Marshall Goldsmith On The Lost Art Of Asking For Help

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By Marshall Goldsmith
We’re all flawed human beings. We all should be asking for help. Reminding yourself and your company’s leadership of this eternal truth is one of the essential tasks for anyone in—or outside—of business today. A guide.

In his coaching practice, Marshall Goldsmith has advised more than 200 major CEOs and their management teams.On July 19, join Goldsmith for an exclusive master class based on his brand new book, The Earned Life. He’ll dive deep into his new, practical framework for decreasing regret and increasing fulfilment, helping you become more productive—and more present in your life. Register here.

During nearly four decades of coaching 200-plus CEOs and their management teams, Marshall Goldsmith has learned a few things about the obstacles that even the most successful people face in creating more fulfilling careers and lives—and how to overcome them. He’s also adept at distilling lessons gleaned from working with a broad array of leaders across industries into universally applicable advice, insights and tools in best-selling books like Triggers, Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.

This excerpt from Goldsmith’s new book, The Earned Life (Currency, May 2022), explores one of the faultiest premises plaguing corporate America: the idea that acknowledging the need for help is a weakness rather than a strength. It’s something every business leader—and every company—would do well to understand and address. Here’s how. 

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Among Peter Drucker’s many uncanny management predictions is this: “The leader of the past knew how to tell; the leader of the future will know how to ask.” 

The myth of the self-made individual is one of the more sacred fictions of modern life. It endures because it promises us a just and happy reward that is equal to our persistence, resourcefulness and hard work. Like most irresistible promises, it deserves our skepticism. 

It’s not impossible to achieve success on your own to the point where it could be accurately described as self-made. The more salient question is: Why would you want to when you could surely achieve a better result by enlisting help along the way? An earned life is not more “earned” or glorious or gratifying—or even more likely—because you tried to achieve it all by yourself. Continue reading →

Three ways to prevent hybrid work from breaking your company culture

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by Earl Simpkins and Varun Bhatnagar

It’s tough to maintain a cohesive culture when half of your employees—or more—regularly work from home. Specific steps can help.

Here’s a situation you might have experienced at your latest team huddle. Half of the group gathers in the conference room as the meeting is about to kick off. But your remote colleagues are busy trying to get connected, and several miss the first few minutes. The discussion gets repeatedly halted by echoes or silenced when remote employees are reminded to take themselves off mute. The conference room doesn’t have a video screen—or a functioning screen that anyone can figure out—so some people in the room dial in on their own laptops, defeating the purpose of an in-person meeting.

Many employees love hybrid work models. But this new approach to work can have a profound impact on their sense of community and connection. A Harvard Business Review study of more than 1,000 employees found that many who worked at least partially remotely felt more excluded from workplace affairs than their in-office counterparts. PwC’s Global Culture Survey 2021 found that among employees who worked from home during the pandemic, 44% found it more difficult to maintain a sense of community with their peers.

And the challenge is not going away. In PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022, 62% of respondents said they prefer some mix of in-person and remote work, and 63% said they expect their company to offer that kind of approach in the next 12 months.

Overcoming these issues and creating a cohesive culture in which employees can participate in meaningful ways regardless of whether they’re at home or in the office takes more than setting new policies. It requires that leaders take specific steps to create an environment that is connected, inclusive, and productive.

Understand your culture, and link it to explicit behaviors Continue reading →

The surprising upside to provocative conversations at work

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by Bhushan Sethi and Peter Brown

Contrary to conventional wisdom, workplace conversations about societal issues aren’t a distraction—they’re a way for employees to understand one another better.

As the world becomes increasingly polarized around a range of hot-button topics, companies often try to keep these issues from becoming a distraction in the workplace. After all, employee conversations about societal topics like climate, immigration, race, and gender equity may seem like a potential source of discord—and HR headaches. But here’s one counterintuitive approach: help your employees talk it out. According to PwC’s latest workforce survey, a majority of employees are already having these conversations. What’s more, they’re benefiting from the experience.

