Marshall Goldsmith Blog

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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Have you ever noticed how often people describe themselves in disparaging ways? More importantly … have you ever heard yourself saying something like this:

“I am a terrible listener. I’ve been told that for years. People at work tell me I’m a bad listener. So does my wife. I guess that’s just the way I am.”

It’s amazing how often I hear otherwise brilliant leaders make counterproductive, stereotypical comments about themselves.

You’ve surely heard them. Maybe you’ve used them to describe yourself:

• “I’m impatient!”

• “I’m always behind.”

• “I always put things off!”

We often talk about ourselves as if we have permanent genetic flaws that can never be altered.

Our personal stereotyping may originate from stories about us that have been repeated for years–often from as far back as childhood. These stories may have no basis in fact. But they can set low expectations that produce self-fulfilling prophecies, which seem to prove that our negative expectations were correct.

I’m a good example of this. I was brought up in a small town. Growing up in Valley Station, Kentucky, I might naturally have become involved in cars, tools, and mechanical things. My dad had a two-pump gas station. Many of my friends liked to work on cars and race them on weekends at the local drag strip.

As a child, however, I gained a different set of expectations from my mom. Almost from birth, I was told, “Marshall, you are extremely smart. In fact, you are the smartest little boy in Valley Station.” She told me that I wasn’t just going to go to college–I could go to graduate school! She also said, “Marshall, you have no mechanical skills, and you will never have any mechanical skills for the rest of your life!” (I don’t think she wanted me to pump gas, change tires and work on cars at the service station.)

How did these expectations affect my development? I was never encouraged to work on cars or be around tools. Not only did my parents know that I had no mechanical skills, my friends knew it. When I was 18 years old, I took the U.S. Army’s Mechanical Aptitude Test. My scores were in the bottom two percentile for the entire nation! In other words, I was soundly defeated by random chance.

Six years later, however, I was at UCLA, working on my PhD. One of my professors, Dr. Bob Tannenbaum, asked me to write down things I did well and things I couldn’t do. On the positive side, I jotted down, “research,” “writing,” “analysis,” and “speaking.” (In other words, I wrote, “I am smart.”) On the negative side, I wrote, “I have no mechanical skills. I will never have any mechanical skills.”

Bob asked me how I knew I had no mechanical skills. I explained my life history and told him about my dismal showing on the Army test. “How are your mathematical skills?” he asked. I proudly replied that I had scored a perfect 800 on the SAT math 1 achievement test.

Bob then asked, “Why is it that you can solve complex mathematical problems, but you can’t solve simple mechanical problems?” Then he asked, “How is your hand-eye coordination?” I said that I was good at pinball and had helped pay for my college expenses by shooting pool, so I guessed that it was fine.

Bob asked, “Why is it that you can shoot pool, but you can’t hammer nails?”

Suddenly, I realized that I did not suffer from some sort of genetic defect. I was just living out expectations that I had chosen to believe. At that point, it wasn’t just my family and friends who had been reinforcing my belief that I was mechanically hopeless. And it wasn’t just the Army test, either.

I was the one who kept telling myself, “You can’t do this!” I realized that as long as I kept saying that, it was going to remain true.

The next time you hear yourself say, “I’m just no good at . . .” ask yourself why not. The next time you’re coaching someone, and he or she says, “I’m just no good at . . .” ask them why not.

If we don’t treat ourselves–and the people around us–as if we have incurable genetic defects, we can get better at almost anything we choose. Why not?

Life is good.

Marshall

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In the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai, the main character, Colonel Nicholson, is a prisoner of war in Burma who leads his men to build a bridge for his Japanese captors. Nicholson is an officer of high integrity, dedicated to excellence, a great leader of people - and thus well trained to complete any mission that he is given.

So he skillfully inspires his men to build a near-perfect bridge. By the film’s end, he finds himself in the painful position of defending the bridge from attack by fellow British officers who want to destroy it - to prevent Japanese trains from using it.

There’s a chilling moment of realization, right before the bridge is detonated, when Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness) utters the famous line, “What have I done?” He was so focused on his goal - building the bridge - that he forgot his larger mission - winning the war!

That is goal obsession, which is a subset of wanting to win too much. It rears its ugly head in many ways. In its broadest form, it’s the force at play when we get so wrapped up in achieving our goal that, like Colonel Nicholson, we do it at the expense of a larger mission.

It’s one of those paradoxical traits that are usually the sources of our success, but taken too far can become blatant causes of failure. You see this when people become fixated on the wrong goals. Given their history of success, they end up achieving a result that does more damage than good to their organizations, their families, and themselves.

