Under the ‘Read & Grow’ series, a discussion was organised on the book ‘What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful!’ written by Marshall Goldsmith. Ms Sangeeta Shankaran Sumesh, Business & Leadership Coach, Speaker & Author; Independent Director on Corporate Boards anchored the discussions with Mr Saurabh Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, Kaleesuwari Group and Mr Venu Prasad Menon, Managing Director, Amnet ContentSource
Sangeetha Shankaran Sumesh:
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is a renowned leadership guru. He says that highly successful leaders can become even more successful by making small behavioural changes and overcoming their blind spots. Leaders tend to think they have been successful and are reluctant to change when things are working well. They delude themselves by overestimating their contribution, taking credit and conveniently ignoring the failures that they had. According to Marshall Goldsmith, four beliefs that helped us to become successful may actually be holding us back in our quest to move forward. What are these four?
Four Misleading Beliefs
First one is, ‘I have succeeded.’ You tend to live in the success of the past. The second one is, ‘I can succeed,’ linking what you have done already. The third is, ‘I will succeed.’ It’s a tendency to be extremely busy, and therefore you land up over committing yourself. The fourth one is, ‘I choose to succeed.’ There is a cognitive dissonance, which refers to the disconnect between what we believe in our minds and what we experience in reality. People will change their behavior if it can be demonstrated that it’s going to be in their best interest and defined by their own values.
How can you identify the motives behind the self-interest? The author says it normally boils down to four things: money, power, status and popularity. However, at a deeper and higher level, it could be things like leaving a legacy behind; being an inspiring role model or creating a great company.
The 20 We Must Get Rid Off
Marshall Goldsmith adds that none of us are immune to personal flaws. He lists out 20 habits that we must overcome. The first habit is ‘winning too much.’ There is a fine line of difference between being competitive and being overly competitive. We tend to argue too much and put people down. For example, you may argue with your spouse on going to a particular restaurant, say ‘A’ but the spouse suggests restaurant ‘B.’ Finally, you give in to the choice of your spouse and go to restaurant ‘B.’ If the food is bad or it’s overcrowded, you tell your spouse, “See, I told you not to come here.’ There is no need to do a cost benefit analysis. The relationship with your partner is far more important than just winning trivial arguments.
The second habit is: adding too much value. It’s a great idea but we tend to do that at work and you’re not letting the other persons to share their views. By doing that, you may improve your idea by 5% but reduce the commitment of your team members by more than 50%. Make your people the winners.
No, But
The third habit is: passing judgments. People don’t like to be critiqued. Instead of being judgmental, just say, ‘Thank you.’ The fourth is: making destructive comments. You may not remember the comments you made but the other person always remembers them. The fifth habit is: starting a sentence with no, but or however. When you do this, the message that you’re giving the other persons is that they are wrong, irrespective of how you sugarcoat it.
The sixth habit is: telling the world how smart you are. By doing that, you not only boast yourself, but also you insult the person in front of you. You’re probably better off not saying anything at all to them. The seventh habit is: speaking when you’re angry. When people are angry, they tend to be out of control. The eighth habit is: negativity. There are people who can’t say anything positive. There is unadulterated negativity in them, in the disguise of being helpful.
Withholding Information
The ninth habit is: withholding information. People tend to think that revealing information puts them at a disadvantage. It may even be unintentional. We may tend to forget or we delegate to people without teaching them how to do it. The way to overcome this is by just sharing the information.
The tenth habit is: failing to give proper recognition. Successful people become great leaders, when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others. The eleventh habit is: claiming credit when we don’t deserve it. The twelfth one is: making excuses. There’s no excuse for making excuses. If we can stop making excuses, we can just get better at anything that we do. The thirteenth one is: clinging to the past where we blame other people as an excuse for our own failures. Stop blaming others for the choices that you have made.
