1. One of my all-time-favourite books. 2. My first attempt to summarise a book in a presentation form. 3. Works best for career advancement & life betterment.

1. 1
• The Trouble with Success
2
• The 20 Habits That Hold
You Back from the Top
3
• How We Can Change for
the Better
4
• Pulling Out the Stops
Book summary by Nordiana Noordin
14 March 2014

2. You are here
20 + 1 habits that hold you back from the Top
How we can change for the better
Pulling out the stops
To all successful leaders
who want to
“take it to the next level”
and get even better

3. 1
• The Trouble with Success
1. You are here
2. Enough about you
3. The success delusion, or
why we resist change
“In which we learn how our
previous success often prevents
us from achieving more success”

4. 1. You are here
• You think you have all the answers, but others see it as arrogance.
• You think you’re contributing to a situation with helpful comments, but
others see it as butting in.
• You think you’re delegating effectively, but others see it as
unresponsiveness.
• You think you’re letting people think for themselves, but others see it
as ignoring them.
What’s wrong is that you have no idea how your behaviour is coming
across to the people who matter – your bosses, colleagues,
subordinates, customers and clients.
(And that’s not just true at work; the same goes for your home life)

5. 2. Enough about you (Let’s talk about the author, Marshall Goldsmith – One
of five most-respected executive coaches by Forbes )
“Who am I to tell you how to change?”
In 1980s, his career as an executive coach began with a phone call from
the CEO of a Fortune 500 company:
“Marshall, I’ve got this guy running a big division who delivers his numbers and
more every quarter. He’s young, smart, dedicated, ethical, motivated, hard-working,
entrepreneurial, creative, charismatic, arrogant, stubborn, know-it-all
jerk.
Trouble is, we’re a company built on team values, and no one thinks he’s a team
player. I’m giving him a year to change, or he’s out. But you know something, it
would worth a fortune to us if we could turn this guy around.”
My job is to identify a personal habit that’s annoying their co-workers and
to help them eliminate it – so that they retain their value to the
organisation.
My job is to make them see that the skills and habits that have taken them
this far might not be the right skills and habits to take them further.

6. 3. The success delusion, or why we resist change
We:
• Overestimate our contribution to a project
• Take credit, partial or complete, for
successes that truly belong to others
• Have an elevated opinion of our
professional skills and our standing among
peers
• Conveniently ignore the costly failures and
time-consuming dead-ends we have
created
• Exaggerate our projects’ impact on net
profits because we discount the real and
hidden costs built into them (the costs are
someone else’s problems, the success is
ours)
Our delusions become a serious liability
when we ne need to change.
Four key beliefs help us become successful:
• Belief 1:
I have succeeded – “I have the skills”
• Belief 2:
I can succeed – “I have the confidence”
• Belief 3:
I will succeed – “I have the motivation”
• Belief 4:
I choose to succeed – “I have free choice
to succeed”
These four success beliefs make us
superstitious and make it tough for us
to change.

7. 2
• The 20 Habits That Hold
You Back from the Top
1. Knowing what to stop
2. Shifting into neutral
3. What’s wrong with us?
“In which we identify the most
annoying interpersonal issues in
the workplace and help you figure
out which ones apply to you”

8. 1. Knowing what to stop
• “Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need
to learn what to stop.” – Peter Drucker
2. Shifting into neutral
• Not all behaviour is good or bad. Some are simply neutral – neither
good nor bad.
• All you have to do is “stop being a jerk”.
Which do you think is easier to do:
becoming a nicer person or ceasing to be a jerk?

9. 3. What’s wrong with us?
What we’re dealing with here are challenges in interpersonal behaviour,
often leadership behaviour.
• Everyday annoyances that make your workplace substantially more
noxious than it needs to be.
• They are transactional flaws performed by one person against others.
And they are 20 annoying habits
• So, check yourself against the list.
• It’s unlikely that you’re guilty of those habits – maybe some.
• If only 1 out of 20 people says that you are guilty of habit #8, let it go.
• If 16 out of 20 say it, let’s get to work.
The higher you go, the more your problems are behavioural.

10. 1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations – when it matters, when it
doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.
2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.
3. Passing judgement: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
4. Making destructive comments: Making destruction The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks
that we think make us sound sharp and witty.
5. Starting with “No”, “But”, or “However”: The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly
say to everyone, “I’m right. You’re wrong.”
6. Telling the world how smart they are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think
we are.
7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional votality as a management tool.
8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work: The need to share our negative thoughts
even when we weren’t asked.
9. Witholding info: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.

11. 11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution
to any success.
12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behaviour as a permanent fixture so
people excuse us for it.
13. Clinging to the past: To deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our
past; a subset of blaming everyone else.
14. Playing favourites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong,
or recognize how our actions affect others.
16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying
to help us.
19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.

12. .... The 21st habit: Goal obsession
Goal obsession is not a flaw – not transactional – not something you do to
another person.
• But it is often the root cause of the annoying behaviour – it turns us into
someone we shouldn’t be.
• It’s the force that motivates us to finish the job in the face of any obstacle
– and finish it perfectly.
In it’s broadest form, a goal obsession is the force at play when we get so
wrapped up in achieving our goal that we do it at the expense of a larger
mission.
• It comes from misunderstanding what we want in our lives.
• It comes from misunderstanding what others want us to do.
As a result, in our dogged pursuit of our goals we forget our manners.
We’re nice to people of they can help us hit our goal.
We push them away if they’re not useful to us.

