This document summarizes Marshall Goldsmith's book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" and discusses why successful people resist change. It notes that successful people often believe (1) they succeeded due to their skills, (2) they can continue to succeed, and (3) they will always succeed. However, this can lead to behaviors that hinder further success, such as overcommitting without listening to others. The document identifies 20 common habits successful people have that can limit additional growth, such as always needing to win, refusing to admit mistakes, or failing to recognize others' contributions. It encourages appreciating these flaws and suppressing them to improve interpersonal relationships and leadership.

1. Prof
Shivananda
R
Koteshwar
Director,
The
Amaatra
Academy
shivoo@pes.edu
/
Facebook:
shivoo.koteshwar
What got you here wont get you
there
Sept 23rd 2013
v1.0
BLOG: http://shivookoteshwar.wordpress.com
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2. Prof Shivananda R Koteshwar ©
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The Book
 What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
 By Marshall Goldsmith
 ISBN-10: 1-84668-137-5
 ISBN-13: 978-1-84668-137-0
How successful people become even more successful
Success people’s stories are not so much about overcoming enormous obstacles and
handicaps but rather about avoiding high-risk, low reward situation and doing everything
in their power to increase the odds in their favor
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Perception – You vs. Your boss/colleague/subordinates/clients
You think you are They see it as
Having all the answers Arrogance
Contributing to a situation with helpful comments Butting in
Delegating effectively Shirking responsibilities
Holding your tongue Unresponsiveness
Letting people think for themselves Ignoring them
Giving people benefit of your years of experience Micromanaging and excessive
meddling
Winning over your client with overwhelming evidence Egoistic personality
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 Past performance
 I have succeeded
 Ability to influence their success (Rather than just being lucky)
 I can succeed
 Optimistic belief that their success will continue in future
 I will succeed
 Sense of control over their own destiny (as opposed to being
controlled by external forces)
 I choose to succeed
Why successful people have resistance to
change?4

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 I have succeeded
 Because of my skills and talent I have won consistently. When I get up in the morning, I edit my failures and choose to reel the highlight of my
success. This motivates me to get up –Self Aggrandizing
 When I face a pitcher whom I have hit well in the past, I always go up to the plate thinking I ‘own’ this guy. When I face a pitcher whom I have not
hit well in the past, I go up thinking I can hit this guy because I have hit pitchers a lot better than he is
 I can succeed
 I have capability within me to make desirable things happen. I believe through sheer force of personality or talent or brainpower, I can steer a
situation in my direction – Self Efficacy
 I see opportunities where you see threats. I will take greater risks to achieve greater returns.
 I will always bet on myself and not a victim of fate. Success is earned through motivation and ability and not luck, random chance or external
factors. I believe there is a link between what I have done and how far I have come
 I will succeed
 Its not just I can manufacture success, I believe success is my due
 I set a goal, publicly announce it and do whatever it takes to achieve the goal
 My over commitment is not because I am trying to save a sinking ship but I am drowning in a sea of opportunities
 I choose to succeed
 When I do what I choose to do, I am committed. Self Determination
 Personal commitment encourages me to stay the course and not give up when the going gets tough
 Because of my cognitive dissonance, I don’t buckle and waver when times get tough. I am committed to my goals and beliefs.
