent. They put lots of focus on identifying high-potential people, better differentiate compensation, serve up the right kinds of development opportunities, and closely watch turnover. But crucial to all these efforts were CEO support and involvement.

No question, one of the best ways top executives can get their leaders to improve is to work on improving themselves. Leading by example can mean a lot more than leading by public-relations hype.

Michael Dell, whose company made the Hewitt list, is a perfect example. As one of the most successful leaders in business history, he could easily have an attitude that says, “I am Michael Dell and you aren’t! I don’t really need to work on developing myself.”

Michael, however, has the opposite approach. He has done an amazing job of sincerely discussing his personal challenges with leaders across the company. He is a living case study from whom everyone at Dell is learning. His leadership example makes it hard for any leader to act arrogant or to communicate that he or she has nothing to improve upon.

Johnson & Johnson, tied for first on the top-20 list, has successfully involved its executives in leadership development. Its CEOs and top executive team regularly participate in a variety of leadership-building activities. Having a dialogue with the CEO about his business challenges and developmental needs makes it a lot easier for employees to discuss their own business challenges and developmental needs.

Executive candor can even help turn around a troubled company. Consider Northrop Grumman, the aerospace defense contractor. CEO Kent Kresa inherited a company that had a poor reputation for integrity, a battered stock price, and an unfortunate reputation as one of the least-admired companies in its industry. His leadership team reversed the company’s poor image and engineered an amazing turnaround – ultimately becoming the Forbes’ most-admired company.

From the beginning of the process, Kent led by example. He communicated clear expectations for ethics, values, and behavior. He made sure that he was evaluated by the same standards that he set for everyone else. He consistently reached out to coworkers. He didn’t just work to develop his leaders–he created an environment in which the company’s leaders were working to develop him.

Unfortunately, in the same way that CEO support and involvement can help companies nurture leaders, CEO arrogance can have the opposite effect. When the boss acts like a little god and tells everyone else they need to improve, that behavior can be copied at every level of management. Every level then points out how the level below it needs to change. The end result: No one gets much better.

The principle of leadership development by personal example doesn’t apply just to CEOs. It applies to all levels of management. All good leaders want their people to grow and develop on the job. Who knows? If we work hard to improve ourselves, we might even encourage the people around us to do the same thing.

Life is good.

Marshall

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The most common behavior problem I have found in the executives I have worked with is an obsession with winning - and this isn’t just CEO’s.

It’s common in most highly successful people, including me. When the issue is important, naturally we all want to win. But if it’s trivial, we still want to win. Even if it’s not worth our time, or it’s to our disadvantage, we often try to win anyway.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about.  You want to go to dinner at restaurant X. Your spouse wants to go to dinner to restaurant Y. You have a heated debate. You go to restaurant Y. The food’s bad, the service is awful. Now you’ve got two options.

Option A - critique the food, point out to your spouse how wrong he or she was and how this debacle could have been avoided if he or she had listened to you. Option B - be quiet, eat the food, and try to have a nice evening.

What do 75% of my executive clients say they would do in this situation? Critique the food. What do they agree they should do? Shut up. If they do a cost-benefit analysis, they realize that their marriage is more important than winning the argument.

So I tell my clients, “Before you get into any conflict, take a deep breath and ask yourself, ‘Is it worth it? What do I have to gain by winning? What do I have to lose?’ “

A related problem is what I call adding too much value. Imagine you’re the CEO. I come to you with an idea that you think is very good, but rather than just say, “Great idea!”, your tendency - because you have to win - is to say, “Good idea, but do it this way.”

Well, you may have improved the quality of my idea by 5%, but you’ve reduced my commitment to executing it by 30% because you took away my ownership.

The higher up you get on the corporate ladder, the more you need to make other people winners, and not make it about winning yourself.

One of my clients said once he got into the habit of taking a breath before he talked, he realized about half of what he was going to say wasn’t worth saying. Even though he thought he was right, he realized he had more to gain by not winning.My parting advice:  Don’t always insist on winning.

Sometimes you have more to gain by not winning.

Before you get into any conflict, ask yourself what you have to gain by winning, or what you stand to lose.

