Have you ever heard of the ‘Peter Principle‘? It was a satirical management theory developed by Laurence Peters in the late 1960’s. At the center was the maxim that everyone rises to their level of incompetence. You get promoted based on past good work until you are in a position in which your skills, experience and aptitude are no longer aligned with the job functions. Meant to be tongue in cheek, what happens if we don’t have to stay incompetent – what happens if we can become a different person?

This is the basis of the book, ‘What Got You Here Won’t Get You There‘ by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter.

Speaking of Timeless

The book was first published in 2007 and some of the concepts are timeless; covered by other authors such as Stephen Covey. I first read the book and heard Goldsmith speak circa 2008. I still remember a sense of ‘Ah Ha’ that came from many of his messages. Over the past decade+, his presentation and some of my own personal concepts have been a go to resource not only for myself but others who I have mentored.

Not Quite What I Remembered

Goldsmith and co-author Mark Reiter did a great job making the book accessible and engaging. Re-reading it after more than a decade, I realized that the key messages do not stand out as well as I thought they did. Perhaps false memories but more likely the result of Goldsmith’s excellent presentation. Nevertheless, this book is still a good gift for a recent graduate of a business school or someone who has been promoted into a leadership role – but point them to the following cheat sheet as well. I can’t promise to be as engaging as Goldsmith was, but I can share a few of his pearls of wisdom.

Memory Jogs to Get You There

The following are notes for quick access and to inflict on unsuspecting young people I mentor. (References are bracketed either from the book, Goldsmith’s website or other sources).

• Habits Can Become Burdens. We are creatures of habit. Often these habits have made us successful but as time and circumstances change, what once was a positive becomes a negative. Bad habits can also chip away at the goodwill we have accumulated in our relationships. (adapted, p. 8)
• Habits can be Broken. Bad habits are seldom life threatening but can cause career and relationship drag. They can be broken by a) identification, b) understand the impact has on others, c) work on modifying or breaking the habit. (adapted, p. 9)
• Those Who Can Do, Those Who Can’t – Learn – and then Teach. Success can be a handicap. Successful individuals develop self-delusions which lead to bad habits which then lead to conflict when those behaviours no longer work. Those who are not naturally gifted but have learned to be proficient at something have a broader and better understanding of that ‘thing’. In other words, failure makes for better teachers than those “cursed” with unbridled success. (adapted, pp. 16-32)
• Changes in Human Behaviour are Entropic. Entropy is the state of inert uniformity; in other words, people don’t change unless there is a crisis and it is in their best interest to change. (adapted, p. 29)
• Once Successful, Stopping is More Important than Starting: Create a To-Stop list of things. These are bad habits, time wasters or things no longer important to us or our relationships. (adapted, p. 35)
• 20 Flaws Holding You Back. Too long to list in a blog, these 20-flaws should be part of a performance management plan for leadership roles. I see myself in some of them either in the shadows or in the full light of day. As well, these are not static and working on one flaw may cause you to accentuate another. Life is always a work in progress. (adapted, pp. 35-42)
• Leadership Amplifies Flaws. Goldsmith spends time identifying the flaws because of leverage effect of position. A quirk or mild annoyance at one level could become culture-toxic at another. The more senior you become, the more behaviour and perception trump ability and reality. (adapted, p. 42)
• Joehari Window. A 2×2 matrix with the dimensions of what is known to us and to other people. Each of these two dimensions has two states: known and unknown. The top left quadrant, the Blind Spot is where flaws and bad habits lurk (adapted, p. 123):

Blind Spots: Unknown to us / Known to Others	Public Knowledge: Known to us / Known to Others.
Unknowable: Unknown to us / Unknown to Others	Private Knowledge: Known to us / Unknown to Others.

