Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Marshall Goldsmith, #1 Business Executive Coach Shares His Secrets for Training CEOs and Entrepreneurs

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Back in the late '60s, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith joined the fad of studying philosophy and began learning about Buddhism. Buddhism taught him that we can only find peace in what we already have, and what works for someone won’t work for everyone. He now utilizes those teachings as a top-rated executive coach who works with some of the most powerful business leaders in the world. In this episode of YAPClassic, Hala and Marshall chat about the 20 habits that hold people back, how to avoid and overcome bad triggers, and how to live a happier life.    Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is recognized as the leading expert on leadership and coaching for behavioral change. Marshall is the author of several Wall Street Journal and New York Times #1 bestsellers, including Triggers and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, which is also the winner of the Harold Longman Award as Best Business Book of the Year.  In this episode, Hala and Marshall will discuss:  - What Buddhism taught him - Why success makes you fail - A life-changing habit that takes 3 minutes a day - Why the inherent urge to win? - How to break the habit of being negative  - Excuses people have for change  - Defining a behavioral trigger - 4 stages of the feedback loop - How to avoid triggers  - Magic moves: apology and optimism  - What makes listening so powerful? - And other topics… Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is recognized as the leading expert on leadership and coaching for behavioral change. He has been named one of the Top Ten Business Thinkers in the World and the top-rated executive coach at the Thinkers50 ceremony in London since 2011.  Marshall is the author of several Wall Street Journal and New York Times #1 bestsellers, including Triggers and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, which is also the winner of the Harold Longman Award as Best Business Book of the Year. His newest book, The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment was released in May 2022.  LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course. Resources Mentioned: Inc.com: Do You Have Mojo or Nojo?: https://www.inc.com/marshall-goldsmith/mojo-nojo.html  Inc.com: Why Leadership is a Contact Sport: https://www.inc.com/marshall-goldsmith/contact-sport-overview.html  Marshall’s Website: https://marshallgoldsmith.com/  Marshall’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshallgoldsmith/  Marshall’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachgoldsmith/  Marshall’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/coachgoldsmith  Sponsored By:  RobinHood - Visit robinhood.com/PROFITING to claim an unlimited 1% bonus on your assets. Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Nom Nom - Go to youngandprofiting.co/trynomnom for 50% off on your two-week trial  HelloFresh - Go to HelloFresh.com/profitingfree and use code profitingfree for FREE breakfast for life! Help Save Palestinian Lives:  Donate money for eSIM cards for the people of Gaza at https://youngandprofiting.co/DonateWHala More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/

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life. Indeed is the hiring platform where you can attract, interview and hire all in one place. Start hiring now with a $75 sponsor job credit to upgrade your job post at indy.com-profiting. As always, you can find all of our deals in our show notes. What's up, young improvitors! Welcome back to to this show in this episode of YAP Classic, where we playing my first interview with Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall Goldsmith is my LinkedIn client. He's been my client for several years now, but when I recorded this episode, he was not

my client yet. Now that I personally know him, I can confirm that he is the real deal. He's one of the biggest experts when it comes to leadership coaching for behavioral change. And he's been named one of the top 10 business thinkers in the world and is the author of several New York Times bestsellers like Trigger and what got you here won't get you there. In today's episode, Marshall and I go deep on how to avoid and manage triggers and enact meaningful and lasting change. We also break down the importance of feedback loops and Marshall's groundbreaking 360 assessment technique.

This episode is a must here for all business leaders and entrepreneurs. Marshall is the best of the best when it comes to executive leadership. So without further ado, here's my interview with Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. So without further ado, here's my interview with Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. I knew that you studied directly under the father of modern management. His name is Peter Drucker. What was he like and what were some of the key lessons that he taught you? Well, I feel very blessed. I mean, I got ranked number one leadership thinker in the world twice.

My intellect compared to his is that of a 10-year-old child. This guy was so, so smart. He taught me many things. And I'm going to share just a couple with you. One is he said, you know, we spend a lot of time helping leaders learn what to do. We don't spend enough time helping leaders learn what to stop. He said, half the leaders I meet, they do not need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop. Well, that one comment led to my book, What got you here, won't get you there. Now, the second thing he taught me, which is really good for younger people who are listening to your podcast right now is this.

If your listeners don't understand anything I've said, but this one thing, it's going to help them be more effective in life and happier, including you. So this is just a great thing to learn. He said, our mission in life is to make a positive difference. Not to be very smart, not to be very right. We get so wrapped up trying to prove how smart we are and right. We are. We're not here on earth to do that.

