Triggers Self-Discipline and Creating Radical Transformation, with Marshall Goldsmith – Episode 181 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Best-selling author, speaker, and leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith explains why our environments are “willpower reduction machines” and why leadership is a contact sport, and chats about avoiding the superstition trap, the “Wheel of Change”, active vs passive questions, self discipline vs self control, learning a practice that takes 3 minutes a day, costs nothing, and helps you improve at almost anything, and being neighbors with Lindsay Lohan.

About Marshall:

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith has been recognized as one of the Top Ten Business Thinkers in the World and the top-rated executive coach at the Thinkers50 ceremony in London since 2011. Published in 2015, his book Triggers is a Wall Street Journal and New York Times #1 Bestseller! He’s also the author of New York Times bestseller and #1 Wall Street Journal Business Book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, winner of the Harold Longman Award as Best Business Book of the Year. With a PhD from UCLA, Marshall is a pioneer 360-degree feedback as a leadership development tool. His early efforts in providing feedback and then following-up with executives to measure changes in behavior were precursors to what eventually evolved as the field of executive coaching. With nearly 40 years of hands-on experience, Marshall Goldsmith is the leading expert on leadership and coaching for behavioral change.

Learn more at MarshallGoldsmith.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
I am honored and excited to introduce to you to literally a man who has been ranked the number one thinker in the world by thinker’s. 50 is regularly recognized as the number one executive coach in the world by publications like Inc and Forbes and Harvard Business Review. And he has best selling books. One, I’m sure that many of you have probably heard of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Marshall Goldsmith, Marshall, welcome to the show.

Marshall Goldsmith
Thank you so much for inviting me.

Host
What is a trigger, Marshall? Can you just kind of give us a background on that?

Marshall Goldsmith
Yep, a trigger is any stimulus and may impact our behavior? My general theory is almost all of us have a great plan of who we want to be in life. Yet, we don’t implement that plan very well, day to day, we’re barrage by triggers from our environment that kind of throw us off target in many cases. And that’s what the book is about how to deal with these triggers.

Host
You made a statement, our environments are willpower reduction machines?

Marshall Goldsmith
That’s exactly right. We grossly overestimate the importance of willpower in our own willpower capabilities. And we grossly underestimate our need for help. So as we journey through life, I’ve go through many, many reasons of why we don’t achieve the goals that we set. Let me just give you one as an example. years ago, my biggest client was Johnson and Johnson. And I probably one of the few speakers you’ve ever heard. It’s gotten research from 10s of 1000s of people who’ve been in my courses, and I measure do they do what I teach? And do they achieve positive change over time, I published an article about this called leaders at leadership is a contact sport. So if any of your listeners would like this, send me an email Marshall, Marshall goldsmith.com, or go to my website, and I’ll send it so you can see it. 86,000 people and showed if people do the stuff, they get better. They don’t not surprisingly, they don’t change. Well, I interviewed people at Johnson and Johnson 98% said they would do what I taught a year later 70% have done something that 30% Zero, not even one minute. Which by the way, I’m not ashamed of this, and probably this 70% of 2000 people’s 1400 People getting evaluated by 10 co workers each. That’s a lot of people getting better. Well, I had some people that did nothing. Why you did, why didn’t you do anything? And their answer had to do with a dream that sounds like this. I’m incredibly busy right now, live pictures of work and home and new technology that follows me everywhere I feel about as busy as ever have. Sometimes I feel overcommitted. Every now and again, my life feels just a little bit out of control. But you know, I’m working on some very unique and special challenges right now, I think the worst of this is going to be over in about four or five months. And then I’m going to take two or three weeks and get organized and spend some time with the family and begin my new Healthy Life program. And everything’s going to be different, and it will not be crazy anymore. Right?

Host
One of the dynamics that you bring up, which I thought was interesting is inertia.

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, you know, our default reaction life is not to find happiness. Our default reaction life is not to find meaning our default reaction like is inertia, we tend to do have been doing go or have been going say we’ve been saying in my book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. That’s the premise of the book. You know, if you want to change, you can’t just keep doing what you’ve been doing and expect to get different outcomes. You have to say, How can I change and we fall into a trap that I call the superstition trap, I behave this way I am successful, therefore I must be successful because I behave this way. No, everyone I coach is ridiculously successful. They all be the way they behave. And they’re all successful, because they do many things right? In spite of doing some things that don’t make any sense. And if we can’t challenge ourselves, inertia just kicks in and we just keep doing what we’ve been doing.