Life is good.

Marshall

www.MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com

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I worked with an executive who was a very dedicated and well-organized leader. In the past, she always took pride in her ability to juggle a high-pressure job and still maintain a sane personal life with her husband and two young kids. As a devoted mother, she always tried to be home by 6:30 each night to spend time with her children. Her staff considered her to be a great boss. She was an excellent listener and kept her door open to everyone.

One unexpected outcome for her openness and inclusion was that she began to make more and more excuses for working late. Soon she was regularly at her desk until 9:30 or 10 p.m. At first, she thought it was simply because she loved her job. But as she analyzed the problem, she realized it had nothing to do with her love for her work.

Her staff depended on her too much.

One of the potential dark sides of power is creating dependency. Great leaders know how much they depend on the people in their organizations. They don’t just count on the power of their positions to get things done; they personally create the kind of loyalty and respect that inspires people to “take the hill” even under the most difficult circumstances. But dependency is a two-way street. The more the leader is respected and admired by the staff, the more the staff may feel the need to gain the approval of the leader.

The currency of access can be seen as a sign of importance and acceptance. Staff members often assume that if their leader chooses to spend her limited time with any one person, that person’s ideas and opinions must be uniquely valued. In some cases this may play out as a grab for face time with the manager and can lead to a dependency that becomes trouble.

This executive had created an environment where getting face time with her was as easy as going to the ATM. This developed into a never-ending spiral where she could never leave the office. People were always coming by, saying, “I just need a couple of minutes of your time.” As we all know, a “couple of minutes” always means more than a couple of minutes. She tried to give her staff whatever they needed. It just seemed as if they needed too much.

She came up with a wonderful idea–one that I hope will help you the next time you feel trapped by a staff that wants more than you can give. She set up one-on-one meetings with each of her direct reports to discuss their responsibilities and her responsibilities.

First she asked each person, “Let’s review your key areas of responsibility. Are there places where I can let go? Are there other instances where my help can make a big difference?”

Her staff acknowledged that they really didn’t need her input on many decisions. They had just gotten used to checking in, in a way that was probably not the best use of anyone’s time. Each person was also able to focus on areas where her involvement was having a real positive payoff.

Her second question involved her areas of responsibility. She asked, “Do you ever see me doing things at my level that I don’t need to be doing? Are there activities that I could be delegating to others?” Every person had at least one good idea of how she could let go of part of her work, helping her simultaneously save time and develop the skills of each member of her staff.

She thanked everyone and implemented almost all of their suggestions. She realized that while part of the problem was their need to depend on her, another part was her need to feel important and needed by them.

Follow this course, and face time will have as much value as Confederate paper. Within a year or so, employees will be developing on the job so well that they may need to have a discussion about how they need less face time and more out-of-my-face time from you.

Life is good.

Marshall

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Upcoming Events:

May 29, 2008 - Helping Successful Leaders Get Even Better - and Helping CEOs ‘Pass the Baton’ - Register

June 9, 2008 - San Francisco - Institute of Management Consultants

June 12, 2008 - London - “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” The Comedy Store

June 19, 2008 - Minneapolis - Training and development professionals - all day

July 1, 2008 - San Diego - ASTD

July 8, 2008 - Webinar: “What Happy Coaches Know … The Science of Happiness” free - register online

August 1, 2008 - Dartmouth - Tuck Executive Program

What happens after that terrific seminar or planning session? Does everything go back to business as usual, or does everyone apply the best of what they learned?

A few years ago, I taught a series of one-day courses for the top 2,000 leaders at one of the world’s most admired companies.

As part of the program, each executive received confidential 360-degree feedback. I asked all of the participants to use that feedback to pick one or two areas for personal improvement, talk with their coworkers about what they were going to change, and ask for suggestions on how they could become more effective leaders. Then they were asked to follow up with co-workers by having short ongoing dialogues to help ensure that this process led to a positive, long-term change in their leadership behavior.