The fourteenth habit is: playing favourite. The fifteenth habit is: refusing to express regret. Be comfortable to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ By saying ‘sorry,’ you can turn your enemies into your partners. The sixteenth habit is: not listening. When we fail to listen, we send the message that we don’t care about the other person(s). The seventeenth is: failing to express gratitude. Just say, ‘Thank you.’
The eighteenth is: punishing the messenger. The nineteenth is: passing the buck or blaming others for our own mistakes. It arises with the need that we need to be perfect. The last habit is: an excessive need to be me, whereby you do not give any positive recognition to your staff. By telling your team, ‘You’ve done the job very well,’ you can make them feel better. ‘The less of me and more of them’ is the success formula, according to Marshall Goldsmith.
As a bonus, he also talks about the 21st habit, which is: goal obsession. Having a goal by itself is not a flaw. But it can be the root cause of annoying behaviour. We are very nice to people who help us achieve the goals. But we hog the limelight and take all the credit.
Feedback
We all need feedback to see where we are and where we need to go. We must measure our progress and 360-degree feedback is an excellent tool for that. The author talks of three types of feedback: solicited feedback, where you ask people for feedback. Here, there’s no embarrassment and people can tell you the truth. The second is unsolicited feedback, which is normally not known to us, but known to the rest of the world. The third is observational feedback, which is the best of the three. You can do it yourself by observing how other people are, what they comment about you and what sort of behavior they display.
Other good habits are apologizing and advertising by telling the world that you’re creating a new ‘you.’ The author stresses on the importance of listening. We must think before we speak and listen with respect. There is no need to multitask. Give full attention without any distraction to the person with whom you interact. The author adds that thanking, appreciating and being grateful are excellent traits. He talks about following up and practicing feedforward. This is an excellent technique, where you ask a person for suggestions that will help you change your behavior. Importantly, the only response to that should be, ‘Thank you.’
Come up with a manual, so your team members know exactly what you want from them. In the end, most of the leadership development revolves around one false assumption. That is, we think that if people understand, they will do it. But that’s not true. Most of us understand, yet we don’t do. The learnings can be used both in our personal lives and professional lives. Goldsmith also talks about how he managed to overcome some of those 20 habits.
Panel Discussion
Mr Venu Prasad Menon: I am in the IT services and knowledge publishing domains. We deal with people using a combination of principles derived from different books. I was resistant to coaching at a certain stage but agreed to go to a coaching session and engage with an executive coach. It helped me to sharpen and achieve percentage improvements.
Mr Saurabh Kumar: We have organizations that have stayed for decades and which are eternally successful, by virtue of their management philosophies. Even today, the best and the average Indian and MNC organizations tend to look at success from a lens of numbers and goals. Almost two thirds of the organisations rely on measures such as KRI, which according to Marshall Goldsmith, may not be a good message. We should be better managers and if we are able get rid of even ten of the 20 habits that we discussed, we can consider us as having achieved a distinction.
Ms Sangeetha: The author talks about many beliefs and reasons as to why we resist change. What are your views?
Mr Venu Prasad Menon: As humans, we are all wired to believe that we are successful. When we look at our progress, we tend to go back and rest on past laurels. In our organisation, I face this challenge with people who’ve spent about 15 or 20 years. They’ve grown from junior levels as an individual contributor to a senior executive level. They still think what got them to the position will help them to succeed and grow further. But that’s not reality.
The world is changing. We are into publishing content knowledge. With AI coming up the way it has come so far, the scene is completely disruptive. But people tend to forget that and say, “I did this three years back and I know how to handle this situation.” Everything is connected and everything is networked. It is better to step back and think, ‘Are there better ways to do it?’
I adopt the technique of ‘stop, start and continue,’ recommended by the author.
When I have personal discussions with people, sometimes I ask them to stop the way they are doing certain things. That’s part of what we call ‘CFR’ (Conversations; Feedback; and Recognition) in our organization. We have very strong people practices.