We're here to make a positive difference. If we don't make a positive difference, it doesn't really matter how smart we are or how right we are. And he said, number two, every decision in the world is made by the person as a power to make the decision. Not the smartest person, the best person, the fair person, or logical person. Decision that may be based on one and only one variable, power. If it has power to make the decision, it's when you make the decision. And he said, if I need to influence you and you have the power to make the decision,

there's one word to describe you. That's called customer. One word to describe me is called salesperson. You sell what you can sell. You change what you can change. If you can sell it, you sell it. If you can't sell it, you can't change it. Take a deep breath and let it go. It's just such good advice. And before you deal with any topic, ask yourself one question, am I willing at this time to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic? Am I willing at this time to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic?

If the answer is yes, go for it. The answer is no. Let it go. That's really good advice. Something else that fascinated me about yourself and something that I feel is really different is that you describe yourself as a philosophical Buddhist. So what's dear to you towards Buddhism and what is being a Buddhist taught you? Well, you're a little young for this, but back in the olden days, that was what was called the hippie.

I spent, for example, 1969, three months out on the road hitchhiking. That was like living in another era. And back in that day, people often study different kinds of religions and philosophies. So I studied Buddhism. So I've been a Buddhism verb almost 50 years. And I'm not a religious Buddhist, I'm a philosophical Buddhist. Buddha was brought up very rich as father was a king. He was protected from life. And then it was living in a kind of bubble. One day he was able to sneak out of the bubble and he looked around and learned something and he said people get old. Then he was able to sneak out a second time and learn people get sick. Third time when people die, you get old, you get sick and you die, shit

happens. Not so good. Then he realized I can't be happy with more all this money and stuff. It doesn't make any difference. Then he went out in the woods and starved himself and he tried to be happy with less. Then he learned to be happy with less either. He finally realized you can only be happy with one thing what you have. There's only one time you could be happy and it's now in this only one place you can find peace that's here. And that's to me the essence of Buddhism. And in my coaching, Yeah. And that's to me the essence of Buddhism. And in my coaching, I teach something called feed forward. Everybody asks for input.

I teach them to listen to it, to thank people, and they don't promise to do everything, but you do what you can. And Buddha said, only do what I teach if it works for you. That's where I got the idea. If it doesn't work for you, it's okay, don't do it. So when people give us ideas to try to help us rather than judging them or critiquing their ideas or putting them down, you know, the learning point is,

you say thank you for the ideas. That's awesome, super interesting. So like I mentioned, you are a world-renowned leadership coach. Your clients are top performing CEOs and executives, but it's honestly a bit counterintuitive to think that top leaders who have achieved so much success have trouble changing any unfavorable behaviors that they have on their own

and need to seek outside help from people like yourself. However, I know that's exactly what your popular book, what got you here won't get you there is all about. And you have said in the past that success makes you fail. So can you explain why that is true and why it's extremely hard for successful people to change? Well, you're making a great point. Any human, in fact, any animal will replicate behavior

that's followed by positive reinforcement. And the more successful we become, the more positive reinforcement we get. And we fall into something called the superstition trap. What is it? Sounds like this. I behave this way. I am successful. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way. Well, the reality is we all behave the way we behave and everyone I work with is mega successful. And they're all successful because they do many things right and it's been done some things that are stupid. And I've never been to anyone so wonderful,

they had nothing on the InSpyto list. Well, we've all got something on the InSpyto list. See, one thing I'm very proud of in my book, Triggers, is 27 major CEOs endorse the book. Well, I'm so proud of that. It's 30 years ago. No CEO would admit to having a coach. They would have been ashamed to have a coach, embarrassed to have a coach. Well, today they're not ashamed. Well, I'll need help. Twilight Tharp, world's greatest choreographer, the same personal trainer for 27 years. Why she

had the same trainer for 27 years, I'm Twilight Tharp. I need help, and it's okay, it's why she looks so good. Top 10 tennis players, how many of them have a coach? 10? Why do they have a coach? You're trying to get better. So, I think it's really just a healthy way to look at life. Yeah, so do you feel like there's a right balance between success and failure? Well, to me, on a more existential level, how do you define success? I'll give you just a few key variables. One is, be healthy. If you're not healthy, the rest of this doesn't matter too much. Two, you need enough wealth to have at least a middle or upper middle class kind of income. Extremely poor people are not particularly happy, but after you get to kind of a middle level of income from there on that, more money doesn't make you happier. Lottery winners are not that much happier for them. So you need

wealth to a degree, you need health, then you need to have great relationships with people you love. So, you know, your listener shouldn't get so focused on their career, they're the people they love. And then assuming you have enough wealth, you're healthy, you've got great relationships with people you love, what matters, two things. The first is happiness, and by happiness what I mean is you love the process of what you're doing. You're just doing what you're doing it, and the second is meaning, that is the outcomes of what you're doing are important to you. And what's really important in life is you need to experience both happiness and meaning simultaneously. If you just try to achieve happiness without meaning, well, you know, like for me, when you're older, you're some like old man playing

crappy golf with old people at the country club eating chicken sandwiches and discussing golf at our surgery. You know, that doesn't work, right? There's empty. It's empty. On the other hand, if you try to pursue meaning without happiness, your victim or mortar. So you really need to number one, love what you're doing and two, you need to see it's meaningful to you. And the key to may for success is, no one can find happiness for you, but you. No one can find meaning for you, but you. I cannot tell you what you love doing. That is to come from your heart.