We surveyed more than 52,000 workers in 44 territories—one of the biggest global workforce surveys ever conducted. The questions covered a range of topics, from hybrid work to technology to factors that will push people to ask for a raise or look for another job. But some of the most surprising findings had to do with discussions about sensitive topics in the workplace.

Most leaders treat these conversations as a possible minefield, with the potential to distract employees from work (at best) and—more likely—lead to disputes if employees feel outnumbered or out-argued. But among respondents, 65% said they have these kinds of conversations sometimes or frequently. The numbers were even higher among younger employees.

Moreover, people were asked about the overall impact of these conversations, and they were far more likely to cite positive outcomes than negatives (by a difference of 34 percentage points). The most popular of those positives? Some 37% said that conversations about societal issues helped them better understand their colleagues and increased their empathy for people with different viewpoints. Notably, people also said that these conversations helped create a more open and inclusive work environment—a key goal of most organizations these days. Continue reading →

Leading under pressure

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by Theodore Kinni

To control the anxiety produced by moments of intense pressure, first step back and analyze the stakes.

Pressure is a goad. Whether it arrives in the guise of a burning platform or a project deadline, a strategic goal or a performance target, a high-stakes deal or an aggressive competitor, pressure can help leaders attain new heights of performance and achievement. You know the adage: no pressure, no diamonds.

The problem with this pithy observation, attributed to 19th-century Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle, is that it is both true and false. Though pressure can drive outsized results, it can also become an insurmountable obstacle to performance and achievement. It can overwhelm a leader and result in missteps that torpedo companies and careers.

The powerful effects—and vagaries—of pressure were dramatically illustrated during the Tokyo Olympics when gymnast Simone Biles unexpectedly withdrew from the women’s team finals. The extraordinarily talented and seemingly unshakable Biles, who was considered a shoo-in to repeat her 2016 gold medal win in the all-around gymnastics competition, cited her mental health. Later, she said that she had been suffering from the “twisties,” a condition that leaves gymnasts disoriented in midair and can lead to serious injury. The twisties are thought to be caused by performance pressure and stress, both of which were surely running higher than usual in an Olympics held during a pandemic. Continue reading →

Unlock the Full Value of Your Business Relationships

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by Christoph Senn is an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at INSEAD and Co-Director of the INSEAD Marketing & Sales Excellence Initiative.

 

 

A fruitful relationship starts with asking the right – and sometimes difficult – questions.

When was the last time you took stock of your business relationships? Are they stuck in a one-sided, transactional mode? Or are they continuously exceeding both parties’ expectations?

A typical business setting, where a company provides “value” by peddling its existing products and services to its customers, is essentially a one-sided affair. Without critical customer input in creating value, this business-as-usual approach seldom delivers a comprehensive, mutual strategy.

Similarly, in developing account plans for corporate customers, businesses are prone to focus mainly on sales history, the competitive landscape, and a future sales pipeline. But these narrow discussions on tactics and pricing tend to miss the larger issues of strategy, and more importantly, collaboration.

From selling to co-creating

In the traditional “value selling” approach, suppliers start by identifying customers whose needs best fit their products and develop a value proposition targeted at these customers. The tactic is focused on what a company’s products can do for the customer. However, the two parties should in fact be focused on creating value together. A good starting point is to ask the question: “What would we do differently, if we were one company?”

Studies of over 3,000 relationship cases show that only 15 percent of frontline sellers work with their clients based on this one-company mindset. By co-creating value, they could have doubled their account value in three years on average. Similarly, senior managers who adopt a customer-centric, value-creating perspective could have increased sales and profitability at twice the rate of their peers. Unfortunately, at 14 percent, they are but a minority of senior managers.

So, what are the building blocks of successful business relationships? How can companies create future-proof relationships that will survive times of uncertainty?

In research conducted from 1997 to 2020, I identified theoretical and empirical answers to those questions: Good business relationships have nine critical building blocks. And enduring relationships depend on strong collaboration between suppliers and customers. On the basis of that research, I developed the triple fit canvas, a framework designed to facilitate collaborative value creation between sellers and buyers. Continue reading →