Marshall Goldsmith, Executive Coach and Bestselling Author
Today, my guest is Marshall Goldsmith, who 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 Best Seller.
He’s also the author of New York Times Best Seller 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 ]is the leading expert on leadership and coaching for behavioral change.
In this candid conversation, Marshall shared the real stories behind his accidental invention of executive coaching, his unique approach to behavioral change, and his generous mission to give away all of his knowledge.
1. The Accidental Coach. Marshall revealed that despite growing up in Kentucky without indoor plumbing and originally planning to simply be a college professor, he essentially invented the field of executive coaching by accident. After serendipitously filling in for his mentor Paul Hersey at a corporate speaking gig, a CEO asked if Marshall could change the behavior of an incredibly smart but “arrogant, stubborn” young executive. Marshall offered a completely novel “no-cure, no-pay” guarantee—if the executive didn’t genuinely improve, he would work for free—and a brand new career was born.
2. Behavior Over Business. Emphasizing that he is a behavioral coach rather than a business coach, Marshall explains that he doesn’t actually need to know anything about his high-level clients’ specific industries. Instead, he uses a “stakeholder-centered” model where leaders gather feedback, publicly apologize to their team for their shortcomings, and then use “feed forward”—asking for constructive ideas for the future rather than dwelling on past mistakes. While he notes this process is technically simple, he stresses that it is not easy, as it requires immense courage, humility, and discipline to actually execute.
3. The Trap of Winning Too Much. According to Marshall, the absolute biggest problem successful people face is the overwhelming compulsion to “win too much”. Because high achievers inherently love being right, they often argue over completely trivial things—such as critiquing a partner’s bad restaurant choice instead of just keeping quiet and trying to enjoy the evening. To break his wealthy clients of their stubborn, argumentative habits, he even strictly fines them $20 for charity every single time they start a sentence with the defensive words “no,” “but,” or “however”.
4. Free Work and the AI Clone. Despite his massive success, Marshall actually spends two-thirds of his time working entirely for free. He has “adopted” hundreds of young people to teach them everything he knows, with the only condition being that they pay it forward and do the same for others when they grow older. To ensure his teachings outlast him, he is currently developing “Marshall Bot,” an interactive AI video clone that will freely share his coaching knowledge with the world. He grounds this generosity in the ultimate life advice, derived from imagining the perspective of a 95-year-old on their deathbed: be happy right now, cherish your friends and family, and always go for your dreams.