Through the eyes of successful people – 4
success Beliefs5

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 Fact : “I am successful and I behave this way”
 Successful people read that as: “ I am successful because I behave this way
 Instead of: “I am successful in spite of this behavior”
 We will succeed attitude sometimes leads to staff burnout, high
turnover and a weaker team than the one you started with. Over
commitment is dangerous
 More we believe that our behavior is a result of our own choices
and commitments, the less likely we are to want to change our
behavior
Success sometimes breeds behavioral
problems
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1. Winning too much
2. Adding too much value
3. Passing judgment
4. Making destructive comments
5. Starting with No, But or however
6. Telling the world how smart we
are
7. Speaking when angry
8. Negativity or Let me explain why
it wont work
9. Withholding information
10. Failing to give proper recognition
20 Habits to avoid
11. Claiming credit that we don’t
deserve
12. Making excuses
13. Clinging to the past
14. Playing favorites
15. Refusing to express regret
16. Not listening
17. Failing to express gratitude
18. Punishing the messenger
19. Passing the buck
20. An excessive need to be me
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 All flaws are around information and emotion (Either more or
less)
 Information Compulsion or Withholding information AND
 Emotion Centered
 Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in your interpersonal
relations
 Its not a genetic defect, you are just living out the expectations
you have chosen to believe
 The only difference between the near great and the great is that
the great ones never have an off switch for caring and empathy
and showing respect. Its always on
20 Habits to avoid
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1. Winning Too much
 If the need to win is the dominant gene in our success DNA the
overwhelming reason we are successful, then winning too much is a
perverse genetic mutation that can limit our success
2. Adding too much value
 When someone comes to you with an idea, rather than just patting him
on the back and saying “Good idea”, your inclination is to say “Good
idea, but it would be better if you tried it this way”. Now you might
have improved the content by 5% but you have reduced his commitment
to execute by 50% because you have taken away the ownership of the
idea
 Higher up you go in the organization, more you need to make other
people winners and not make it about winning yourself
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in your
interpersonal relations
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3. Passing Judgment
 There is nothing wrong with offering an opinion in the normal business discussion
as you want people to agree or disagree freely but its not appropriate to pass
judgment when we specifically ask people to voice their opinion about us
 People don’t like to be critiqued, however obliquely. That’s why passing
judgment is like pushing people away and hold ourselves back from greater
success. The only sure thing that comes out of passing judgment on people’s
efforts to help is that they wont help us again
4. Passing destructive comments
 Destructive comments are the cutting sarcasm we make with or without intention,
that serve no other purpose than to put people down, hurt them or assert
ourselves as their superiors
 They are different from comments that add too much value – because they add
nothing but pain
 The fact that a destructive comment is true is irrelevant. The question is not, “Is it
true?” but rather “Is it worth it?”
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in
your interpersonal relations
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5. Starting with “No”, “But”, or “However”
 When you start with “No”, “But”, or “However”, or any other
variation thereof, no matter how friendly your tone is, the
message to the other person is “You are wrong”. Nothing
productive can happen after that
 Never use “That’s true, however …” or “Yes, but…”
6. Telling the world how smart we are
 What backfires is need to win people’s admiration, need to
let them know that we are atleast their intellectual equal if
not their superior, need to be the smartest person in the room
 Being smart turns people one, but announcing how smart you
are turns them off
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in
your interpersonal relations
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7. Speaking when angry
 Emotional volatility is not the most reliable leadership tool. When
you get angry, you are usually out of control and when you are
out of control its hard to lead people.
 You may think you have a handle on your temper that you can use
your spontaneous rages to manipulate and motivate people, but its
very hard to predict how people will react to anger
 Anger is rarely someone else’s fault. It’s a flaw that’s solely our
own
8. Negativity or “Let me explain why that won’t work”
 “Let me explain why that won’t work” is a unique flaw because it is
pure unadulterated negativity under the guise of being helpful
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in
your interpersonal relations
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9. Withholding Information
 Information is power which makes withholding information even more extreme
and irritating
 Intentionally withholding information is the opposite of adding value. We are
deleting value. Yet it has the same purpose: To gain power
 The problem with not sharing information is that it rarely achieves the desired
effect. You may think you are gaining an edge and consolidating power, but you
area actually breeding mistrust.
 Withholding information is nothing more than a misplaced need to win
10. Failing to give proper recognition
 In withholding the recognition of another person’s contribution to a team’s success,
you are not only sowing injustice and treating people unfairly but you are
depriving people of the emotional payoff that comes with success
 In depriving people of recognition, you are depriving them of closure and
everybody needs closure in any interpersonal transaction
 Successful people or achievers become great leaders when they learn to shift the
focus from themselves to others
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in
your interpersonal relations
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11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve
 Claiming credit is adding insult to injury that comes with overlooked
recognition
 When someone you work with steals the credit for a success that you
created, they are committing the most rage-inducing interpersonal crime
in the workplace
 Great leaders need to transform self from credit miser to credit
philanthropist
 Look at every episode and ask yourself if its in any way possible that
someone else might deserve the credit for your achievement. If yes,
acknowledge
12. Making Excuses
 Once people reach the age of accountability, no matter what people do
to them, it cannot be an excuse for any mistakes they make
 If we stop excusing ourselves, we can get better at almost anything we
choose
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in
your interpersonal relations
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13. Clinging to the past
 Going backwards is not about creating change, its about understanding.