The canyons of Wall Street are littered with victims of goal obsession. I asked one hard-driving deal maker, “Mike, why do you work all of the time?” He replied, “Why do you think? Do you think I love this place? I am working so hard because I want to make a lot of money!”

I continued my inquiry, “Do you really need this much money?”

“I do now,” Mike grimaced. “I just got divorced for the third time. With three alimony checks every month, I am almost broke.”

“Why do you keep getting divorced?” I asked.

The answer came out as a sad sigh. “All three wives kept complaining that I worked all the time. They have no idea how hard it is to make this much money!”

This sort of classic goal obsession would be laughable if the irony — or more accurately, the failure to appreciate the irony — weren’t so painful.

One of the most ironic examples of goal obsession was the “Good Samaritan” research done by Darley and Batson at Princeton in 1973. In this widely referenced study, a group of theology students was told that they were to go across campus to deliver a sermon on the topic of the Good Samaritan.

As part of the research, some of these students were told that they were late and needed to hurry up. Along their route across campus, Darley and Batson had hired an actor to play the role of a victim who was coughing and suffering.

Ninety percent of the “late” students in Princeton Theology Seminary ignored the needs of the suffering person in their haste to get across campus. As the study reports, “Indeed, on several occasions, a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the victim as he hurried on his way!”

What’s happening here? Goal obsession clouded their judgment. They were under time pressure. They were in a hurry. They had deadlines. They were going to do something that they thought was important. Other people were depending on them. And in that hothouse of circumstances, their goals got warped. After all, when people committed to hitting their targets pick the wrong one — when they focus on the bridge and not the war — somebody may end up getting hurt.

Try this. It’s simple, but not easy.

Step back, take a breath, and look around.

Survey the conditions that are making you obsessed with the wrong goals.

Remember that time and deadline pressures come with being a leader. We confront them every minute of every day. They do not go away.

This makes it all the more important to reflect upon our work, match it up against the life we want to live, and consider, “What am I doing?” and “Why am I doing this?”

Ask yourself, “Am I achieving a task and forgetting my organization’s mission? Am I making money to support my family — and forgetting the family that I am trying to support?”

After all this effort and display of professional prowess, you don’t want to find yourself at a dead end, asking, “What have I done?”

Life is good.

Marshall

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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

www.MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com

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If you’re a CEO, have you ever noticed what happens when you’re thinking out loud in your organization? When the leader sneezes, everybody else may get pneumonia. This is something every boss needs to consider before opening his or her mouth, because the same dynamic occurs all day long in the workplace — to the point where even the manager’s praise can create confusion.

For example, I advise my clients to be very conscious of their tendency to grade or rate people on the quality of their suggestions. Bosses do this all the time. If a direct report makes a suggestion, the boss will say, “That’s a great idea!” That’s nice to hear, of course. We’ll go home that night and tell our significant other, “You’ll never believe what the boss said about my idea today.” But if we hear, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!” the power of the comment is multiplied. The wound may linger forever.

And when the response falls in between, that can be the worst. Does it mean we’ve scored a 4 out of a 10, and the boss expects better? Is the boss turning against us? If praise given can be potent and inspiring, then praise withheld can be potent and disorienting.

That’s the problem when we openly judge what our colleagues say to us. It can set off a chain of events beyond our control, which defeats the purpose of talking to people in the first place.

Perhaps the most outrageous story about a leader’s unappreciated power comes from the CEO of a telephone company. He was driving home thinking about work when he passed a solitary phone booth on a quiet residential corner. “That’s an odd location for a phone booth,” he thought. “I wonder how much money it earns us.”

The next day, he runs into a midlevel employee in the hallway, someone on the operational level, not a manager. He says, “I’m curious. How much do we make on that phone booth near my house? It’s not a big deal. Don’t spend a lot of time on it. Just send me a note.”

The employee looks it up and starts to write that note. His manager walks by and asks, “What are you doing?”

“Oh, this is for the CEO. He stopped by and wanted to know how much we make on the phone booth by his home.”

“You can’t send him a little note. There’s no comparison of this phone booth with other booths in the area.”

So the question gets bumped up to the next level, and the next, and you can imagine the result. About two months later, an executive vice president and the original manager walk into the CEO’s office with a phone-booth study in a three-ring binder that’s as big as a phone book. The CEO looks at it with a blank expression and says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He later told me that this one comment had cost his company over one million dollars!