In confidential surveys after the course, almost all of the participants enthusiastically agreed that they were going to do what they were asked to do. A year later, almost 70% of the leaders actually did something related to their commitments. About 30% did absolutely nothing. The good news for the 70% was that their co-workers reported that they had become more effective leaders. As for the 30% who did nothing - well, at least they weren’t seen as getting worse! I suppose that qualifies as good news too. But the do-nothings raise an interesting question.

I have had the opportunity to follow up with the leaders in the 30% category and ask them why they didn’t do what they said they would do. Their answers seldom have anything to do with ethics or integrity. In spite of recent examples of terrible ethics violations, the huge majority of leaders I meet are highly ethical people. They are not liars or phonies. They truly believed that they should change and that this was the “right thing to do.” Their answers usually don’t have anything to do with lack of intelligence or understanding either. They are all very bright people. They not only agreed with what they committed to do, but they also understood what to do and how to do it.

So why didn’t these leaders do what they said they were going to do? Why do we often fail to do what we know we should do?

The answer can be explained by something they tell themselves. It’s something I have told myself for years. I am going to predict that you have told yourself the same thing - maybe often, maybe for years. You may be getting a little skeptical right now. You’re probably thinking, “This guy doesn’t know my mind. What is he talking about?” We will see how accurate my guess is.

The interior monologue sounds something like this. “You know, I am incredibly busy right now. In fact, I feel about as busy today as I have ever felt in my entire life. To be honest, I just feel constantly overcommitted. To be really honest, given what is going on at work and at home, sometimes my life feels a little out of control. But, you see, I am working on some very unique and special challenges right now. I think that the worst will be over in four or five months. After that, I am going to take a couple of weeks off and get organized. I am going to start working on my personal development. Then I am going to start spending more time with my family. I’ll start exercising and eating right. When I do, everything is going to be different - and it won’t be crazy anymore.”

Have you ever told yourself something like that? I have, and so have most of the leaders whom I meet every week. Many of us have been saying this to ourselves for years.

That’s why we haven’t been doing what we know we should be doing. We are waiting until life isn’t crazy. We are waiting until we “have some time.” We are waiting for a day that may never appear.

I have learned a hard lesson trying to help real leaders change real behavior in the real world. There is no “two or three weeks.” Things don’t calm down or slow down. Look at the trend line. There is a good chance that tomorrow is going to be even crazier than today.

So here’s my suggestion. Ask yourself two very hard questions.

First, what change is going to make the biggest, positive difference? And second, what am I willing to change now? Not next week, not next month, not when everything starts to make sense. Now.

Don’t worry so much about everything else.

Just change that.

Life is good.

Marshall

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We all like to think of ourselves as important.  Here is a story about how to become really great in the eyes of the people you meet.

Two highly accomplished lawyers are sitting at the bar at Sparks Steakhouse in New York. One is my friend’s lawyer, Tom, and the other is Tom’s law partner, Kevin. They’re having a leisurely drink, waiting for their table to open up. Sparks is a landmark steakhouse where a handful of New York’s rich, powerful, and glamorous are in attendance most nights. On this night, the A-list name is superstar attorney David Boies, who argued the U.S. government’s case against Microsoft. He makes a beeline to the bar to say hello to Kevin, whom he knows from previous cases.

Boies joins Tom and Kevin for a drink. A few minutes later, Kevin gets up to make a phone call outside. Boies remains at the bar, talking to Tom for 30 minutes. “I’d never met Boies before,” Tom said. “He didn’t have to hang around the bar talking to me. And I have to tell you, I wasn’t bowled over by his intelligence, or his piercing questions, or his anecdotes. What impressed me was that when he asked a question, he waited for the answer. He not only listened, he made me feel like I was the only person in the room.”

Tom’s last 13 words perfectly describe the single skill that separates the great from the near great. When Kevin inexplicably disappeared, Boies stuck around and made a lasting positive impression on Tom. The two attorneys have different practices; the chance that Tom could somehow help Boies one day is virtually nil. Boies clearly wasn’t looking to score points. In showing interest, asking questions, and listening for the answers without distraction, Boies was simply practicing the one skill that has made him inarguably great at relating to people.