 Understanding is perfectly admissible if your issue is accepting the past. But if your issue is
changing the future, understanding will not take you there
 People who cling to the past, convince themselves why they are the way they are and don’t
change. They also use it to contrast it with the present –usually to highlight something positive
about themselves at the expense of someone else
 Sometimes we blame other people not as an excuse for our failures, but as a subtle way of
highlighting our successes
 Stop blaming others for the choices you made
 Never use “When I was your age …?”
14. Making Excuses
 Our recognition of people may be linked to how much they seem to like us rather than how well
they perform. That’s the definition of playing favorites
 Rewarding those who heap unthinking, unconditional admiration upon us is not right
 Leaders can stop encouraging this behavior by first admitting that we all have a tendency to
favor those who favor us, even if we don’t mean to
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in
your interpersonal relations
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15. Refusing to express regret
 We think apologizing means we have lost a contest
 All the fears that lead us to resist apologizing – the fear of losing, admitting we are wrong,
ceding, control – are actually erased by an apology
 If you put all your cards in someone else’s hands that person will treat you better than if you kept
the cards to yourself
 Apologizing is one of the most powerful and resonant gestures in the human arsenal –almost as
powerful as a declaration of love
 Do admit guilt, ask for an apology and plea for help. When you declare your dependence on
others, they usually agree to help
16. Not Listening
 Not listening is a silent invisible activity. People rarely notice you doing it. You cannot be listening
because you are bored or distracted or busy composing what you want to say and no one will
know it but when you display extreme impatience, they notice it
 Poor listening can happen because you think you already knew what you are about to hear or
your mind works so fast that you could comprehend any message by filling the blanks yourself
 In the past very bright people would put up with disrespectful behavior, but in the future they will
leave
 Stop saying or thinking – “NEXT”
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in
your interpersonal relations
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17. Failing to express gratitude
 “Thank you” is what you say when you have nothing nice to say. It will never annoy the person
hearing it
 Positive or negative feedback, always say “Thank you” because no matter what someone tells
you, remind yourself, “I wont learn less”
 When somebody makes a suggestion or gives you ideas, you are either going to learn more or
learn nothing. But you are not going to learn less.
 Hearing people does not make you dumber, so thank them for trying to help
 Never say “I am confused ..” when someone suggests something because its subtle and dishonest.
You are actually saying “You are confused” which means “You are wrong”
 Saying “Thank you” keeps people talking to you. Failing to say “Thank You” shuts them down
 Gratitude is not a limited resource, nor is it costly. It is as abundant as air. We breather it in but
forget to exhale
18. Punishing the messenger
 Its not always the unjust retaliatory action we take against a whistle blower or the angry tirade
we heap upon someone who tells us something we don’t enjoy hearing, it’s also the small
responses we make throughout the day whenever we are inconvenienced or disappointed- like a
momentary snort of disgust you exhale
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in
your interpersonal relations
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19. Passing the buck
 A leader who cannot shoulder the blame is not someone anyone will follow blindly into battle
 Passing the buck is the dark flip side of claiming credit that others deserve. In addition to
depriving others of their rightful glory for a success, we wrongfully saddle them with the shame of
our failure
 Nobody expects us to be right all the time but when we are wrong, they certainly expect us to
own up to it. Being wrong is an opportunity to show what kind of person and leader we are
 How well you own up to your mistakes makes a bigger impression than how you revel in your
successes
20. An excessive need to be “me”
 It would be easy for each of us to cross the line and begin to make a virtue of our flaws –simply
because the flaws constitute what we think of as “me”. This misguided loyalty to our true natures-
this excessive need to be me is one of the toughest obstacles to making positive long term change
in our behavior
 “Good job” on a report even when the performance was not 100% perfect never damages the
reputation of a demanding boss. The pay off in terms of improved morale and performance will
be enormous.