Most bosses are smart enough to sense the impact of their statements. They know how a harmless suggestion can be taken as an order. That’s why they couch their musings in carefully calibrated language intended to signal that they shouldn’t be taken too seriously. The trouble is, no matter how much sweetener is sprinkled on the conversation, when the CEO is involved, it’s never a fair fight.

When they’re asserting their authority, CEOs are not shy about throwing their weight around. It’s when they’re trying to be democratic and fair that CEOs forget how much they still weigh. If you’re the boss, there’s no point in pulling your punches. They still carry a lot of wallop. On occasion, it’s much smarter not to punch at all.

So bite your tongue. Sometimes — more often than we know — it’s less confusing for the boss to simply say thank you or nothing at all. Because whether you intend it or not, whatever you say has the power to knock folks out.

Life is good.

Marshall

www.MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com

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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

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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

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When I wrote an article for HR.com some time ago, I said that in many ways war can be seen as a metaphor for much of what happens in daily business life. In fact, ten different versions of The Art of War by Sun Tzu have been listed in the top 1% of all books on Amazon.com.

Corporate leaders, not military people, are the major buyers of these books.

As organizational leaders reflect upon the ongoing war in Iraq, it might be a good time to look for learnings from combat that we can all apply in our daily business interactions.

I have had the privilege of coaching many successful leaders. One of my former clients (who I will call “Joe”) is now the CEO of one of the world’s most valuable corporations. When I worked as his coach, he was the chief operating executive at a smaller company. He had many of the strengths that most of the top executives that I meet possess. He was brilliant, dedicated, high in integrity, committed to the company, dedicated to serving customers, innovative and consistent in achieving results. He was also viewed as somewhat stubborn and opinionated.

Joe’s “area for improvement” was not particularly unusual. I recently described the most common problem of the executives that I coach. I replied, “winning too much”.

Joe was a wonderful client and is still a friend. After 18 months, he achieved very positive long-term change in behavior as judged by his key stakeholders. He was seen as much more open and less opinionated and judgmental. He was viewed by almost everyone as a more effective leader. At the end of our time together, I asked Joe, “What did you learn from this coaching process in the past year?”

Joe replied, “Most of what I learned from you, I learned in the first day. I learned to stop, take a breath and ask myself, ‘Is it worth it?’ before I spoke.”

He smiled and said, “Unfortunately, in many cases, when an executive like me makes a suggestion, it is taken as an order. When I was able to stop and think before speaking, in about half the cases, I concluded, “Do I believe that I am right? Maybe. Is it worth it? No.”

When listening to news about the war, it might be good for all of us to review the behavior of the key players in this drama. For each decision ask, “Does this leader believe that he is right?” then ask, “Is it worth it?”

In some cases the answer may be “yes”. Sometimes it is worth it to go to war to defend what we believe to be right. In other cases the answer might be “no”. Sometimes “winning the battle” is not worth the cost. As you listen to the leaders speak (on all sides), think not only about the war. Think of the interactions that preceded the war. For example, think about the way that the Americans, Brits, French and Germans have treated each other in the past few months.

These lessons from war may not just apply at work. They might also apply at home.

Nathaniel Branden taught me a wonderful exercise to help determine if something was really worth it. He asks his clients to complete the following sentence (over and over again) with a list of benefits: “If I get better at (the behavior the client may want to change), then …”.

I have done this exercise with hundreds of leaders. When leaders participate in this exercise, one of two things happens. Either can be very useful. In some cases the leaders begin to realize how important this change is. They finish the exercise with a commitment to do better. In other cases the benefits don’t seem that important. The advantages of changing don’t merit the effort. In these cases I suggest that they work on something else.

The first time I did this exercise, I observed an executive who was highly judgmental. He completed the sentence, “If I become less judgmental …”. The first few completions were mainly sarcastic or cynical comments. By the sixth completion he had tears running down his face. He said, “If I become less judgmental, maybe my children will speak to me again.”

This leader learned a great lesson. Sometimes “winning” and “being right” just wasn’t worth it. He also learned that becoming less judgmental was definitely worth it.

War provides an opportunity to observe leaders making critically important decisions in the ultimate high-stakes environment. As you watch each leader on television ask yourself, “Does he believe that he is right?” then ask, “Is it worth it?”

Try to differentiate between the need to “win” and to “be right” from the need to fight a noble battle for a just cause.

More importantly, the next time you are ready to go to war – at work or at home – don’t forget to ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”

Life is good.

Marshall

www.MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com

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