What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful Marshall Go

Leadership expert Sally Helgesen and best-selling leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith have trained thousands of high achievers - men and women - to reach even greater heights. Again and again, they see that women face specific and different road blocks from men as they advance in the workplace. In fact, the very habits that helped women early in their careers can hinder them as they move up. Simply put, what got you here won't get you there...and you might not even realize your blind spots until it's too late.

What's holding you back? Your hard work is paying off, you are doing well--but there is something standing between you and the next level of achievement. Perhaps one small flaw--a behavior you barely even recognize--is the only thing that's keeping you from where you want to be. Here, executive coach Goldsmith discusses not only the key beliefs of successful leaders, but also the behaviors that hold them back. He addresses the fundamental problems that often come with success, and offers ways to attack them. He outlines twenty habits commonly found in the corporate environment and provides a systematic approach to helping you achieve a positive change in behavior.--From publisher description.

Goldsmith recognizes that plenty of leaders hold on to awful character traits and unhelpful behaviors. This is additionally reinforced by the common opinions about successful people as being competitive, self-obsessed and even obnoxious. But at some point, these characteristics usually get in the way of leaders and executives having even more success.

Your hard work is paying off. You are doing well in your field. But there is something standing between you and the next level of achievement. That something may just be one of your own annoying habits. Perhaps one small flaw - a behaviour you barely even recognise - is the only thing that's keeping you from where you want to be. It may be that the very characteristic that you believe got you where you are - like the drive to win at all costs - is what's holding you back. As this book explains, people often do well in spite of certain habits rather than because of them - and need a "to stop" list rather than one listing what "to do".Marshall Goldsmith's expertise is in helping global leaders overcome their unconscious annoying habits and become more successful. His one-on-one coaching comes with a six-figure price tag - but in this book you get his great advice for much less. Recently named as one of the world's five most-respected executive coaches by Forbes, he has worked with over 100 major CEOs and their management teams at the world's top businesses. His clients include corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson and Johnson and GE.

In the previous excerpt, we saw that successful people always want to surpass others, and that desire also makes them want to "correct" the opinions of outsiders. But that habit won't help because in the long run, helping everyone move forward is more important than you going alone.

Although most parents teach their children proper manners, most successful people think the act of saying "sorry" or "thank you" is submission. That is simply completely wrong. We should have said such words more often.

I liked the book the minute it arrived. It has a guy on the front shamelessly climbing a career ladder, and comes with the subtitle How Successful People Become Even More Successful. Now you have to admit, that's a pretty appealing claim. I wouldn't count myself in the ranks of the successful people of the world (yet) but the chance to learn from them (and maybe even skip straight to more successful) attracted me instantly.