I can also not tell you what's meaningful for you. That also has to come from your heart. So happiness and meaning to me, that's the ultimate goal of success. It needs to come though from the inside, not from the outside. The greatest disease is I'll be happy when, when I get the money status BMW condominium, I will be happy when we all have the same win. You know, the key is, you know, be happy now. Be happy when we all have the same win. You know, the key is, you know, be happy now. Be happy with what you have. That's so touching and it's so true. You've definitely got to know from internally

what really matters to you and make sure you fulfill those things. So really great advice. So let's talk about your two most popular books. What got you here won't get you there and triggers. They've been recognized by Amazon.com as two of the top 100 leadership and success books ever written. Millions and millions of people have benefited from your books, which is so incredible. So as an introduction to the books

and also your expertise to our listeners, if our readers had to take away one key concept from each of these books, what would that be? Well, first I'll start with what God you hear from each of you there. Teach people there is ask for input from everyone around you. How can I be a better manager? How can I be a better team player? How can I be a better supplier? How can I be a better customer? How can I be a better son or daughter?

How can I be a better father or mother? Better brother's sister? Better friend, better family member? You didn't have a bad internet question. How can I be a better? Then listen to what people have to say. Again, don't promise to do everything they say. Just promise to listen and think about it. Pick the most important things for you to improve

and then just follow up on a regular basis. How am I doing? Follow up on a regular basis, get input. And if you do this, I mean, I have research from tens of thousands of people, they tend to become more effective, not as judged by yourself, but as judged by the most important people in your life. So that's from my book, Quick Got You, here, Won't You There. And my book, Triggers, I'll teach your list, there's something that takes three minutes a day, costs nothing, will help think it better, it almost anything. Now, some people are skeptical. three minutes a day, costs nothing. We'll help think it better, it almost anything.

Now, some people are skeptical. Three minutes a day, cost nothing, don't make it better, anything. Sounds stupid to be true. I have to people that start doing this quit within two weeks, not because it does not work, and quit because it does work. This is called the daily question process. And that's, you get out of spreadsheet, you're right down with column of questions that represent what's most important in your life, friends, family, out of spreadsheet, you write down a column of questions that represent

what's most important in your life, friends, family, co-workers, etc. Every question has to be answered with a yes or no or a number. Seven boxes across one for every day of the week. At the end of the week, the spreadsheet will give you a report card. I will warn your listeners in advance that a report card they see at the end of the week might not be quite as beautiful as the corporate values privacy stuck up on a wall. I've been doing this for years, and you do this every day, you learn that life.

Life is incredibly easy to talk. Life's incredibly difficult to live. And if you do this every day, it's humbling. Most people can't do it. I have a woman named Jasmine call me every day. She's gonna call me right after this call. Every day she calls me me and she listens to me read questions I wrote and provide answers I wrote every day.

Someone asked me, well, why do you have a woman calling every day? Don't you know the theory about how to change behavior? I wrote the theory about how to change behavior. Have a woman call me every day because my name is Marshall Gullsmith. I got ranked number one leadership thinker coach in the world. I'm too cowardly to do this stuff by myself

and too undisciplined to do it by myself. And I need help. And it's okay. So once we admit we need help, life is better for everybody. And this daily question process is amazing. The first six questions I recommend are number one, and they all start with, did I do my best.

Number one, did I do my best to set clear goals? Number two with did I do my best number one did I do my best to set clear goals Number two did I do my best to make progress for achieving my goals today Number three did I do my best to find meaning Number four did I do my best to be happy Number five did I do my best to build positive relationships and finally number six did I do my best today to be fully engaged relationships. And finally, number six, did I do my best today to be fully engaged? And our research on this is amazing. Just by asking these six questions every day, you tend to get better at amazing ways. And if your listeners would like to get articles, I wrote one called Leadership as a Context work. And that talks about the point I made from what

I hear on with you there. I wrote another one called the about the daily questions from the book triggers. If they just send me an email, I'd be happy to send them copies of both articles and my email addresses Marshall at Marshallgultswitt.com and Marshall has two else. Cool. So let's stick on this daily questions for a bit. Why is it necessary to make sure that you're asking active questions rather than passive ones? Well, there's nothing wrong with passive questions. Here's the issue.

