Author(s): Marshall Goldsmith
January 2007
Hachette Publishing
256 Pages
What Got You Here Won't Get You There
America’s most sought-after executive coach shows how to climb the last few rungs of the ladder.
The corporate world is filled with executives, men and women who have worked hard for years to reach the upper levels of management. They’re intelligent, skilled, and even charismatic. But only a handful of them will ever reach the pinnacle -- and as executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shows in this book, subtle nuances make all the difference. These are small "transactional flaws" performed by one person against another (as simple as not saying thank you enough), which lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive back. Using Goldsmith’s straightforward, jargon-free advice, it’s amazingly easy behavior to change.
Dr. Goldsmith is a new member of the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame. He is the only two-time Thinkers 50 #1 Leadership Thinker in the World. He has been ranked as the World’s #1 Executive Coach and Top Ten Business Thinker for eight years. Marshall was chosen as the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Award for Leadership by the Harvard Institute of Coaching.
Dr. Goldsmith is the author or editor of 41 books, which have sold over 2.5 million copies, been translated into 32 languages and become listed bestsellers in 12 countries. Amazon.com recently recognized their ‘100 Best Leadership & Success Books’. His books, Triggers and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, were both recognized as being in the top 100 books ever written in their field. Marshall is one of only two authors with two books on the list. His recent book, How Women Rise, with lead author, Sally Helgesen, is a BookScan #1 book for Women.
Marshall’s other professional acknowledgments include: Global Gurus - the inaugural Corps D ’Elite Award for Lifetime Contribution in Leadership and Coaching, Harvard Business Review - World’s #1 Leadership Thinker, Institute for Management Studies - Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership Education, American Management Association - 50 great thinkers and leaders who have influenced the field of management over the past 80 years and BusinessWeek - 50 great leaders in America.
Dr. Goldsmith served as a Professor of Management Practice at the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business. His Ph.D. is from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management - where he was the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year. His MBA is from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business - where he was the Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year. He is one of a select few executive advisors who has worked with over 200 major CEOs and their management teams. He served on the Advisory Board of the Peter Drucker Foundation for ten years. He has been a volunteer teacher for US Army Generals, Navy Admirals, Girl Scout executives, and leaders of the International and American Red Cross – where he was a National Volunteer of the Year.
Dr. Goldsmith has over 1.3 million followers on LinkedIn. His YouTube videos have over 3 million views. Hundreds of his articles, interviews, columns, and videos are available online at www.MarshallGoldsmith.com for viewing and sharing. Visitors have viewed, read, listened to, downloaded, or shared his resources tens of millions of times"As a guy who has had some success in my life, I especially understood and appreciated what this book taught me. The point of the book is actually the title and subtitle. He states: "The problems we'll be looking at in this book are not life-threatening diseases (although ignored for too long they can destroy a career). They're not deep-seated neuroses that require years of therapy or tons of medication to erase. "More often than not, they are simple behavioral tics 'bad habits that we repeat dozens of times a day in the workplace' which can be cured by (a) pointing them out, (b) showing the havoc they cause among the people surrounding us, and (c) demonstrating that with a slight behavioral tweak we can achieve a much more appealing effect.
"One of the keys to a good business book can be found in the Table of Contents. This book is not different. The four sections are titled: The Trouble with Success; The Twenty Habits That Hold You Back from the Top; How We Can Change for the Better; Pulling Out the Stops. If you go into a bookstore to check this book out, just look at the twenty habits. They were a scary eye opener for yours truly. I used up one hi-lighter on this book and found way more bad habits I have and need to change than I care to admit. The nice thing about this book is that you can identify the flaws you didn't think you had and fix them without anybody knowing you had a problem. Now that is a huge benefit. All in all, this is an important book." -- Jack Covert, Jack Covert Selects, 1800CEOREAD
"Goldsmith has no interest in probing why people behave the way they do. He doesn't try to reshape their personalities. He measures success by the extent to which other people's perceptions of his clients change for the better . . . he teaches them how to apologize for their shortcomings -- 'the most magical, healing, restorative gesture human beings can make,' he writes in his book [What Got You Here Won't Get You There] . . . and then to ask for help in getting better . . . 'It's much harder to change people's perceptions of your behavior than to change your behavior,' he says . . ." -- Barbara Rose, Chicago Tribune
"If you decide to purchase one new book this year I encourage you to make it What Got You Here Won't Get You There. This is the top tier of leadership information available!" -- weLEAD Rating - highly recommended
"The book is written pretty much the way Marshall speaks. It is simple, brutally honest, and humorous. It doesn't try to get fancy. It's economically composed, crafted to be useful. It will appeal to people with no time to waste. Like its author, it's practical and to the point . . . What Got You Here will be required reading for many years to come. -- David Zweig, Senior Editor, World Business Academy Perspectives
"This is a superb book, practical with a rich understanding of human behaviour and how to change. Mr. Goldsmith has endless examples from his work and his own personal failings, and the result is a chance for readers whose companies don't hire him to get the benefit of his expertise." -- Harvey Schachter, Globe and Mail
"What holds you back from achievement? Marshall Goldsmith is an executive coach who has worked with over eighty CEOs in the world's top organizations -- so he's in the perfect position to examine how global leaders overcome self-defeating habits, translating these lessons to the modern condition and everyday man in What Got You Here Won't Get You There. From key beliefs in successful leaders to common behavior flaws, this book translates drawbacks to success, and will find an audience in any general-interest collection where self-improvement is of interest." -- Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review/California Bookwatch
"You'll see the results whether you're a CEO or just getting started." -- BookPageHachette Publishing