• Hearing Feedback for the First Time. Successful people don’t like to hear feedback. Most people have a hard time hearing positive feedback because of innate modesty. Successful people have a hard time with negative feedback because they are delusional about their abilities. We tend to only hear feedback that matches our self-image. (adapted, pp. 111-129)
• Feedback is a Gift, Don’t Shoot the Messenger. Feedback is a gift to be cherished and welcome whether you use it to improve or not. It also needs to be nurtured and encouraged. (adapted, pp. 111-129)
• Learn How to Say Thank You. One of the biggest challenges with feedback is the inclination to ‘Ya-But-It’. Goldsmith has a solution for this, shut up and say thank you. This technique works in many situations not just when receiving feedback. Simply say thank you and recognize that you received a gift – don’t spoil the moment. (adapted, pp. 92-93)
• An A+ Thank You. Develop means to provide top tier thank you’s. One way to do this is a personalized thank you card. Providing sincere and unqualified thanks is an act of sincerity and a genuine emotion. By the way, if you are looking for a way to provide personalized thank you’s – try my Picture Thank You Card method. (adapted, pp. 157-160)
• Sorry to Say This – Apologize! Goldsmith is a big proponent of saying: “I am sorry“. Both in the context of when one goofs but also for past bad behaviour. Sincerity is central to”I am sorry” and so don’t explain, complicate or qualify it. The words are: “I am sorry, I will try to do better in the future” – full stop. (adapted, p. 140)
• Listen to the Shining. As a leader, one of the greatest skills is the ability to actively listen to others. Listening means: don’t interrupt, don’t finish sentences, don’t know the subject, avoid negative rejoinders (no, but, however), don’t be distracted, and ask intelligent questions at the end. Most important, avoid the temptation to impress the other person with how much better you are; “The more you subsume your desire to shine, the more you will shine in the other person’s eyes“. (adapted, pp. 155-156)
• Just to Follow Up. If you have asked people to help you break habits, follow up with them periodically. This will both demonstrate your sincerity to change but also continues to engage them in the process. Prioritizing a follow up also helps to prevent slippage because we become too busy. Back to bad habits, it also recognizes that cognition and action are inter-twined yet separate. Knowing something leads to doing something but doing something strengthens our understanding of it. (adapted, pp. 161-)
• Measuring Your Trajectory. Goldsmith answers 32 Yes/No questions every day as way to monitor how well he is working towards his personal goals. These questions include engagement, setting goals and others. You can download an iPhone application, or a spreadsheet can be downloaded. (adapted, Questions That Make A Difference: The Daily Question Process and, pp. 166-167)
• Moving Forward with Feedforward. Feedback is about examining the past to construct an understanding of the future. Feedforward is entirely future focused and involves 4 steps: 1) Pick a behaviour for improvement, 2) Ask someone for suggestions about self-improvement for the future, 3) Listen to the response, 4) Say ‘thank you’ – nothing more. Feedforward works as it is positive and future orientated; as well, the focus is on hearing rather than on responding to the comments (adapted, Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback and pp. 171-174)
• Achieve Not Over-Achieving. What may be seen as a virtue in one context or situation may be liability in another. Goldsmith uses the example of wanting to spend more time with his kids after they noted he was absent with work travel. He spent more time at home at which point his now teenage-kids asked him to travel more. His children’s needs changed as he was working toward an objective that had ceased being relevant. (adapted, One Trick Others in Your Office Don’t Know)
• Influencing and Following. The Harvard Business Review article: Effectively Influencing Decision-Makers was not part of the book but is a good read. It is as much about how to be a good follower as it is about how to ‘sell’ your idea to a decision maker.

We Are Marshall

On the off chance that Goldsmith reads this, a note of thanks. I can’t say that I have followed his words of wisdom but I have at least thought of them. Goldsmith is now in his early 70’s and has been recognized as one of the most influential American Business-Coaches. All indications are that he is a person possessing a generous spirit and an ethos of helping others. All attributes that got him there – and deservedly so.

Links and Further Reading

• Goldsmith’s website: https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/product/book-2/.
• 20 Flaws Holding You Back: https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/articles/bad-behavior/.
• Wikipedia, the Peter Principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle.
• A Cole’s Notes version of the book: https://jamesclear.com/book-summaries/what-got-you-here-wont-get-you-there.