The world famous executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith, has had a huge impact on me personally, and in this episode I share his biggest nuggets (that I think about and use every day).
Tyler Small: What got you here, won't get you there. I'm Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence. So the world famous executive coach Marshall Goldsmith has written this wonderful book. It's been out for a while now. It's titled What Got You Here. Won't Get You There. And the title came about from a conversation he has had with many fortune 500 executives.
[00:00:26]By the way, you can hire him for his consulting engagements. It's only a quarter of a million dollars. The great news is he has said you can use all this stuff for at no cost you can borrow and copy and just, he just he's very free with his things. He says I've made my millions just take it and use it.
[00:00:45] So I am very I'm very generous with borrowing Marshall Goldsmith's material. It's fantastic. Fantastic. And he says I'll save you the $250,000 fee. Here's some free advice. Right? And he specializes in coaching executives who are high performers, do great work, great, incredible value for their organizations and are just big jerks.
[00:01:13]And that implies low emotional intelligence, right? They're , high performers yet low emotional intelligence. So his message, his opening message to many of these fortune 500 CEOs that he is coached. And sometimes others COO's people, oftentimes people who are perhaps next in line for the CEO position, but they're just a mean to people and they need to have a 180 course correction on
[00:01:40] their culture skills their social skills, their leadership abilities which we call oftentimes. What does this mean? So he'll say, look you've accomplished a lot in your career. They're like, yes, I have. And he'll go on. And usually he does he'll be called in by their, by the CEO or by the board.
[00:01:56] And oftentimes the board or the CEO, whoever is. Whoever is responsible for that individual will, will tell Marshall, we'll tell him, they'll say, look we're going to have to let this individual go. If they don't string up. Now, if they can straighten up, there's such a high performer, they do so well, making things happen that we would love to have them fill the CEO seat or the next level up, whatever it is.
[00:02:20] And. And that would be great. We see a promising career for this person, if, and only if they can straighten up, but otherwise , we're probably going to let them go soon. So this is a major high stakes situation for the individual. And so he starts out this conversation saying, look, , basically what got you here is not going to get you there.
[00:02:38] It you've been. You've been cutthroat. You've been mean you've been sarcastic, whatever it is that he, as he does his research to find out about this person. That mindset and those behaviors will not get them where they're trying to go. And I've found that this is true most of the time with the leaders that I've coached, even though I don't coach say Fortune 500 CEOs.
[00:03:02]The senior managers, directors, vice presidents, and C-level people that I have coached. They want to get somewhere better than they are now. And they realized that doing the same things that they've always done will get them the same results. They'll continue to to be at that level that they're at now, unless they can change what they're doing, less, they can change their mindsets and their behaviors, their habits.
[00:03:23] In order to improve. So what Marshall has is this brilliant program that he coaches them through. And I've adopted the high level structure of this program and I've adapted it and I've given it some very specific additions that I found amazing quantitative results with it.
[00:03:44]And using a Five-star scale. And I've talked about the the Five Star Experience, the Five Star Thank You, the Five Star Apology. I've talked about the Ultimate Relationship Question, how to actually measure the relationship. So I feel weird for saying this cause Marshall Goldsmith is I just look up to him as a hero and a mentor.
[00:04:03] Now and I've actually, I've taken things a step further in order to help people get a little more granular and a little more visual, a little more specific on the advice and the feed forward, if you will, that, that they're asking for people. But let me just tell you his high level framework that is super cool.
[00:04:22] And that, that I've adapted from. And it basically he says, look, here's what you need. Do you need to go, and if you've created a reputation for yourself as a jerk, right? And I think many of us who are desiring to work on our emotional intelligence as I am.
[00:04:36] And I hope that you are hoping to work on your emotional intelligence as many of us it's maybe not necessarily that you're a complete jerk. But that there are some frictions that you need to, there's some cold areas, some icy areas that you need to break up and warm up thought out in your relationships.
[00:04:54] And so I think this can be super helpful even if you aren't a complete jerk to all those around you, that would justify calling in the great Marshall Goldsmith. So anyway, so he the individual goes through this process and it's basically that they. First apologize. They say, look I've messed up.
