Marshall Goldsmith’s Required Reading
A CEO had a near-fatal skiing accident, which
caused him to embrace a more humanist approach to leadership that is now
transforming his company. Marshall Goldsmith would call the accident a trigger,
which he defines as “any major or minor stimulus that reshapes our thoughts and
actions.” In his new book, Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts
— Becoming the Person You Want to Be (Crown, 2015), he explores the role that
such stimuli play in behavior change.
Helping
leaders achieve positive, lasting behavior change has been Goldsmith’s life
work. A top-rated executive coach, he has worked with more than 150 CEOs of
major companies and their management teams. Among many recognitions and awards
he has received, Goldsmith has been ranked among the 15 most influential
business thinkers in the world in the biannual Thinker50 list since 2009. He teaches executive
education at Dartmouth’s Tuck School and has been a volunteer teacher for U.S.
Army generals, Navy admirals, Girl Scout executives, and International and
American Red Cross leaders.
Goldsmith
has written more than 30 books, including What Got You Here Won’t Get You
There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful (Hachette, 2007) and MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It,
How to Get It Back If You Lose It (Hachette, 2010), winner of
the Harold Longman Award for Business Book of the Year. When I asked him to
name a few books that could serve as triggers for leaders who are intent on
enhancing their performance, he recommended the following titles.
Hesselbein on Leadership, by Frances Hesselbein
(Jossey-Bass, 2013)
“Of
all of the great leaders that I have had the honor to coach, Frances
Hesselbein,
the former CEO of the Girl Scouts of America and a winner of the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the U.S., stands out as one of
the few from whom I learned far more than I taught. Peter Drucker said that she
was the most effective executive that he had ever met, and after having served
on the Drucker Foundation Advisory Board for 10 years, I can assure you that he
was no easy grader! In Hesselbein on Leadership, Frances shares her
philosophy on leadership and life. If you take nothing else away from it except
the importance of leading by example, reading it will be time well
spent.”
The Leadership Challenge: How to Make
Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, by James Kouzes and Barry
Posner (5th ed., Jossey-Bass, 2012)
“This
book, first published more than 25 years ago, in 1987, is still the gold
standard on leadership. The five leadership practices that it details are based
on extensive research, and they add up to the most comprehensive and thoughtful
analysis of what it takes to be a great leader that I have ever seen. And I
love the stories and examples because they are immediately applicable by
leaders at all levels — not just CEOs.”
Management of Organizational
Behavior: Leading Human Resources, by Paul Hersey, Kenneth Blanchard, and
Dewey Johnson (10th ed., Prentice Hall, 2013)
“The
development of the situational leadership theory by Paul and Ken in the 1970s
gave us the first practical model for analyzing situations and determining
which leadership style work best in each. Since then, I have taught this model
to thousands of leaders. The ideas in this textbook can seem like common sense,
but they are far from common practice.”
The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual
on Meditation, by Thich Nhat Hanh (Beacon Press, 1999)
“I
have been a philosophical Buddhist for many years and have read more than 400
books on Buddhism, but no other Buddhist author has influenced my thinking as
much as Thich Nhat Hanh. His work is simple and profound at the same time.
What, for instance, could be more powerful a leadership mind-set than to
approach every task as an opportunity to enhance your awareness of the world?
Many of the elements of my coaching process, such as feedforward, have been derived from
this Vietnamese monk’s work.”
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