 Less me , more them equals success
 When you find yourself resisting change because you are clinging to a false notion of “me”, its
not about you, its about what other people think of you
Appreciate the flaw and work to suppress it in
your interpersonal relations
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 By itself, goal obsession is not a flaw but taken too far, it can
become a blatant cause of failure
 It comes from misunderstanding what others want us to do
 Goal obsession is not a flaw but a creator of flaws
 Our quest for a successful outcome may end up doing more
harm than good to our organization and ourselves
 Short sighted goal is dangerous. While achieving a task, never
forget the organization's mission
 After all the efforts and display of professional prowess, you
don’t want to find yourself at a dead end, asking, “What have
I done?”
21 Habit: Goal Obsession
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 As mentioned earlier, all the flaws are centered
around information and emotions
 Information and emotion - Nothing wrong in either
sharing or withholding
 Its good to share that helps people
 Its good to withhold when it harms people
 Key is to ask 2 Questions when sharing
information/emotions
1. Is it appropriate?
2. How much should I convey?
How can we change for better?
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 7 Step method for changing our interpersonal
relationships and making these changes permanent
1. Feedback
2. Apologizing
3. Telling the world or Advertising
4. Listening
5. Thanking
6. Following up
7. Practicing Feedforward
How can we change for better?
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 We need feedback to see where we are, how we are doing, where we
need to go and to measure our progress
 Feedback tell us what to change, not how to do it
 Traditional Feedback issues
 Feedback are usually focused on the past (Failed past) and not towards positive
future
 Negative feedback can shut people down and change cannot happen in this
environment
 Change involves 2 parties. Person who’s changing and the people who
notice it
 Before working your flaw, you need 4 commitments from your coworker
1. Let go off the past
2. Tell the truth
3. Be supportive and helpful – not cynical or negative
4. Pick something to improve yourself – so everyone is focused more in improving
than judging
Feedback
1
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 Stop asking for feedback and then expressing your opinion
 Our opinion will sound defensive however we say it. It will resemble a
rationalization, a denial, a negation or an objection
 Pure issue-free feedback that make change possible has to solicit advice
rather than criticism, be directed towards future rather than obsessed with
past and be couched in a way that suggests that you will act on it
 Feedbacks comes to us in 3 forms
1. Solicited
2. Unsolicited
3. Observation
Feedback
Known to Others
Unknown to Others
Unknown to Self
Known to Self
Public Knowledge
Private KnowledgeUnknowable
Blind Spots
Feedbacks
1
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 Solicited Feedback
 Ask the right people, Ask the right questions, Interpret the answers properly and Accept them as accurate
 Unsolicited Feedback
 What is unknown to us might be known to others. We can learn from that
 If we stop, listen and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can bring the
real changes that are needed to close the gap between our stated values and actual behavior
 Observational Feedback (5 ways)
1. Make a list of people’s casual remarks about you. By ranking them as negative or positive, you are turning in the
world with 2 new weapons: Judgment and Purpose
2. Turn the sound off (Watch the gesture and body language). With this you are increasing your sensitivity to others
by counterintuitive eliminating the precious sense of hearing
3. Complete the sentence
 List the positive benefits that will accrue to you if you achieve your goal. As you go deeper into it, answers become
more personal. As the benefits you list become less expected and more personal and meaningful to you, that’s when you
know that you have given yourself valuable feedback –that’s when you have hit an interpersonal skill that you really
want and need to improve
 This is a retrograde analysis – Seeing the end result and then identifying the skill you will need to achieve it
4. Listen to your self aggrandizing remarks
 Stuff people boast about as their strengths, more often than not, turn out to be their most egregious weakness
 Stop saying: “May be I am not an expert in this, but ..” – This means you believe you are an expert. Similarly “May be I
wasn’t paying attention, …” – Means “I was paying full attention and I don’t agree with what you are saying”
 By doing this you are flipping your world upside down and seeing that you are no different from anyone else
5. Look homeward
 Your flaws at work don’t vanish when you walk through the front door at home
 You realize not only you need to change but why it matters so much
Feedback
1
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 Without apology there is no recognition that mistakes have been
made, there is no announcement to the world of the intention to
change and most important this is no emotional contract between you
and the people you care about
 Its not what you say, its what they hear
 When it comes to apologizing, get in and get out as quickly as
possible. The sooner you get the apology over with, the sooner you
can move on to telling the world
Apologizing
2
Telling the world or Advertising 3
• After you apologize, you must advertise. Its not enough to tell
everyone that you want to get better; you have to declare
exactly in what area you plan to change
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 What good listeners do: (Have a toll booth between their mind and tongue!)
