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Before he died, I had the privilege of spending 50
days with Peter Drucker, the world's greatest authority on management.
I was on his advisory board for ten years. Peter
Drucker taught me some wonderful lessons. One of the great
lessons taught to me by Peter Drucker was this --
we spend a lot of time helping leaders learn what
to do, we do not spend enough time helping leaders
learn what to stop. He said half of the leaders I
meet, they don't need to learn what to do, they
need to learn when to stop. Well, that one comment led
to my book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There.
Which ended up being a best seller in 12 countries and
translated into 30 languages, so, thank you, Peter Drucker. Now,
how do you use what to stop in coaching and in
leadership development? I was interviewed in the Harvard Business Review and
asked a question. What is the number one problem of all
of those successful people you've worked with
over the years? What is the number one
problem of all those executives that you've coached?
And my answer was -- winning too much.
Now what does that mean? If it's important, we want to win; meaningful,
win; critical, win; trivial, win; not worth it, win
anyway. Winners love winning. It's incredibly difficult for smart successful
people not to constantly go through life winning. I'm going to
give you a case study that almost all of my successful
clients fail, about winning too much. And I'm going to make
a prediction -- I will predict that you will fail this case
study, and when I say fail, you will fail yourself. You
will say what I did do is the opposite of what
I know I should have done. Here is the case study
-- you want to go to dinner at restaurant X. Your husband,
wife, friend, or partner wants to go to dinner
at restaurant Y. There's a heated argument, you go
to a restaurant Y. It's not your choice, the
food tastes awful, the service is terrible. Option A,
critique the food, point out our partner was wrong.
This mistake could have been avoided had only he
listened to me, me, me. Option B, shut up,
eat the stupid food, try to enjoy it, and have
a nice evening. What would I do, what should I do? Almost
all my clients, what would I do, critique the food. What should I do?
Shut up! Well, that was a negative example. I'm going
to give you a case study now that is much worse. An example so bad that it makes
the other one pale by comparison. Case Study Number
2, you have a hard day at work, a hard
day, you go home. Your husband, wife, friend, or partner
is there. The other person says, I had such a hard
day today, I had such a tough day. And we
reply, you had a hard day? You had a hard day?
Do you have any idea what I had to put
up with today? Do you think you had a hard day?
We are so competitive, we have to prove we are more
miserable than the people we live with. I gave this example
at a class at Dartmouth's Tucks School. A young
man in the back raised his hand and he said,
I did that last week. I asked him what
happened? He said, My wife looked at me. She said,
Honey, you just think you've had a hard day,
it's not over. [LAUGH] Well, the next time you start
trying to win, take a deep breath and ask
yourself a hard question, exactly what am I winning? Yeah,
I love getting emails -- my email address
is Marshall@MarshallGoldsmith.com. I love getting emails, and I recently
got an email from a gentleman about this -- he sent me an email and he said, I
know you don't remember me, but I was in
your class five years ago. I just wanted to
send you an email and say, thank you. He
said, Yesterday my wife called up, and was talking
about what a tough day she'd had. And I was just getting ready to point
out how her problems paled in significance to my own. He said, for some reason,
I remembered what you said five years ago, I stopped, I breathed. I listened to
my wife and I said, I love you, thank you for all sacrifices that you've made
for our family. He said, I spent $25, I went home, I bought some flowers, I said I
love you to my wife and gave her the
flowers. He said, That was the best $25 I ever
spent, thank you very much. Well again, next time
we start trying to win and prove we're right, take
a deep breath and ask a deep question. Exactly
what am I winning here? What am I winning here?
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