If you ask like employee engagement surveys, always ask passive questions. If you ask a person a passive question, we tend to blame the environment. For example, do you have clear goals? People say, no, why not? Well, they're confused. They have meaningful work.

No, they make me do trivia. It's them. It's their fault. See, these active questions begin with the phrase, did I do my best too? And what's amazing about that phrase is, you cannot blame someone else. All you have to do is try. You don't have to succeed. They don't even try. And that's why the active questions are so powerful. Let me give you the hardest question you could ever test yourself on every day. It has four qualities. And this is totally counterintuitive. Quality of number one is you write the question. You write your own question. Why is that hard? You can't blame the idiot that wrote the question. Number two, you know the answer. Why does that make it hard. You can't say you don't know how to do it.

Number three, you know it's important. It's not trivial. And then finally, number four, all you have to do to make a high score is try. You just have to try. Yeah. They might ask why is that so difficult? No one to blame.

It's very hard to look in the mirror every day. No one to blame. Put yourself. And I've been doing this for years, and I've learned about 95% of all of my problems. I can see in one place just looking at mirror. It's very hard to face this for most people. And including me, by the way, it's hard to do this every day. That's why a woman called me. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.

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You know, they say if you don't do something daily, your behavior doesn't change. You don't change yourself. So sticking on habits, you outline 20 habits that hold people back from reaching the top. Some examples are winning too much, adding too much value, and playing favorites. We don't have time to cover all 20 in detail, but I'd love to run through some core themes that I picked out that relate to these 20 habits. Maybe let's start off with the theme of being too competitive. So some habits you mentioned that I think fall into this category are winning too much with holding information, claiming credit when we don't deserve it, and failing to provide recognition. So, can you talk to us about this type of quote-unquote bad behavior and how it negatively impacts our relationships? Well, what happens is we have been programmed to succeed and win. Every one of your

listeners, including you, have taken tests after tests after testing your life. And I looked up your background, you're a very good student for point out grade average. You got a lot of reinforcement for doing one thing over and over and proving how smart you are. Over and over and over. And it's real tough when you've had as much reinforcement as you've had for proving how smart you are

to stop doing that See it's hard Every time you made those a's people pat you on the back. Oh, congratulations You're the valedictorian of the school and almost everyone I coach is just like you. They're real smart hard working people What's hard when you take tests day after day after day? Not to just go through life proving how smart you are. Now, let me give you a couple examples of this. Winning too much. If you want to go to a restaurant X, your husband, wife, friend, or partner

wants to go to a restaurant Y, you have heated argument. You go to a restaurant Y. Food tastes awful and the service is terrible. Option A, you could critique the food and point out our partner was wrong. And you know, this mistake could have been avoided if only you'd listened to me, me, me. Or option B, shut up. Eat eat the stupid food try to enjoy it and have a nice evening

What would I do what should I do almost all of my clients what would I do critique the food? What should I do? Shut up Well, it's very hard for smart successful people not to critique the food another one even worse You have a hard day at work you go home your husband or partner is there and the other person says, I had such a hard day today. I had such a tough day. And if we're not careful, we reply, you had a hard day. You had a hard day. You have any idea what I had to put up with today? You think you had a hard day? We're so competitive, we have to prove we're more miserable than people we live with. I gave an example to my class department. A young guy in the back raised his hand.

He said, I did that last week. I asked him, what happened? He said, my wife looked at me. She said, honey, you just think you've had a hard day. It's not over. Yeah. That's so funny. You know why we have the urge to want to win so much?

What's the meaning behind that? Like, why is that so inherent for humans? Well, we've been reinforced through our lives for winning and proving we're smart and right. And again, at the lower level of an organization, it's really not so bad. You can't have to prove yourself. Every time you get promoted though, you gotta learn to stop doing that. And the worst thing you see you can do is try to prove how smart they are and win all the time. At that level, you want to make everybody else a winner. Don't make it all about you.

So it's a very difficult transition. One of my customers said, for the great individual achiever, it's all about me. For the great leader, it's all about them. You see, it's hard to make this transition for me to an achiever, which is mostly about me, to be in a leader, which is mostly about them. Yeah.

So let's talk about the habit of being negative. So always kind of giving negative feedback and also starting our sentences with no or but or however, can you explain that habit to our listeners? Yes, one of the classic challenges of the smart people like coaches, they tend to be a little stubborn. Now, I'm assuming you're not stubborn, but many of the smart people I coach is they tend to be a little stubborn. Now I'm assuming you're not stubborn, but many of the leaders that I coach are stubborn people. So one night I was having dinner with General Eric Shinseki's head of the United States Army, four-star general. I went around by two to four-star general and he said, Marshall, who is your

favorite customer? I said, sir, my favorite customer, smart, dedicated, hardworking driven to achieve creative entrepreneurial cares about the company and customers great values high integrity stubborn opinionated know it all and ever wants to be wrong I said sir you think any of the journals in this very room may fit such a description. He said Marshall We have a target rich opportunity Well, there's no but however, there's the classic problem with stubborn people. If someone talks to us, first word of the amount is no, would you say, shut up here long or but, what does it bite me, just regard everything you said.

