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Marshall Goldsmith in an interview with Deepak Chandra, Associate Dean,
CEE, and S Ramnarayan, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, ISB |
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| “There is no fixed identity; there is no fixed ‘you.’ ‘You’ changes constantly. Therefore, anybody can change at any time in their life, and at any time in their career.” |
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to go to restaurant Y. You go to restaurant Y, but it is not your choice. The food tastes awful and the service is terrible. What do you do? Option A: critique the food and prove your partner was wrong; Option B: shut up, eat the stupid food, try to enjoy yourself, and have a nice evening. When asked, “what would you do?” 75 percent of the class said, “critique the food,” and when asked, “what should you do?” they said, “shut up!” Only win the things that are worth winning. If it’s not worth it, take a deep breath, and let it go.
It sounds so simple. Why then do successful people find it so difficult?
Understanding the theory is easy, but changing behaviour is very hard. My CEO clients have spent their entire life winning all the time. The more successful you become, the more reinforced it gets. So, you fall into the delusional trap that everything you do is leading to your success. You forget that you are successful in spite of doing things that don’t make any sense.
Tell us about your coaching process.
My coaching process is very straightforward. I do not get paid before the client gets better. The client is not judged by me, but judged by his own people. My client gets confidential feedback
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from his key stakeholders. If you are not the CEO, you and the CEO agree on an important behaviour to improve. I teach people to use something called the feed forward – where they don’t ask for feedback about the past, but ask for ideas for the future, or suggestions to improve. They don’t promise to change everything, but promise to do what they can. We have a rigorous follow-up system, which, though not time consuming, takes a lot of discipline. I talk to the stakeholders and share the feedback. Clients get better, I get paid, and life is good.
So, the process depends a great deal on the person being coached and not on the coach?
Entirely. The key variable for success is not the coach, but the client. The success or failure of this process is not about me, but it is about ‘you.’ You do this stuff, pick your stakeholders, and follow-up. You learn from everybody around, and you get better.
Your measurement of success is based on the perception of key stakeholders. What if the perceptions are not in tune with the actual behavioural change?
I am often asked the question, ‘do people really change their behaviour or, are they
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