Mr Saurab Kumar: Out of the 20 habits that we need to get rid of, I would pick the first two habits: don’t be too competitive; and don’t try to add too much value. These are part of our every day or even, every hour discussions and conversations that take place in an organisation. In a meeting, when everyone says ‘yes’ to a proposal and one person points out an issue, instead of supporting or encouraging that person who has said something, the others try to put that person down. They don’t want to accept there is a better way to do. People must work together, look at the risks around a plan and see how they can mitigate them, instead of just making a plan and going ahead with it.
We also need to avoid being judgmental. People become judgmental when they think that they are superior to others. If I think that whatever information my colleague gives will be half-baked, I am judgmental. Another habit that we must overcome is negativity. The likelihood of any initiative to succeed goes down by 30 to 40% when it is drowned in negativity.
Mr Venu Prasad Menon: Gratitude is a habit I have imbibed as a practice from the book. In our organisation, we have also created a pattern with the Rockefeller habits. Every day, all the important teams that run a function or business have a 10-minute meeting which we call ‘daily huddles.’ These are just stand- up meetings in which the challenges from that day and important resolutions required are discussed. Then we have weekly huddles of 20 minutes duration. Everybody comes in and the audience is bigger. We also have monthly huddles. Each of these meetings is started with a section for ‘gratitude.’
Gratitude is not just for the people in the meeting. May be, somebody in the administrative team could have booked tickets at a cheaper fair. Their name will be discussed in the meeting and they will receive an email with all others who attended the meeting being copied. This, we have found to be, very energising.
Another habit is about not adding too much value. I’ve seen that people at every level tend to stop participating in meetings or discussions when they feel that there’s one person who’s trying to impose his or her views on the entire audience. There’s no collaboration; no cohesion or synergy between teams. You must give chance to everyone to contribute. In addition to this, we must not feel bad about asking for an apology. I don’t feel bad about saying sorry to somebody on my team.
Ms Sangeetha: When you make a mistake, you don’t have a problem apologising. But what I’ve realized is most people think they have not made a mistake and so they wonder why they should ever apologize. I’ve seen a lot of people who are very driven or so obsessed with their goals.
Mr Saurab Kumar: On the face of it, goal obsession is a desirable behaviour. Most of the people managers start saying, ‘You should be first obsessed with the goal. Only then can you align people. Put your 120% efforts and forget all the rest. Focus only on my goal.’
Any business goal or initiative needs to be sustainable. It cannot be short term. It needs to be repeatable and the success needs to stay. That’s when you realise that the effort needs to be time-phased and targeted rather than just getting obsessed with one thing and forgetting other things. We must also look at what we are obsessed with and evaluate if it is really linked to the end objective of the organization.
Ms Sangeetha: How can we become better listeners?
Mr Venu Prasad Menon: One of our principles is customer obsession. It has helped us to serve our clients the way we’ve served them for the last 25 years. We’re a 24-year-old company; we work with Microsoft and Amazon. We have about 1500 people and 12 principles. If you talk to our employees, they may not remember all the 12 but all of them will talk about customer obsession. We listen to our customers. Listening is very critical. Innovation is never top down. It happens at the edges. Unless you listen to your operators, you don’t know where and what to innovate. When you listen, the other person understands that you’re there, listening. It means a lot. If you listen to somebody for five or ten minutes, it means that person is important.
Ms Sangeetha: What are your thoughts on practicing feed-forward?
Mr Saurab Kumar: Feed-forward replaces feedback. We’re moving into an era where the communication needs to be smooth and effective. With feedback, we get an opinion about what we did – our lacunae and negative aspects. With feedforward, when you want to improve in a particular area or aspect, you ask what you should do to improve in that area. For example, I call my team and have open discussions. I tell them that we need to work and improve upon it and ask them, ‘What can I do to support you?’ If I ask for direct feedback, I may not get what I wanted. So, feedforward is a better option.
