Marshall Goldsmith Quotes

Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others.

Leadership is providing inspiration and vision, then developing and empowering others to achieve this vision.

What got you here won't get you there.

To help others develop, start with yourself.

The major challenge of most executives is not understanding the practice of leadership - it is practicing their understanding of leadership.

If we can stop, listen, and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can compare the self that we want to be with the self that we are presenting to the rest of the world. We can then begin to make the real changes that are needed to close the gap between our stated values and our actual behavior.

Great leaders encourage leadership development. By openly developing themselves

Those who lead by example and demonstrate passion for what they do make it much easier for their followers to do the same.

The great Western disease is, ‘I'll be happy when... When I get the money. When I get a BMW. When I get this job. When I get the relationship,’ Well, the reality is, you never get to when. The only way to find happiness is to understand that happiness is not out there. It's in here. And happiness is not next week. It's now.

Never confuse acquiring degrees with wisdom.

After living with their dysfunctional behavior for so many years, people become invested in defending their dysfunctions rather than changing them.

If you aren't opening doors for people, you are closing them!

Change is not a one-way street- it involves two parties: the person who is changing and the people who notice it.

When we do what we have to do we are compliant. When we do what we choose to do we are committed.

To help others develop, start with yourself! When the boss acts like a little god and tells everyone else they need to improve, that behavior can be copied at every level of management. Every level then points out how the level below it needs to change. The end result: No one gets much better.

Anybody can change, but they have to want to change.

The only way to find happiness is to understand that happiness is not out there. It's in here. And happiness is not next week. It's now.

Treat every piece of advice as a gift or a compliment and simply say, “Thank you.

The best way that we can begin to produce positive change is to make peace with what is in ourselves and others, and then work to move forward and make life even better.

Lasting goal achievement requires lots of time, hard work, sacrifice & dedication to a process that is maintained over years.

The more we are committed to believing that something is true, the less likely we are to believe that its opposite is true, even in the face of clear evidence that shows we are wrong.

People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.

Research indicates that the desire to achieve the skills associated with success is more highly correlated with achievement than the desire for success itself.

It is a whole lot easier to see our problems in others than it is to see them in ourselves.

Look to the present. The great disease of 'I will be happy when ...' is sweeping the world. You know the symptoms. You start thinking: I'll be happy when I get that ... BMW ... promotion ... status ... money. The only way to cure the disease is to find happiness and meaning now.