What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
The author in his book addresses a particular audience, successful people who need to make a change to continue to be successful.In his book, Goldsmith lists twenty-one common harmful habits in interpersonal relations. He explains that the higher you go in executive management, the more your problems are behavioral. Some of these behavioral problems are as follows:
1. The need to win to much
2. Making destructive comments
3. Starting sentences with “No,” “But,” or “However”
4. Telling the world how smart you are
5. Speaking when angry
6. Withholding information
7. Clinging to the past
8. Playing favorites among direct-reports
9. An excessive need to be “Me” (or, “I can’t change, that’s just how I am”)
10. Goal obsession
The author writes about challenges tha are also getting executives to understand how they are perceived by others in their work environments, and at home. He separates our personal “perception” into four categories:
1. Public Knowledge (Traits known to others and self)
2. Private Knowledge (Traits known to self but not to others)
3. Blind Spots (Traits known to others but not to self)
4. Unknowable (Traits unknown to others, and not know to self)
Goldsmith says that the most interesting traits to examine and study are 3, the blind spots known to others but not to ourselves. He provides a formula for detecting these traits, examining them, and fixing any negative discoveries. The formula is:
1. Collect feedback from everyone around us, using both deliberate and subtle tactics.
2. Apologize to everyone for any negative traits.
3. Advertise that you are beginning a personal campaign to improve and that you would like their feedback periodically as you work on improvement.
4. Listen to feedback in terms of “what can I do in the future to improve” and not “what did I do wrong in the past” (one is positive, one is negative)
5. Thank people for their suggestions, and don’t disagree with them.
6. Follow-up relentlessly. This is the key to the improvement process taking shape.
Goldsmith also discuss about several topics in his book. One interesting aside is a list of common reasons why goal setting can fail:
1. Time: It takes longer than expected, so it couldn’t be completed.
2. Effort: It’s harder than was expected.
3. Distractions: Nobody expected a “crisis” to emerge that took resources or time away.
4. Lack of Rewards: After they see some improvement, they don’t get enough positive response from others, so they give up.
5. Maintenance: Once a goal is met, there is no fortitude to stick with the pattern that brought success.
I found the most valuable part of Goldsmith’s book to be his formula for collecting feedback about others’ perceptions of us, and how we can affect change within ourselves where needed.

Elton Dushku