One of my clients was stubborn and opinionated, so I was reviewing his 360 feedback report. He said, but Marshall, I said, that's free. If you ever do that again, I'm going to find you $20 dollars, all the money goes to the charity of your choice. He said, but Marshall, 20, no, 40, no, no, no, 60, 80, I ever do that again, I'm gonna find you $20. All the money goes to the charity of your choice. He said, but Marshall, 20, no, 40, no, no, no, 60, 800. He lost $420 in an hour and a half. At the end of the hour and a half, he said, thank you. He said, I had no idea.

He said, I did that 21 times we throw in it in my face. How many times would I have done it? I'd do not been through it in my face. How many times would I have done an engine up and threw it in my face? 50 times, 100 times? You said, no wonder people think I'm stubborn. The first thing I do when people talk to me is I prove I know more than them or they're wrong over and over and over and over again. He got so much better being a good listener just by learning that.

Yeah, a big takeaway I got from your book is that you need to sometimes just like pause. And if you're gonna say negative response, or if you're gonna say no or but start off with thank you instead and show your gratitude. And one of my favorite stories actually that you tell is about gratitude and self-control. You talk about being in the car with your wife, for example, maybe on the way to the airport

and getting loud with her for telling you to watch out for a red light. And, you know, I've had this happen to me with my boyfriend maybe 10 times at least. So, could you tell us about this story and share the lesson on why the best response? You can say when you're unsure or when you're going to say something negative is simply, thank you. Well, you know, it's interesting. Everyone says they want to encourage honest input. We want people to tell the truth and we don't want to punish the messenger. So I teach my classes, I always say,

how many of you believe you should encourage honest input and encourage the truth? Don't shoot it in the up raise your hand, right? And I said, well, you wouldn't shoot the messenger, would you? Oh, no, no, of course not. And then I gave him this case study. Imagine you come home from work, you've had a hard day,

you get in the car to go to the store. You're driving the store lots of traffic. Cars are cutting in front of you, people honking their horns. A person in front seat goes, look out, there's a red light up ahead. You say thank you, or did you say, what do you mean there's a red light doing anything? I can see how they're going to drive this car. What do you mean quiet? Let me drive. Well, almost everyone in the room shows plan B.

So what was the cost to that person saying, hey, there's a red light up ahead, nothing? What could that have saved your life, their life, and then lives of other innocent people? So many gives us something that has a fantastic potential benefit and cost nothing. What should we say to this person? Just say thank you.

Just say thank you. And don't beat them up for telling you the truth. So let's talk about improving some of these bad behaviors. You were a pioneer of the use of 360 degree feedback. Can you tell us about this process? In my coaching, everything that I work with gets confidential feedback from all of their key stakeholders. These will be their direct reports, their peers, their managers could be board members, and then they pick important behavior to improve. Then they go back and talk to people saying thank their direct reports, their peers, their managers, could be board members. And then they pick important behavior to improve.

Then they go back and talk to people, saying thank you for this feedback. Here's what I've learned. Here's what I'm gonna do about it. They practice and feed forward. They don't ask for more feedback about the past ideas for the future. They don't critique the ideas, they shut up,

they thank people, don't promise to do everything. And then they follow up on a regular basis. And the follow upup is you know two months ago I said I want to be a better listener based on less two months than I just for the next two. They follow follow-up follow-up and then we measure improvement. And again the people that do this stuff tend to get better. People that don't don't. So I'm not sure which book this was in exactly but you say that people change their ways when they feel like something they truly value is being threatened. Can you talk about this

and maybe also talk about some of the big excuses people have for change? Well, change is hard. And if we're gonna change anything, we really have to have that kind of a what's in it for me in terms of value. And that's why feedback is important. Most people do value their families.

And they get feedback from their families that they're not doing a good job. They want to get better. Most people value their coworkers. They get feedback from their coworkers. They're not doing a good job. They want to get better. So that's really important.

In my book, Triggers, I talk about why we don't do all the stuff we know we should. And there are a variety of reasons. Years ago, my biggest client was Johnson and Johnson. And at the end of my class, about 98% of the people said that we're going to do what I thought a year later, about 70% had done something that they're presented then nothing. I'm not ashamed of these numbers. I'm very proud. 70% of 2,000 people is 1,400 people getting evaluated by 10 coworkers each. Yeah. About, you know, 14,000 people have a little better life. So I'm proud of that.

