Narrator: A CEO of a successful food company, Carlos, is brimming with creative energy. His design team presents a brilliant new packaging concept for a snack line. He loves it, but can't resist adding his two cents. "Great work," he says, "but what if we made it baby blue?" The team, eager to please, spends a month perfecting the baby blue design. When they present the final product, Carlos is pleased, but another thought strikes him. "This is fantastic," he declares, "but you know what would be even better? Red." The team leaves the meeting dispirited, their enthusiasm crushed. Carlos, meanwhile, is completely unaware of the negative impact of his "value-add" suggestions. He believes he's helping, but he's actually demotivating his best people.

This subtle act of self-sabotage is at the heart of Marshall Goldsmith's book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. It explores the paradox of success: the very behaviors that propel people to the top are often the ones that prevent them from reaching the next level. The book reveals that for successful individuals, the path to greater achievement isn't about learning what to do, but about learning what to stop.

Narrator: Successful people often operate under a powerful set of delusions that make them resistant to change. Goldsmith argues that success itself creates a kind of psychological armor. This "Success Delusion" is built on four core beliefs: "I have succeeded," "I can succeed," "I will succeed," and "I choose to succeed." While these beliefs foster confidence and drive, they also create a dangerous feedback loop. When we succeed, we tend to believe that our success is a direct result of our specific behaviors. This leads to a form of superstition, where we confuse correlation with causation.

Goldsmith highlights this with a simple study he conducted. He polled three business partners, asking each to privately estimate their percentage contribution to the firm's profits. Their combined estimates totaled over 150 percent. This overestimation is not about dishonesty; it's a natural byproduct of success. We internalize our wins and filter out our failures, reinforcing the belief that our current methods are flawless. An executive named Harry, a brilliant but poor listener, perfectly embodied this. He was successful in spite of being a terrible listener, but he believed he was successful because his poor listening helped him filter out bad ideas. This delusion makes it incredibly difficult to accept that a behavior needs to change, because that behavior is incorrectly linked to a history of achievement. The first step to getting "there" is realizing that the map that got you "here" is now obsolete.

Narrator: At the highest levels of any organization, technical skills are a given. The true differentiators—and the most common stumbling blocks—are behavioral. Goldsmith identifies twenty interpersonal habits that frequently hold successful people back. The most critical shift in mindset he proposes is to focus not on adding new skills, but on stopping negative behaviors.

One of the most pervasive habits is "Winning too much." This is the overwhelming need to win in every situation, no matter how trivial. Goldsmith uses the classic restaurant dilemma to illustrate this. You want to eat at restaurant X, your partner wants restaurant Y. You argue, but eventually go to Y. The food is terrible and the service is slow. The winning-too-much impulse is to spend the evening proving how right you were, ruining the night for both of you. The better choice is to let it go, but for many successful people, the need to be right overpowers reason.

Another common flaw is "Adding too much value," as seen with Carlos the CEO. This is the irresistible urge to tweak every idea presented by a subordinate. While the suggestion might improve the idea by 5 percent, it reduces the employee's commitment and ownership by 50 percent. The leader's small win comes at the cost of the team's motivation. Other habits, like making destructive comments, starting sentences with "No," "But," or "However," and failing to give recognition, all stem from a similar place: an unconscious need to assert superiority, which ultimately undermines relationships and long-term success.

Narrator: Identifying a flaw is one thing; changing it is another. Goldsmith provides a structured, seven-step method for making behavioral changes permanent. This process is not about a single event, but about creating a system of accountability with the people you work with. The core components are Feedback, Apologizing, Advertising, Listening, Thanking, and Following Up.

The power of this framework is shown in the story of Beth, a high-ranking executive who had a toxic relationship with a senior colleague named Harvey. Feedback revealed that Harvey saw her as arrogant and disrespectful. To fix this, Goldsmith didn't just tell Beth to be nicer; he scripted a specific apology for her to deliver. The script was simple and direct: "Harvey, I want to apologize. I have not treated you with the respect you deserve... I’m sorry, and I will try to do better in the future."

When Beth delivered this apology, Harvey was taken aback. Instead of gloating, he admitted his own faults in their interactions. The apology broke the cycle of conflict and created an opening for a new, collaborative relationship. This illustrates a key principle: an apology is not a sign of weakness, but a tool for creating an emotional contract. By apologizing and then advertising her intent to change, Beth enrolled Harvey as an ally in her improvement. The final, crucial step is relentless follow-up—regularly asking Harvey, "How am I doing?" This keeps the commitment alive and ensures the change is noticed and sustained.

Narrator: Perhaps the most innovative tool Goldsmith offers is "feedforward." He argues that traditional feedback, which focuses on the past, is often difficult for successful people to hear because it feels like criticism. It can trigger defensiveness and arguments about what "really" happened. Feedforward elegantly sidesteps this problem by focusing exclusively on the future.

The process is simple. First, you pick one behavior you want to change, for example, "I want to be a better listener." Second, you describe this objective to a colleague. Third, you ask them for two suggestions for the future that could help you achieve your goal. Crucially, these suggestions must be future-oriented ideas, not critiques of past behavior. Fourth, and most importantly, you listen to the suggestions without judgment and the only response you are allowed to make is, "Thank you."

This process works because it's positive, productive, and positions your colleagues as helpful advisors rather than critics. It also reinforces the Buddhist parable of the two monks who encounter a woman at a stream. One monk carries her across, breaking a rule. The other monk is furious and berates him for hours. Finally, the first monk turns to him and says, "I only carried her across thestream. You carried her all the way back to the monastery." Feedforward is about leaving the past at the stream. It acknowledges that we can't change the past, but we can create a better future, one suggestion at a time.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from What Got You Here Won't Get You There is that for those who have already achieved a high level of success, the final frontier for growth is not in acquiring new skills, but in mastering interpersonal behavior. The subtle, often unconscious habits—the need to win, to add value, to pass judgment—are the invisible barriers that cap potential. Overcoming them requires humility, courage, and a willingness to see yourself through the eyes of others.

The book's most challenging idea is that you must actively enlist the people around you in your journey of change. It's not a solo mission. The real work begins when you ask a trusted colleague a simple, future-facing question: "How can I do better?" The answer may be difficult to hear, but it is the only way to get from where you are to where you want to be.