Host
You bring up things like avoidance and and actually, the wheel of change, I thought was one of the most memorable things would you mind just kind of given a given an explanation of the the wheel of change, and maybe we could talk through different parts of it.

Marshall Goldsmith
Take the concept of change, we could look at the two dimensions positive and negative. And then the other was change or keep. And then we form four quadrants in the wheel of change in the first quadrant is called positive change, creating and if you think about your life, it’s very important to say alright, who do I want to become in the future? And what is the positive change in my life that I do want to create positive change. And we don’t think about that enough. Most of us spend more time planning our vacation than we do plan in our lives. The second quadrant is called positive keep preserving. And it’s very important as we look at the new me that I want to become what is it about the old me that I want to preserve or keep perhaps relationships or good habits or what is it that you don’t want to change? What is you want to preserve or keep and you know, I have a home in New York and I see him New York many people get so busy creating in this case particularly well, they forget about preserving things, tell their family. And sometimes what we need to preserve is more important than what we want to create. So both are important, then the third part of the wheel of change is called negative change. And that’s a eliminating, hey, what do you want to get rid of? And it’s very important because if we keep trying to create or preserve, and we never eliminate, we run out of space. And then we’re back into that problem I discussed over constant over commitment. So we consistently say if I’m going to be something different, not just what am I going to put on the plate? What are we going to take off the plate? And then the final part is negative keep which most people have trouble understanding, why would I keep something that’s negative? Well, that’s called accepting. We’re not going to change everything in life. And it’s very important to realize what where am I not going to make a difference? Where am I not going to make an investment for change? And Peter Drucker taught me our mission in life is to make a positive difference not to prove how smart we are not prove out right we are, before you deal with any topic ask a question, am I willing at this time to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic? The answer is yes. Go for it answer’s no, take a deep breath and let it go. So the wheel of change talks about creating, it talks about preserving it talks about eliminating and talks about accepting all four are very important as we plan our journey through life.

Host
You’ve gone through some research here on the difference between active and passive questions, and how they affect our ability to actually catalyze change and overcome circumstances. So you might walk us through that.

Marshall Goldsmith
Yeah, I’ll start with the daily questions, then getting into specifics of active versus passive questions. I’m now going to share something with your listeners. It takes three minutes today costs absolutely nothing is going to help them get better at almost anything. There’s some people who probably skeptical now thinking three minutes at a cost, nothing helped me get better at almost anything. Sounds too good to be true. Half the people start doing this quit within two weeks. And they do not quit because it does not work. They quit because it does work. So I’m going to teach you though, something that’s very easy to understand, in theory, very difficult to implement in practice, and then I’ll share my own some of my own questions every day. Of here’s your homework assignment, get out an Excel spreadsheet. On one column, write down a series of questions that represent what’s important in life, friends, family, direct reports, coworkers, whatever it is health, every question must be answered with a yes or no or a number. Yes is recorded as one no is a zero or at number. Seven boxes across one for every day of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, every day fill it out. Well, at the end of the week, the Excel spreadsheet will give you a report card. I will warn your listeners that advanced report card at the end of the week will not be quite as beautiful. As corporate values plaque that they have stuck up on the wall, you quickly learn life is incredibly easy to talk life is incredibly difficult to live. Well. I’m going to share some of my questions. And mine are not intended to be anybody else is one of my daily questions for example, is I only times yesterday did you try to prove you were right when it wasn’t worth it? I’m almost never going zero Well, life kind of hearts, that old professor not to be right all the time. How many angry or destructive comments did you make about people yesterday? How many minutes did you walk? How many push ups? How many sit ups? Did you say or do something nice for your wife, your son, your daughter? How many minutes did you write? My friend Jim Moore does this and he would tell you that saved his life. He didn’t kind of save his life or sort of save his life. It did save his life. One of his daily questions is are you currently updated on your physical exam? First 90 days he did this? He said no. Every day, he finally said This is embarrassing. I have to get the stupid exam record asking the question, get stupid exam, what the doctor said you have cancer now that was many years ago is going to be fine. The doctor also said had you waited seven more months who had been debt. He knew he should have gotten a physical exam, but he didn’t do it. Well, when you hold a mirror in front of your face every day. It’s hard to hide, you realize source most of my problems would be me. Well, my daughter and I, my daughter Kelly is a PhD from Yale. She’s a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School. We went over this together and we were talking about the concept of employee engagement. And she said everything about employee engagement is in all passive questions. Do you have clear goals meaningful work? Or do you have a best friend at work? And she said there’s nothing wrong with passive questions. The problem is when we ask a passive question, people have a negative response they blame the environment. She’s gave me the idea of asking active questions that begin with the phrase Did I do my best to I’m now going to share my first six daily questions, talk about why they’re important and then share some of the research about this we’ve done and invite everyone to participate if they would like to my first six questions Did I do my best to set clear goals? Not did somebody set goals for me? Did I do my best to set my own goals? Number two, did I do my best to make progress toward achieving my goals? Did I do my best to find meaning rather than did someone give me money? Did I do my best to be happy? Did I do my best to build Positive relationships. And finally, did I do my best to be fully engaged? Six basic questions every day? Well, our research on this is pretty amazing. We’ve done research involving 1000s of people, we fill out these questionnaires every day for 10 days. And what we’ve found is about 46% of the people 10 days later, Sam bettered everything about 75% said he got better four items out of the six. I think 94% said he got better at something 6% said no change and less 1% say overall, you’re worse. Well, it’s amazing. These questions get me focused on on what I cannot change. Focus on what I can change. What’s the one question life I can’t blame on somebody else? Did I do my best?