And I got to interview the people who did nothing. And I said, why'd you do nothing? Well, the answer is had nothing to do with ethics values or integrity. They wouldn't word that you're most ethical, company, the world or good people. I'm sure your listeners are good people. I know to do with intelligence. They're smart. I'm sure your listeners are smart. The reason people did nothing had to do with the dream. The dream I've had for years, and I would bet even at your young age, you've already had this dream. The dream sounds like this. You know, I'm incredibly busy right now. You haven't worked at home in new technology that follows me everywhere, and emails and voice, and global competition. I feel about as busy as you ever have. Sometimes I feel overcommented.

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. And I think the worst of this is going to be over in four or five months. And after that, 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 That everything is going to be different and it won't be crazy anymore If you ever had a dream that resembled that dream. Yeah, how many years? Well, you know what I'm very much the person who doesn't believe in being busy and it's a matter of prioritizing But as a younger person, I definitely acted like that. Yeah. Good good good good good And so it's really important and we use all kinds of excuses Another excuses one of my favorites is called it's a special day You know I'm going on that diet, but it's a super bowl

So I'm gonna eat that super bowl pizza and guacamole or it's mine birthday or it's my kids birthday Or my boss friends birthday or my mother's birthday, you know, it's somebody's birthday So if we're not careful we can make up this special day, excuse to cover almost every day. Every day is a little special or different and makes an excuse. And so I remember triggers, I talked about all these wonderful excuses we have and keep us from doing what we know we should. And it's hard. It's hard to face the reality of our lives.

That's why the daily question process is so hard. Yeah. So let's move on to triggers since we're already talking about it. Can you explain to our listeners what a behavioral trigger is? Well, triggers in any stimulus in my impact to our behavior. It could be a site, a sound, a word, a person. Any stimulus in impacts our behavior, and as we journey through life, we all have this image of the person that we want to person. Any statement of this in impacts our behavior is we journey through life. You

know, we all have this image of the person that we want to become. Why don't we become this person? Well, every day we journey through life, we have these triggers, these events that occur, these sites, and they usually sometimes push us toward becoming that person. It usually pushes away from becoming that person. Somebody says something, we become angry, we go off the handle, the driving case study. You smell something, you feel you didn't want to eat. You told yourself you shouldn't eat. So, as we journeyed through life,

very important to realize what are the triggers in my life that really set off behavior that's inconsistent with the person I want to become, and how can I, number one, anticipate these triggers? So then I can start becoming aware of them before they happen and anticipate them, if possible, avoid them. And if not possible to avoid them,

at least they're not able to adjust my behavior so that I'm not being controlled by these triggers. And if you look at life, you can say, you know, how much do I control and how much am I controlled? And you can look at different dimensions. If you've ever been to motivational speech, there's always a saying, you can do it, you can do it, it's all up to you, you can do it, or the book, the secret. If I envision it, it will happen.

Well, it's partly true and partly not so true. The other view is we're like a pinball machine, pinball bouncing through life and BF Skinner, the Harvard psychologist basically, said that we're just controlled by triggers in our environment. We have no control. Well, in my book triggers, I think they're both a little bit true. We have some control. And part of my life is a function of what I can control.

And part of it is I am being controlled. And the whole idea of the book is really to just balance the equation a little bit more in terms of I'm in charge of my own life and a little bit less of I'm just being manipulated by my environment. Yeah. Before we move on to environment, let's just dig deeper into habits and triggers and feedback loops. Specifically, I'd like you to explain what a feedback loop is to our listeners. So it's comprised of four stages, evidence, relevance, consequence, and action. Could you maybe walk us through a real-life example of a feedback loop so that our listeners

could really understand what it is? Well, you're driving your car and you see a sign that says, speed limit 30 miles an hour coming up in a small town and evidence that something's going to happen and then how important is it we think I might get a ticket and then eventually think that's relevant and then you've got this evidence which would lead to a consequence which is something bad and you ultimately end up changing your behavior. So as we go through life we're constantly given the opportunity to deal with these feedback loops. And the important thing is to say, all right, am I being sensitive enough to these feedback

loops? Am I aware of what's really going on around me? Before you see that, we have a little child. The little child says, you know, I miss you, Mommy. What does that mean? How can I process this? And the coworker who seems upset, being able to read your environment as best you can,

so that you're learning from the environment at all times, and then you're able to make adjustments in your behavior that fit the needs of the people in your environment. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Calling all dog owners. I had a dog that recently passed away, his name was Bam Bam. And he died at 16 years old and he lived a long time. And towards the end of his life, I had to take more care of him.

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You only quit smoking, don't smoke. If you only quit eating chocolate, get chocolate out of your house. Because when the stimulus is there, you're much more likely to do it. So just avoid it if you can is the first thing, but sometimes you can't avoid it. So if you can't avoid it, then you're gonna need to learn to adjust, to adjust your behavior. So it kind of fits that.

