What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There helps you overcome your personality traits and behaviors that stop you from achieving even more success.

Goldsmith’s 30 years of experience in the corporate environment brought about an important observation: successful people are often full of bad character traits. But because they are so successful, they often confuse their advantages with their shortcomings.

A great example was one executive with whom Goldsmith worked. The man delivered truly outstanding results for his company, but had one big weakness: he was a terrible listener. He knew this, but, interestingly, considered it to be the very driver of his success!

How so? He simply thought that by not giving his attention to other people, he was protecting himself from distractions and preserving his own creativity. It never occurred to him that he succeeded despite, not because of this behavior.

Such bias, when overlooked, may hold high-level leaders from advancing further. That’s because the higher you are in the corporate hierarchy, the more important your people skills become. It is, therefore crucial to remain open to improvement – especially in those areas where you may see no need for improvement at all!

That’s the real meaning of “what got you here, won’t get you there.” You might have succeeded despite your various flaws. But to really level up your performance, you should be prepared to turn your whole approach upside down!

Corporations can sometimes be a weird place to be. It is partially because the rules we instinctively follow in our personal lives seem not to apply at work! But Goldsmith points out that the workplace and personal pursuits are not all that different. Hence, we could often improve corporate culture by simply consulting common sense. One example is that we should praise avoiding bad decisions and behaviors at work as much as we do in personal life. Just think about it. If your friend manages to quit smoking, you surely will congratulate them. But when your employee calls off a deal that would harm the company? You probably won’t acknowledge it in the same way as you would if they closed a good deal. However, being able to recognize destructive behavior and skipping it is a major part of any success. This applies at the workplace, just like it does in health or relationships. And it is important for the executives and leaders to acknowledge this and to give a good example from the top. One problem with abandoning unhelpful behaviors, though, is that many people believe them to simply be part of their personality. Take another leader Goldsmith worked with. That person never complimented his employees – but not because he didn’t think they…