I’m not sure why all of us don’t execute this precious interpersonal maneuver all the time. We’re certainly capable of doing so when it really matters to us. If we’re on a sales call with a prospect who could make or break our year, we prepare by knowing something personal about the prospect. We ask questions designed to reveal his inclinations, and we scan his face for clues.

The only difference between us and the super-successful among us - the near great and the great - is that the greats do this all the time. It’s automatic. There’s no on-off switch for caring, empathy, and showing respect. It’s always on.

So why don’t we do it? We forget. We get distracted. We don’t have the mental discipline to make it automatic.

Ninety percent of this skill is listening, of course. And listening requires the discipline to concentrate. So I’ve developed a simple exercise to test my clients’ listening skills. Close your eyes. Count slowly to 50 with one simple goal: You can’t let another thought intrude into your mind. You must concentrate on maintaining the count.

Sounds simple, but incredibly, more than half of my clients can’t do it. Somewhere around 20 or 30, nagging thoughts invade their brain. They think about a problem at work, or their kids, or how much they ate for dinner the night before. This may sound like a concentration test, but it’s really a listening exercise. After all, if you can’t listen to yourself (someone you presumably like) as you count to 50, how will you ever be able to listen to another person?

Like any exercise, this drill both exposes a weakness and helps us get stronger. If I ask you to touch your toes and you can’t, we’ve revealed that your muscles are tight. But if you practice each day, eventually you’ll become more limber.

Once you can complete the exercise without interruption, you’re ready for a test drive. Make your next interpersonal encounter-whether it’s with your spouse or a colleague or a stranger-an exercise in treating the other person like a million bucks. Employ these tiny tactics: Listen. Don’t interrupt. Don’t finish the other person’s sentences. Don’t say, “I knew that.” Don’t even agree with the other person.

If he praises you, just say thank you. Don’t use the words “no,” “but,” and “however.” Don’t let your eyes wander elsewhere while the other person is talking. Maintain your end of the dialogue by asking intelligent questions that show you’re paying attention, move the conversation forward, and require the person to talk (while you listen).

Your only aim is to let the other person feel that he or she is important. If you can do that, you’ll uncover a glaring paradox: The more you subsume your desire to shine, the more you will shine in the other person’s eyes. You may feel like a dullard as you listen quietly, but invariably the other person will say, “What a great guy!” You’d say the same thing about anyone who made you feel like the most important person in the room.

Life is good.

Marshall

www.MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com

Upcoming Public Seminars 

www.MarshallGoldsmithFeedForward.com

Measuring and documenting are a way of life in business. We keep close tabs on sales, profits, rate of growth, and return on investment. In many ways, part of being an effective leader is setting up systems to measure everything that matters. It’s the only way we can know for sure how we’re doing.

When you think of the importance we put on measurement, you would think that we would be more attuned to measuring the “soft-side values” in the workplace: how often we’re rude to people, how often we’re polite, how often we ask for input rather than shut people out, how often we bite our tongue rather than spit out a needlessly inflammatory remark. Soft values are hard to quantify but, in the area of interpersonal performance, they are as vital as any financial number. They demand our attention if we want to alter our behavior — and get credit for it.

When my children were young, I decided that I wanted to be a more attentive father. So I asked my daughter, Kelly, “What can I do to be a better parent?”

“Daddy,” she said, “you travel a lot, but I don’t mind that you’re away from home so much. What really bothers me is the way you act when you are home. You talk on the telephone, you watch sports on TV, and you don’t spend much time with me.”

I was stunned, because one, she nailed me and two, I felt like an oafish dad who had unwittingly caused his daughter pain. There’s no worse feeling in the world. I recovered quickly, however, by reverting to a simple response that I teach all of my clients. I said, “Thank you. Daddy will do better.”

From that moment, I started keeping track of how many days I spent at least four hours interacting with my family without the distraction of TV, movies, football, or the telephone. I’m proud to say that I got better. In the first year, I logged 92 days of unencumbered interaction with my family. The second year, 110 days. The third, 131 days. The fourth, 135 days.