Host
That accountability, that self accountability and having to reconcile that that’s why people stopped doing it because it’s sort of uncomfortable to have to sit there for 90 days and admit you haven’t done the thing?

Marshall Goldsmith
Exactly right. I pay a woman and Kate call me on the phone every day, every day. She just listens to me read the questions I wrote, provide the answers I wrote every day. Somebody said why do you pay a woman to call you don’t you know that theory about how to change behavior. I wrote the theory about to change behavior pay woman to call me because my name is Marshall Goldsmith. I’m the world’s number one ranked executive coach, a paying woman to call me every day. She listens to me read questions I wrote and write answers I wrote every day. Why do I do this? Because I’m too cowardly to do this by myself and too undisciplined to do this by myself. And you know, it’s okay. He once we get over that macho willpower, I can do it on my own nonsense. We all need help. It’s okay. My book Triggers one thing I’m very proud of 27 major CEOs endorsed that book, these included CEO of the year in the United States, Guy was ranked number three greatest leader in the world winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, CEO Pfizer CEO, Best Buy’s CEO, target president, the World Bank, on and on and on. Why am I so proud of that? 30 years ago, no CEO would admit they have an executive coach, they would have been ashamed to say I need help. Today. These are all bunch of great leaders who stand up on a regular basis and say, I need help. And it’s okay.

Host
That is a big shift. I do have one more question for you right now, Marshall. But before that, where do you want people to go to connect with you? Where would you point people to?

Marshall Goldsmith
One, my website, www My name Marshall goldsmith.com, on LinkedIn on YouTube, I’ve got you know, hundreds of videos on YouTube, I give away all my material to help other people.

Host
So the last thing I wanted to ask you here is the difference between self discipline and self control?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, one is what I do, and the other is kind of what I don’t do. And I think it’s very important to look at both, for example of what I do could be something like I have the discipline on a regular basis to say something nice to someone. What I don’t do is I don’t lose control. When I speak. My good friend pres hasslein said, you know, why should I be entrusted to control someone else I can control myself I, one of my daily questions to avoid speaking when angry around controls. So I think both are very, very important. And as we journey through life very important before speaking in Greek, am I willing to at this time to make the effort required to make a positive? Or the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic? If the answer is yes, do it the answer’s no. Let it go. We waste so much of our lives, dealing with issues that we’re not going to change anyway. I mean, I have a home in New York. One of my neighbors from my condominium was a young woman named Lindsay Lohan. How many millions of hours are wasted around the world people read Lindsay Lohan got drunk Lindsay Lohan got stoned Lindsay Lohan was in a car wreck. Well, you know when people talk about Lindsay Lohan, I always say one thing. If you ever think Lindsay Lohan is a loser, she is not wasting her life reading about you. Well, you know, learning point live your own life. In great life. You know, don’t live Lindsay Lohan’s life or some movie stars, some celebrity or some politician. live your own life, live your own life.

Host
Marshall, thank you so much for your work and just for your incredible clarity and insight into the psyche of what enables people to really take action and make change in their lives.

Marshall Goldsmith
Thank you.