13. It comes from misunderstanding what we want in our lives.
We think we’d be truly happy (or at least happier) if only we made more
money, or lost 10kg, or got the corner office.
So, we pursue those goals relentlessly.
What we don’t appreciate until much later is that ...
• in obsessing about making more money, we might be neglecting our
loved ones i.e. our family – for whom we presumably securing that money
• in obsessing about our weight with extreme diets, we might actually end
up doing more harm than good to our bodies
• in pursuing the corner office, we might trample upon the colleagues at
work whose support and loyalty we will need later on to stay in that
corner office or move even higher
We start out with a road map heading in one direction but end up in
the wrong town.

14. It comes from misunderstanding what others want us to do.
The boss says we have to show 10% revenue growth for the year.
So, when it appears we will miss that target, goal obsession forces us to
adopt questionable, less than honest methods of hitting the target.
In other words, the honourable pursuit of a difficult goal set by someone
else transforms us into cheaters.
If you examine it more closely, we’re not really obsessed with hitting the
10% growth; our true goal is pleasing our boss.
The only problem is that we either don’t see this or we refuse to admit it to
ourselves.
Is it any wonder our values get mixed up?
Goal obsession has warped our sense of what is right or wrong.

15. 3
• How we can change for
the better
1. Feedback
2. Apologising
3. Advertising
4. Listening
5. Thanking
6. Following up
7. Practicing feedforward
“In which we learn a seven-step
method for changing our
interpersonal relationships and
making these changes permanent”

16. Take a breath...
If you step back and look at most of those interpersonal flaws (20 annoying
habits), they revolve two familiar factors: information and emotion.
• Almost half rooted in information compulsion:
– when we add value, or pass judgment, or make destructive comments,
or announce that we “already knew that,” or explain “why that won’t
work” – we are compulsively sharing information.
– likewise, when we fail to give recognition, or claim credit we don’t
deserve, or refuse to apologise, or don’t express our gratitude – we
are withholding information.
• Some rooted in emotion compulsion:
– when we get angry, or play favourites, or punish the messenger – we
are succumbing to emotion – and displaying it for all the world to see.
Information and emotion. We either share them or withhold them.
We have to ask: “Is this appropriate?” and “How much should I convey?”

17. 1. Feedback
• Feedback tells us where we are, where we need to go and to measure our
progress. Without it, we wouldn’t have results, we couldn’t keep score, we
wouldn’t know if we were getting better or worse.
• We need honest, helpful feedback.
2. Apologising
• Apologising is the magic move – a seemingly simple tactic – but like admitting
you were wrong – it’s tough for some people to do but brilliant for those who
can.
• How to apologise? Here’s the instruction manual:
─ You say “I’m sorry.”
─ You add “I’ll try to do better in the future.”
─ And then you say nothing.
(Don’t explain it. Don’t complicate it. Don’t qualify it. You only risk saying
something that will dilute it.)

18. 3. Advertising
• After you apologise, you must advertise – declare exactly in what area you
plan to change.
• In other words, now that you’ve said you’re sorry, what are you going to do
about it?
4. Listening
• 80% of our success in learning from other people is based upon how well we
listen – success or failure is determined before we do anything.
• Good listeners do:
─ Think before you speak
─ Listen with respect
─ Ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”

19. 5. Thanking
• Why thanking works? Because it expresses one of our most basic emotions:
gratitude.
6. Following up
• You do not get better without follow-up. Always ask: “How am I doing?”
7. Practicing feedforward
• Pick the one behaviour that you would like to change.
• Describe this objective in a one-to-one dialogue with anyone you know.
• Ask that person for 2 suggestions for the future that might help you achieve a
positive change in your selected behaviour.
• Listen attentively to the suggestions. You are not allowed to judge, rate or
critique the suggestions in anyway.

20. 4
• Pulling Out the Stops
1. Changing: The rules
2. What to stop doing
“In which leaders learn how to
apply the rules of change and what
to stop doing now”

21. 1. Changing: The rules
• Rule 1: You might not have a disease that behavioural change can cure
• Rule 2: Pick the right thing to change
• Rule 3: Don’t delude yourself about what you really must change
• Rule 4: Don’t hide from the truth you need to hear
• Rule 5: There is no ideal behaviour
• Rule 6: If you can measure it, you can achieve it
• Rule 7: Monetise the result, create a solution
• Rule 8: The best time to change is now

22. 2. What to stop doing
• Stop 1: Stop letting your staff overwhelm you
• Stop 2: Stop acting as if you are managing you
• Stop 3: Stop “checking the box”
• Stop 4: Stop being prejudiced about your employees
─ I know what they want
─ I know what they know
─ I hate their selfishness
─ I can always get someone else
• Stop 5: Stop trying to coach people who shouldn’t be coached
─ Stop trying to change people who don’t think they have a problem
─ Stop trying to change people who are pursuing the wrong strategy for the
organisation
─ Stop trying to change people who should not be in their job
─ Stop trying to help people who think everyone else is the problem

23. “If you stay in this company, why are you going to stay?”
Marshall conducted a research project involving more than 200 high-potential
leaders from 120 companies around the world. Each company could nominate
only 2 future leaders, the very brightest of its young stars. These are the kinds
of people who could jump at a moment’s notice to better-paying positions
elsewhere.
The 3 top answers:
1. “I am finding meaning and happiness now. The work is exciting and I love
what I am doing.”
2. “I like the people. They are my friends. This feels like a team. It feels like a
family. I could make more money working with other people, but I don’t
want to leave the people here.”
3. “I can follow my dreams. This organisation is giving me a chance to do what
I really want to do in life.”
The answers were never about money. They were always about
happiness, relationships, following dreams, and meaning.

24. You can get there!
You are here now
Let the journey begin.