F o r e t h o u g h t

co n v e rsati o n

Behave Yourself
Changing how people see you is as important as changing how you act.

Like many executive coaches, Marshall Goldsmith helps businesspeople with behavior problems. Unlike most, though, he was recently proled in the New Yorker and was ranked among the top
ten executive educators by the Wall Street Journal. Goldsmith has
worked with more than 50 CEOs to ne-tune their styles. With degrees in math, business, and organizational behavior and 25 years
of experience, he has the credentials of an elite consultant. But his approach is informal and down-to-earth, even a little eccentric. And
Goldsmiths message to executives is, if you really want to change,
leave your past behind. Following are excerpts, edited for clarity, of
Goldsmiths recent conversation with HBRs Gardiner Morse.

Whats the most common behavior

problem youve found in the executives
youve worked with?
An obsession with winning and this isnt just
CEOs. Its common in most highly successful
people, including me. When the issue is important, naturally we all want to win. But if its trivial, we still want to win. Even if its not worth our
time, or its to our disadvantage, we often try to
win anyway.
Whats wrong with winning?
Heres an example I use with clients: You want
to go to dinner at Restaurant X. Your spouse
wants to go to dinner at Restaurant Y. You have
a heated debate. You go to Restaurant Y, though
its not your choice. The foods bad; the service
is awful. Now, youve got two options. Option A:
Critique the food, and point out to your spouse
how wrong he or she was and how this debacle could have been avoided if he or she had listened to you. Option B: Be quiet, eat the food,
and try to have a nice evening.
What do 75% of my executive clients say they
would do in this situation? Critique the food.
What do they agree they should do? Shut up. If

they do a cost-benet analysis, they realize that

their marriage is more important than winning
the argument. So I tell my clients, Before you
get into any conict, take a deep breath and ask
yourself,Is it worth it? What do I have to gain by
winning? What do I have to lose?
A related problem is what I call adding too
much value. Imagine youre the CEO. I come to
you with an idea that you think is very good, but
rather than just say,Great idea!your tendency,
because you have to win, is to say, Good idea,
but do it this way.Well, you may have improved
the quality of my idea by 5%, but youve reduced
my commitment to executing it by 30% because
you took away my ownership. The higher up you
get on the corporate ladder, the more you need
to make other people winners, and not make
it about winning yourself. One of my clients
whos now a CEO at a major company said that
once he got into the habit of taking a breath
before he talked, he realized that about half of
what he was going to say wasnt worth saying.
Even though he thought he was right, he realized he had more to gain by not winning.
What should an executive ask rst in
evaluating a coach?
Thats easy. What do you specialize in? What
are you best at?Ive been to a lot of conferences
in my eld, and I often hear, A great coach does
this, and a great coach does that, as if theres
some generic perfect coach for all situations.
I dont believe that. Executive coaching is a very
primitive eld. Too many coaches will say they
can address whatever problem you have when
they really have no business trying to x problems they dont know anything about. Good
coaches specialize. Some focus on career planning, some do organization and time management, some transitions or strategy. Get the right
coach for the specic problem.

Copyright 2002 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Whats the biggest mistake the executive

client can make in working with a coach?
There are two. The rst, as Ive said, is getting
the wrong coach. The second is to expect that its
the coachs responsibility to make you change.
Its not the coachs job. Its yours. Too many people think that a celebrity coach will solve their
problems. Thats like thinking youll get in shape
if you have the worlds best personal trainer.
A good trainer will help, obviously, but in the
end the only way youll get in shape is if you
work out. I think it was Arnold Schwarzenegger
who said,Nobody got muscles by watching me
lift weights.
You have a track record for helping
executives change. What are you doing
thats different?
A key thing is, I really dont hold myself up
as coach as expert. Im much more coach as
facilitator. Most of what my clients learn about
themselves they dont learn from me. They learn
from their friends and colleagues and family.
Anybody around you can help you change your
behavior, and they can help you more than an
executive coach can. Lets say you want to do a
better job of listening. Well, rather than having
some coach explain to you how to be a great
listener, what you need to do is ask the people
around you, What are some ways I can do a
better job of listening to you? Theyre going to
give you specic, concrete ideas that relate to
them how they perceive you as a listener not
the generic ideas a coach would give. Even
though theyre not experts on the topic of listening, they actually know more about how you
listen, or dont, than you do, or certainly than
a coach does.
What I generally teach people is, the real coach
isnt me; its the people around you. If you want
to have a better relationship with your customers, who needs to be your coach? Your customers.
If you want to have a better relationship with
your coworkers, who needs to be the coach? Your
coworkers.
Do your clients really change?
The outcome I measure is the perception of
change. How do my clients colleagues think he
or she is doing? Its much harder to change peoples perceptions of someones behavior than to
actually change that persons behavior. Thats
october 2002

because we tend to perceive people in ways consistent with our preexisting ideas about them,
not their current behavior.
So, lets say the behavioral problem you want
to x is that you make too many destructive
comments. Scenario A: Naively, you might assume the way to x that is to tell people youre
going to change and that youll quit making
destructive comments. But the reaction will be
skepticism. No one believes youre going to
change. And if you have one slipup six months
later you call some guy in nance an incompetent bean counter it will conrm your colleagues perception of you.
Scenario B: You tell people youre going to
change, you quit making destructive comments,
and you follow up. After two months, you ask
your colleagues,How am I doing at not making
destructive comments? And theyll say, Gee,
I dont think Ive heard any. Their skepticism
goes down a notch. You check in at four months,
then six months. Each time, they conrm
youre doing better. Not only has your behavior
changed; most important, their perception of
your behavior has changed. So now if you slip
up with the guy in nance, your colleagues
will likely see it as a temporary lapse, a momentary falling off the wagon, and will give you
the benet of the doubt as long as you dont
do it again.
Your approach is to simply target a problem
behavior and change it, without evaluating
its cause. Some critics would say thats a
awed even dangerous approach because
it ignores the possibly deep psychological
bases of behavior.
I dont agree with that. Therapy is certainly valuable for some types of problems, but it generally
isnt relevant for the behavioral issues I work
with. Virtually everybody I coach has reasons
that are not their fault,that make them behave
the way they do. I just tell them, Let that go.
Focus on what you can change, not on what you
cant. When youre over 50, blaming mom and
dad is weak. Can you imagine a CEO sitting
down with people and saying,You know, I make
too many destructive comments, and I analyzed
why. Its because of my father. Forget it. The
message is, youre an adult. Grow up. Take responsibility for your behavior.
Reprint F0210C