You know, look, I love chocolate. I can't get it all the house because my wife likes to eat it too. And she wants it to be here, but I need to realize when I see this chocolate, I'm gonna be tempted to eat it. So I she wants it to be here, but I need to realize when I see this chocolate, I'm going to be tempted to eat it. So I have to adjust my behavior so that I don't. Yeah. And like you mentioned, like a big trigger is your environment. So in your book, you say, if we do not create and control our environment, our environment

creates and controls us, you call the environment things like the devil and that we should treat it like our enemy. Why such the hard feelings could you dig into that a little deeper? Well, what happens is I'm reading a book now called Deep Work. It's a great book. It talks about social media and how we can become completely addicted to social media in a way that's not healthy. The average kid is flunking out of school in the United States spends 55 hours a week on non-academic media. So, yeah, it's like an addiction and it talks about how Facebook can be addictive and depressing. The more hours you spend on Facebook, the more depressed you tend to be.

For two reasons. One, you see all these fake lives. You know, the vacation is always positive and the kids are always beautiful. And you think, gee, my life isn't as good as that. Well, nobody's life is that good. It's a fake life. Or you're posting fake lives. And you realize that's not really me anyway. It's depressing either way. So I think, you know, very important to realize that we are bombarded by stimulus. And this hasn't become less real in the New World. This has been a lot more real. And we need to really back away and say, am I being controlled by this or am I controlling this? And if you're not careful, we end up being controlled by this.

So when I was a professor at Dartmouth, the young man used to drive me a limo driver back and forth and he flunked out of school. He's been 25,000 hours of his life playing a video game, World of Warcraft, 25,000 hours. That's a minute. You get two PhDs in 25,000 hours, you play a video game. Well, that's an addiction. So you really need to be sensitive to how much am I controlling this? And how much is this controlling me? Yeah. Can you talk about some

of the ways that we can change our habits? We talked about the daily questions, but are there any other commitment devices that we can employ? Get help. In the same way that, you know, I have help. I have someone call me every day. Why? I need help. If you haven't fixed it by yourself in the last 10 years, you're probably not going to fix it by yourself next week. Just admit you need help and it's okay to need help. I can say my book triggers Look at the names of the people who are said book. I'm CEO of the United States. I need help I'm with the presidential mellow freedom. I need help. I'm head of the world's largest pharmaceutical company I need help. I'm president world bank. I need help. Well, they're not too good to get help

So don't be above getting help because we almost all need help. And again, if you could do it by yourself, you would have done it by now. Yeah. So you have these concepts of magic moves. Two of them we covered, the power of asking active questions, asking for help, which you just covered. But we didn't cover two of them. Apology and optimism. Could you tell us more about these magic moves? Well, let's start with apology. Very important, all of my clients do this. They all get confidential feedback.

Another more feedback is perfect. So all they have things to approve. So the first thing I tell them is, they say they apologize. Say, for example, I've gotten feedback, indicates I need to be a better listener. If I've not listened to you or other people, I'm sorry. Please accept my apology. There's no excuse.

Well, if you want everybody else to take responsibility as a leader, let them watch you take responsibility. Let them watch you take responsibility. And that's a very important message to send a role model to people. Don't try to be better than everybody else. Just be a fellow human being and everybody takes responsibility. The other one is optimism and this has been studied to death. I mean if you don't believe you're gonna do something you probably won't. If you tell yourself I can't do this, it's just the way I am. Well you probably are right. You can't do it and that's just the

way you are. You have to tell yourself why am I saying this is just the way I am. Why am I saying I can't do this? Unless you have an incurable genetic defect, you can probably change. Well, since almost no one I coach has incurable genetic defects, they can all get better. You know, you can't make yourself taller. Optimism won't make yourself taller,

but you can become a better listener or better with people, you can be better giving recognition. These are all positive things you can become a better listener or better with people. You can be better giving recognition. These are all positive things you can change. Not things you can't change. Yeah. One thing that we didn't get to touch on that I think is actually really important and you just see looted to it is listening. What makes listening so powerful?

Well, you know, if you want to show concern for other people, you need to be able to listen. What is the message you can indicate to people when you're not listening? I don't really care about what we have to say or you. And one thing I teach people on listening, this is somewhat counterintuitive as this. A lot of people think we don't listen not by what we say, but how we look. So I always try to teach my clients pretend you're on video and you're going to be judged by doing it look like you care. Number one, it'll probably help you be a better listener, but people will feel you're

a better listener. Now, have you ever had this happen before? Has anyone ever looked at you and said, you're not listening? Yeah. And then have you ever repeated what they said, verbatim to prove they were wrong? Well, that doesn't really help the relationship. When somebody says you're not listening, what they're really saying is you don't care. You see, if you look like you cared, no one would ever say you're not listening.