[00:05:12] I need to work on my relationships. And I've had some really bad habits and I'm going to be working on those now. One of the difficult things is. This well, I'll just, I'll describe some of the differences later some other time. But that's the first step is to do the apology. And then and you, and that he recommends reading meeting regularly with this, with each person that you need to correct things with.
[00:05:36]And then he recommends advertising that there's this change that there's this specific intention. And that you're working on making these changes in behavior and you're improving the way that you treat people. And so you're getting this specific advice from people you're asking for their honest advice and for them to invest in the future and stop investing in the past .
[00:06:01] And to forgive you, right? So you're asking for all those things. And then you're pledging to do better in specific ways and you're working on it and you're following up with these people regularly. I think he recommends doing it at least once a month. It depends on how often you meet with people, how much exposure that you have with people that some people may be once a month would be too frequent and others, it would not be often enough.
[00:06:25]I feel that's all based on it how many exposures you have with that person over the, over each week and month. So anyway, so you're checking in and you're advertising the way he talks about advertising. The need for it is he says for every hundred percent in improvement you have, it will only show up as a 10% to others.
[00:06:49] So others will perceive only 10% of every hundred percent improvement. So it's, it shows you basically, you could be a completely different person. You could have changed all of the things that were requested of you and made a complete 180 and be a hundred percent improved. And yet those around you would only sense a very small, tiny part of that improvement.
[00:07:13]They would still be perceiving you as the old you, right? The old, your old self who is making all those old errors. And because they remember right there, their perception of you is mostly based on the past, not the current or the future. So he recommends this idea of advertising the new you.
[00:07:33] And I just think that's. Of critical importance and something that we need to get over. If you're the type of person who's Oh, I do not do sales and advertising. That makes me feel so uncomfortable, et cetera. Get over it. Figure out ways that you're going to advertise the change.
[00:07:49] Now from my perspective, what's been most successful. The people that I've coached is. Instead of doing the advertisement as a pat on the back, doing it as a check-in as almost forming it as a question. And that's exactly what I do is I, as there, what I do myself and I coach people to do is I asked them I recommend forming this as a question and saying, look, I want to be better.
[00:08:15] I'm working on my relationships. I'm trying to make changes in my mindset, my behavior, and I'm trying to do better in these very specific ways. And I've been trying to do this to let's just say a very simple one. I've been trying to show up to meetings on time. And I, so I showed up at 1259 to our meeting on Tuesday.
[00:08:37] I showed up at three minutes early to my meeting on Thursday with you. And then. This morning I made sure that I was here at least five minutes early to make sure that the conference room was was indeed secured that, and that the people in there knew that I was there waiting for it.
[00:08:53] And so that we wouldn't have any hiccups with getting started on time and know that punctuality is really important to you. So I've been working on this and trying to demonstrate to you that this is just, super important for me to be able to build our relationship. And so based on those last three times that we've met how, on a scale of five stars how would you rate my punctuality?
[00:09:15] And so you can do that very specific, or you can say, how would you rate this experience of me getting to the meeting on time? There's lots of ways to ask it, but basically you're asking. For a specific rating when they give you a five-star rating, that means that their perception of you is at five stars.
[00:09:35]And if you're basically demonstrating that you've done a perfect job than expect that five star rating, if there's something that you haven't done, they'll let you know or they'll say what about, yesterday you mentioned these other three times within the last week, but yesterday, you no showed the meeting, So it's an opportunity to have insight into your blind spots by asking for, by doing that check-in and asking them, Hey, how how would you rate this experience?
[00:10:01] How would you rate my improvement? And so those experiences are what builds the relationship. I hope you've enjoyed this this structure that I've shared with you. What Got You Here, Won't Get You There. It's true. Marshall Goldsmith. I highly recommend the book super, super impactful book, very actionable advice in there.
[00:10:21] He goes through I think it's the 20 biggest faux pas that are most commonly seen in leaders and a very helpful book. Highly recommend it. Great read. Go through make those apologies. Talk about your improvements. Meet frequently, ask for the ratings and advertise as you improve and do that, check in with people so that you can look forward, look at the present, help them see the new you.
[00:10:48] And I submit to you that. What will get you there is using these tips and hacking emotional intelligence. I'm Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence.