Coaching works best with high potential people who are willing to make a concerted effort to change, not as a religious conversion activity.
Interpretation
Coaching is most effective with motivated individuals ready to put in the effort to improve themselves.
In this quote, Marshall Goldsmith emphasizes that successful coaching requires engagement from individuals who have the potential for growth and are actively willing to work towards change. He clarifies that coaching should not be viewed as a form of forced belief change, but rather as a supportive process that individuals embrace to enhance their skills and performance.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech during a leadership training session.
Active questions are the alternative to passive questions. There is a huge difference between, 'Do you have clear goals?' and 'Did you do your best to set clear goals for yourself?' The former is trying to determine the employee's state of mind; the latter challenges the employee to describe or defend a course of action.
Treat every piece of advice as a gift or a compliment and simply say, βThank you.
The only thing I don't think people don't understand about good leaders is that they're both good and lucky. A lot of it is timing.
Life is short. Do whatever you can to help people - not for status, but because the 95-year-old you will be proud if you did help people and disappointed if you didn't.
If we become aware of what's happening before we act, behaviour becomes a function of choice rather than a result of an impulse or trigger. You begin to control your world more as opposed to the outside world controlling you.
A leader who is self-aware enough to know that he or she is not adept at everything is one who has taken the first step toward being a great leader.
If we allow the celebrity rock-star model of leadership to triumph, we will see the decline of corporations and institutions of all types. The twentieth century was a century of greatness, but we face the very real prospect that the next century will see very few enduring great institutions.
Empty values statements create cynical and dispirited employees, alienate customers, and undermine managerial credibility.
Sometimes leaders slide from the role of freedom fighter into the presidency, which they may be unsuited for, but everyone accepts it until they hit the bump in the road.
Know what your people are like, and make sure they do their jobs excellently.
The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!
The appointing power vested in the president imposes delicate and onerous duties. So far as it is possible to be informed, I shall make honesty, capacity, and fidelity indispensable prerequisites to the disposal of office, and the absence of either of these qualities shall be deemed sufficient cause for removal.
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