What they're really saying is you don't look like you care. And the higher up you go, the more important this becomes. At the CEO level, this is critically important. Let's say I'm in a meeting. I've heard this presentation 20 times before. I know everything it's going to be said. It's been vetted 12 times before I see it. On the other hand, if I look bored and disinterested, the young person making the presentation, this will break their heart. It'll feel terrible. So I teach people, look, you got to look like you care and that's not being a

phone. That's been a professional. You got to communicate to that person what you're saying is important to me. And just to what you say and how you look. And if you don't, just be devastated. So it's a great lesson to learn at all levels of management when you're younger, it's important when you're old. Yeah, totally agree. So to close out the episode, you have an article on ink.com that's called, do you have mojo or nojo? And I thought it would be a cute and memorable way to end the show. Could you tell our listeners the difference between mojo and nojo? Mojo is that positive spirit towards life, which starts on the inside and radiates to the outside. And you see that when you go to the store, check into the hotel, at the airport. You know, it's that positive spirit

which radiates to the outside, and no joke is exactly the opposite. It's that negative spirit which radiates to the outside. That spirit says, I don't wanna be here, I don't like this, so I'm happy I don't wanna talk to you. So I think very important as we journey through life to look at two things. One, generating that positive spirit inside ourselves and going back to those questions, you know, am I doing my best today to be happy?

Am I doing my best to find meaning? Am I doing my best to be engaged? Build relationships, generating that positive spirit inside yourself. And then number two, back to imagine your own video, communicating that positive spirit to everyone around you. And I think as you mentioned a couple times, even more important at home than it is at work. Communicating this spirit of, I'm happy to see you. I love you. You're important to me.

And good to do those good things at work, even better to do them at home. And how about No Joe? Well, No Joe is the opposite. That's, you know, I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I don't want to be here, go away. I'm going to, I say American Airlines, I have over 11 million fricking fly miles,

I want a three hour flight. One flight of 10, it's positive, I'm motivated up, beat into the ESF, and the other is negative bit or angry in cynical. I'm sure you've been on the same flight. Well, what's the difference? It's not American Airlines. It's the flight attendant. It's what's in our heart. It's what's different. And really don't get

lost on the environment. Let me give your listeners my final good advice. Are you ready? I like everybody. Take a deep breath. Imagine you're 95 years old and you're just getting ready to die. Right before you take that last breath, you're giving a beautiful gift. The ability to go back in time and talk to the person that's listening to me right now. The ability to have that person be a better leader and have a happier life. What advice would that wise old person have for the young person that's listening to me right now? Well, whatever your listeners are thinking now, do that.

Terms that are performed surprisingly, that's the only one that matters. That old person sees you did the right thing you did. That old person sees you made a mistake you did. You don't have to impress anybody else. Some of my friends interviewed old folks who were dying and got this, this question. What advice would you have? On the personal side, three things. Scene number one, three words.

Be happy now. Not next week, not next number one, three words, be happy now. Not next week, not next month, not next year. Be happy now. The Great Western disease, I'll be happy when, when I get that money status, be in W a condominium, well, I have the same win. Learning point from old people,

I got so busy looking for what I didn't have, I couldn't see what I did have. I had everything. All your listeners, many of them are smart people, hardworking people, good people, compared to me, young people. Don't get so focused on what you don't have, you can't see what you do. Learning Point number two on the personal side, we've discussed several times, friends and family. You realize these people are important. Number two is you have a dream go for it, because you don't go for it when you're 35, you may not when you're 85, and that

needs to be a big one. Maybe a little one to New Zealand speaks Spanish. Whatever it is just do it Business advice in which different number one life is short have fun Remember to do whatever you can do to help people and The main reason is that it's nothing to do with money or status for getting ahead Main reason to do it is a 95 year old you will be proud be proud of you because you didn't disappoint it, you should own, and then finally, go for it. Old people, we almost never regret the risk we take and fail. We always regret the risk we fail to take. And finally, thank you so much for asking me to be on your podcast. And I hope that it's been useful to your listeners and help them have a little

better life. It has. So where can our listeners go to find more about you and everything that you do? Send me an email, Marshall with two else at Marshallgulsmitt.com website. I've got 300 videos online, www.Marshallgulsmitt.com. Go to any of these sites and I have you stuff on LinkedIn, 1.3 million followers. I can't do any more LinkedIn connections because they tap out after I think 30 or 40,000. But I can do more followers. So go to any of those sites and I'm happy to share everything I know with everyone. Awesome. It was such an honor. I want to be respectful of our time. So thank you so much for joining Young and Profiting Podcast. Oh, thank you so much for inviting me and hope I get to see you in New York sometime.

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