ISB Insight: How has your experience at the ISB been during this programme?

Marshall Goldsmith: The participants are very impressive, dedicated, and hardworking. They came from all over India, and have great backgrounds – top HR people, executive coaches, and executives themselves.

Are Indian participants similar to those from other countries?

I found excellent work ethic here, a very strong focus on business, and lots of respect for education and educators. I did an exercise on ‘team building without time wasting,’ and had the group rank their teams on teamwork in terms of how they should be versus how they actually are. The scores were virtually identical to participants across the world. So, in some areas, the group was different; in others, they were similar.

Any areas of improvement for Indians or Asians?
There are lots of very smart people here, but there is a tendency to think too much – getting lost in analysis and complications, as opposed to cutting to the chase and figuring out what is really important, and move on.

The title of your recent book – ‘What Got You Here Won’t Get You There’ – is interesting. What should leaders do to get there?

I teach leaders to get confidential feedback from important stakeholders. They should pick the most significant behaviour to improve, follow-up with key stakeholders on a regular basis, and realise that the same behaviours that led them to where they are, will not necessarily help them get to the next level. It is very important to get into a disciplined habit of continuous learning, continuous leadership development, reaching out, asking people for inputs, continuously educating themselves, realising that in the new world everything is changing, and that ‘What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.’

What would be the most important demands or skill-sets for the leaders of the future?

One of the most common issues I work with, is the issue of winning too much. You want to win all the time – whether it is important, or meaningful, or trivial. The more successful you become, the more you want to win. I use a case study in class. It’s a lot of fun. Let’s say, you want to go to dinner at a restaurant X. Your partner wants