Dr. Marshall Goldsmith was recently recognized as the #1 leadership thinker in the world at the bi-annual Thinkers50 ceremony sponsored by the Harvard Business Review.
Dr. Goldsmith is the million-selling author or editor of 34 books, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There — a WSJ #1 business book and winner of the Harold Longman Award for Business Book of the Year. His books have been translated into 28 languages and have become bestsellers in ten countries.
Dr. Goldsmith’s Ph.D. is from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management where (in 2012) he was recognized as the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year. He teaches executive education at Dartmouth’s Tuck School and frequently speaks at leading business schools.
Some of Dr. Goldsmith’s areas of expertise are:
- Delivering keynote speeches on leadership and coaching for professional associations, executive groups and human resource organizations.
- Providing top-rated leadership training for executives and high-potential leaders.
- Teaching leaders and HR professionals to become great coaches.
- Coaching for leadership that ensures executives achieve and sustain long-term, positive behavioral changes.
- ..and so much more.
Today we asked Marshall what he loved to do most, and he shared this with us:
- Speaking or teaching is actually what he enjoys doing the most. He loves to speak and to teach.
- The second thing he does is coach executives. What he loves about coaching executives is not so much what he teaches, but what he learns while coaching. He has found that is is a great way to learn.
- The third thing he does is write and edit books and articles, that’s how he reaches people. Somebody has read something he has written 25 million times. He says, “I can’t speak to 25 million people!”
Marshall is working on his next new book and talked with us about it. The tentative title is called: Triggers. The book is about our relationship with the environment. My book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, was about interpersonal relationships. My book MOJO, was more intra-personal, that’s the way we view ourselves in the world around us. This book, Triggers, is more about our relationship with our environment, kind of the dance that we do with our environment. He talks in the book about how we are constantly being created by our environment and creating our environment at the same time.
He is currently doing some interesting research to teach people to focus on their own engagement and the results have been amazing. He is doing this research with his daughter, Kelly, who has a Ph.D. from Yale in behavioral marketing and is now a professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School at NorthWestern.
There are six questions they are using in their research. Each question starts with, “did I do my best to…?” The six questions are:
- “Did I do my best to be happy?”
- “Did I do my best to be kind meaning?”
- “Did I do my best to build positive relationships?”
- “Did I do my best to set clear goals?
- “Did I do my best to make progress towards goal achievement?”
- “Did I do my best to be easily engaged?”
People then just evaluate themselves every day. Instead of saying, “is the company motivating me?” Rather than saying, “Do I have a friend at work?” they say, “Am I doing my best to build positive relationships?” Its about the brain neuroscience — it’s all about attention and focus.
Join us as we talk with Dr. Marshall Goldsmith about his wealth of knowledge about leadership training, employee engagement, and more. Listen to the complete recording, without commercials, above.
Coach’s Corner
Good to Great Strategies – Micro-Initiatives: D.O.D. of Great Leadership
Here is another of the 108 strategies from Leading with Emotional Intelligence. Discovering the “degree of difference” (D.O.D.) between good and great leadership has been the focus of many writers. Goleman, Boyatzis, and the Hay Group use the term tipping point to describe the behaviors that tip or move a performer into the top 10%. Using your strengths more in a disciplined fashion is the first strategy to improve performance.