Five years after that first conversation, even though I was spending more time with my family, my business was more successful than it had been when I was ignoring them. I was beaming with pride — not only with the results, but also with the fact that, like a skilled soft-side accountant, I had documented them. I was so proud, in fact, that I went to my kids, both teenagers by this time, and said, “Look kids, 135 days. What’s the target this year? How about 150 days?”

Both children suggested a massive reduction in “Dad time.” My son, Bryan, suggested paring down to 50 days. Their message: You have overachieved.  I wasn’t discouraged. It was an eye-opener. I was so focused on the numbers, on improving my at-home performance each year, that I forgot that my kids had changed too. An objective that made sense when they were 9 and 12 years old didn’t make sense when they were teenagers.

Soft-side accounting has other benefits. If you track a number, it will remind other people that you are trying. It’s one thing to tell your employees or customers that you’ll spend more time with them. It’s a different ball game if you attach a real number to that goal, and people are aware of it. They become much more sensitized to the fact that you’re trying to change. They also get the message that you care. This can never be a bad thing.

Everything is measurable, from days spent communicating with employees to hours invested in mentoring a colleague. All you have to do is look at the calendar or your watch — and count.

Once you see the beauty of measuring the soft-side values in your life, other variables kick in, such as the fact that setting numerical targets makes you more likely to achieve them. Another measurement that I tracked was how often I spent 10 minutes each day engaging my wife and each of my kids in one-on-one conversations. Ten minutes is not a long time, but it’s a significant improvement on zero. I found that if I measured the activity, I was much more likely to do it. If I faltered, I always told myself, “Well, I get a credit toward the goal, and it only takes me 10 minutes.” Without that measurable goal, I was much more likely to blow it off.

Life is good.

Marshall

www.MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com

www.MarshallGoldsmithFeedForward.com 

As you may know I have 9.5 million frequent flier miles, which means I’m traveling much of the time.

I’m often asked for a list of my upcoming events, so I’ve decided to begin including information about upcoming public seminars in my personal blog.

I’ll make these separate posts, so you can read them if you like, or just look for the informational posts if you prefer.

Here is a start:

You can spend a full day with me and Linkage, Inc. - click here to register

Mar 18, 2008
New York, NY

May 12, 2008
Chicago, IL

I’ll be expanding on my newest best selling book, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful.”

You’ll learn some new strategies for how to attack problems that often come with success.

Here is what Linkage says:

At Linkage, we believe that the best leadership coaching occurs when helping individual leaders drive personal behavioral change against the backdrop of their business strategy. To that end, Linkage proudly presents What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, a practical 1-day program for leaders featur­ing coaching guru, Marshall Goldsmith.

As a participant, hear from Marshall Goldsmith about how to unlock the keys to your professional success. Learn to use proven tools and processes to identify the behavioral habits that stand between you and your next level of achievement in the context of your own professional environment. Leave empowered to change what keeps you from where you want to be. And reap the added benefits-by working to improve yourself as a leader-of naturally encouraging others around you to do the same.

Marshall’s one-on-one coaching comes with a six-figure price tag. In this 1-day event, get Marshall’s great advice without the hefty fee! Marshall Goldsmith was named one of the five most respected ex­ecutive coaches by Forbes and a top-ten executive educator by the Wall Street Journal. He has worked with some of the most influential leaders in Fortune 500 companies.

Click here to register for a full day Linkage seminar with Marshall Goldsmith either in New York or Chicago.

***

“What Happy Coaches Know” Webinar Series

Noon EST/9AM Pacific - second Tuesdays - look for me July 8th (click here to register)

Here is “What Happy Coaches Know” says:

“2008 What Happy Coaches Know” is a complimentary webinar series featuring top coaches including Marshall Goldsmith.

Coaching is a vital skill set in today’s competitive global economy. Being a leader is not enough. To succeed, you must optimize your performance and know how to imbue others in your organization with leadership skills through coaching strategies.

Practical, actionable insights are the focus of “What Happy Coaches Know”, a new webinar series the second Tuesday each month at noon EST/9AM Pacific. Co-hosted by Cathy Greenberg and Marilyn McLeod.

Find registration link here for “What Happy Coaches Know” webinar series.

Click here for webinar schedule and more information.