 They think before they speak
 They listen with respect and
 They are always gauging their response by asking themselves “Is it worth it”
 Tricks for developing good listening skills
 Listen
 Don’t interrupt
 Don’t finish the other person’s sentences
 Don’t say “I knew that”
 Don’t even agree with the other person (Even if he praises you, just say “Thank you”
 Don’t use the words, “no”, “but”, “however”
 Don’t be distracted. Don’t let your eyes or attention wander elsewhere while the other person is talking
 Maintain your end of the dialogue by asking intelligent questions that show you are paying attention, move the
conversation forward and require the other person to talk
 Eliminate any striving to impress the other person with how smart or funny you are. Your only aim is to let the other person
feel that he/she is accomplishing that
 Don’t interrupt, judge, dispute or deny when listening. Shut mouth except for saying “Thank you”
Listening
4
Thanking 5
• Thanking works because it expresses one of our most basic emotions – Gratitude
• When someone does something nice for you, they expect gratitude and they think less of
you for withholding it
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 Follow-up is
 how you measure progress
 how we remind people that we are making an effort to change and that
they are helping us
 how our efforts eventually get imprinted on our colleagues' minds
 How we acknowledge to ourselves and others that getting better is an
ongoing process
 More than anything, Follow-up makes us do it.
 Follow-up is important because
 Not everyone responds to executive development, at least not in the way
the organization desires or intends
 There is an enormous disconnect between understanding and doing
 People don’t get better without follow-up
 Becoming a better leader or a better person is a process, not an event
Following Up
6
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 Feedback is past tense, feedforward is future perfect
 Feedforward works because leaders don’t particularly like hearing criticism
(Negative feedback), successful people love getting ideas for the future
 Unlike feedback, which often introduces a discussion of mistakes and
shortfalls, feedforward focuses on solutions and not problems
 When it comes to our flawed past, leave it at the stream. It does not mean
we should always let go of the past. One needs feedback to scour the past
and identify room for improvement. But you can’t change the past; to
change you need to be sharing ideas for the future.
 Feedforward is a simple 4 step process
1. Pick the one behavior that you would like to change which would make a
significant positive difference in your life
2. Describe this objective in one-on-one dialogue with anyone you know
3. Ask that person for two suggestions for the future that might help you achieve
a positive change in your selected behavior
4. Listen attentively to the suggestion. The only response you are permitted to
say is “Thank you”
Practicing Feedforward
7
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1. You might not have a disease that behavioral change
can cure (It might be a skill problem)
2. Pick the right thing to change
3. Don’t mislead yourself about what you really want to
change
4. Don’t hide from the truth you need to hear
5. There is no ideal behavior – Sometimes desire for
“perfect” can drive away “better” so be careful
6. If you can measure it, you can achieve it
7. Monetize the result, create a solution
8. Best time to change is “NOW”
8 rules that will help you get better handle
on the process of change
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30. Prof Shivananda R Koteshwar ©
Thank You !
Prof Shivananda R Koteshwar
shivoo@pes.edu
BLOG: http://shivookoteshwar.wordpress.com
SLIDESHARE: www.slideshare.net/shivoo.koteshwar