Speaker 1: 00:09 Hi Marshall.

New Speaker: 05:26 Lois Sonstegard, how are you? I’m doing well. We were going to be on a zoom call and I’m just trying to figure out, yeah, I’m on Zillow and I’m wondering, we’re having trouble with that connection here.

Speaker 4: 05:43 Well, let me, let me go on my a zoom link and all, I was going to call you in about one minute, but let me just make sure I’ve got it. Okay. All right. You mean at doctors? So it should be working. Wait, we all practice those things, Marshall and controlling. Okay.

Speaker 2: 06:12 I don’t, so you know what I am finding is every now and then it’s I get on zoom before the people you entered. Unbelievable. I know. Turn off my phone cause that’s, there we go. , yeah, you can see me okay. Right. I could see you marvelously in Marshall. I before we get started I just want to thank you. You have made such an incredible contribution to my life and

New Speaker: 06:51 well thank you so much

New Speaker: 06:53 and I just appreciate your taking the time because you don’t have to and and you do it so graciously, so just thank you. Oh, thank you for asking me. Happy to do it. Where are you

New Speaker: 07:06 I’m in Minnesota.

Speaker 5: 07:07 No, I’m in New York right now.

Speaker 2: 07:10 Yeah. You, you’re everywhere. I know. I travel all the time. Okay. So if you’re ready, do you have questions that you have of me before we get started? If not, I’ll go ahead and get started. Okay. Ready? Ready. Okay.

New Speaker: 07:28 Hi everybody. This is Lois Sonstegard, welcome to our podcast today with Marshall Goldsmith. I am so excited to have Marshall Goldsmith with us. He has been a mentor to me in many ways. His work has been just so meaningful to me as I’ve looked at what is that that’s necessary in organizations. And he as you already are aware, I’m sure he number one thought leader in leadership globally and has won numerous awards for being the number one executive coach around the world. So Marshall, let me just give you a moment to introduce yourself the way you would like and then we’ll go from there.

Speaker 5: 08:16 Well, my name is Marshall. I’m from a small town called Valley Station Kentucky. I went to school in Indiana. I got a Phd at UCLA. I was a college professor and dean when I was very, very young. Then for 42 years I’ve done three things. I give talks for teach classes and I travel all around the world speaking and teaching into 102 countries. Then I write in that it books and articles I’ve written or edited 40 books, three Big New York Times bestsellers and I coach executives. So being the coach of the CEO Ford and Pfizer in Glaxo, in the World Bank and, and you’re in Minneapolis, they’re a couple people I work with, their doctor Nowsorthy head of the Mayo Clinic and where’s leads your Best Buy? So a couple of great, great clients in mind in your neighborhood. So I do those three things. And I’ve been married 44 years. My wife’s a psychologist, my daughter’s a professor at Vanderbilt, two grandchildren. My Son’s an entrepreneur in Austin. So life is good. Life is good.

Speaker 2: 09:13 You’re amazing. So Marshall, let’s just take a moment to also tell our audience about your documentary film that is forthcoming. I think it’s due to come out on 2020 in the fall. Is that correct?

Speaker 5: 09:28 Yes, it is.

Speaker 2: 09:30 And what inspired that? I had the privilege of being able to participate in that. And so just tell us a little bit about what, what caught, what brought that about?

Speaker 5: 09:40 Well, you know, I was basically asked to do it and it’s just to me an opportunity to communicate with the world in account of legacy sense. for me, , I really never thought about birthdays until I turned 70 and I recently became 70. And it really, what I want to do the rest of my life and focus on projects that I think have a good legacy opportunity, you know, pass it on, give it back to other people. And as you know, one of my projects is I’m adopting people and I’ve adopted a couple of hundred people from around the world and teach them all I know for free and the only prices when they get old, they have to do the same thing. So I see the documentary as a way to try to communicate as much as I can to as many people as I can.

Speaker 2: 10:27 So that’s part of what I want to talk about with you a little bit today is legacy

Speaker 6: 10:33 because once you’ve been a leader and you’ve been at the top of the mountain, so to speak, the next really is legacy isn’t?

Speaker 5: 10:43 It is. I’ve had the privilege of doing eight programs at my home, either in New York or California where I deal with retiring CEOs or perhaps CEOs who’ve been the CEO, but now they’re moving up to executive chairman or in a different role and we talk about what are they going to do the rest of their lives, which is very, very challenging and important. I mentioned my friend who bears, you’ll leave from Minneapolis, he was at our last program and because she’s moved up to executive chairman of Best Buy now, very, very successful and now he’s dealing with a very interesting existential thought of what am I going to do next?

Speaker 6: 11:20 And so Marshall, when you work with leaders like that, there’s a process, right? When did people begin to think about that, for example, and is there a process you take people through? You’re one of probably the most, it has to be pragmatic because everything you do is very pragmatic and , you’re very thoughtful about creating processes.

Speaker 5: 11:44 Well, I wrote a book called “Succession. Are you ready?” It was published by Harvard Business Review and we talk about this and we talk about letting, and really I encourage CEOs to think in a pretty early stage about what I call their exit strategy because the role of a CEO, and it doesn’t last as long as it used to. It’s a rapidly changing world and you know, you think you’ve made it to the top. Well, the distance between I made it to the top and it’s time to leave. It’s not very long, right? It really encouraged them to think pretty early about what do you want to do the rest of your life? What is gonna to do, what are you going to do forever and what matters in life anyway. There are five basic things that are important and one is you have to have health.

Speaker 5: 12:31 If you don’t have health and the rest of it’s irrelevant. You need wealth, but only to middle-class level of income. Anyway, and all these people are more money they’re ever going to spend. So wealth is pretty much a non issue then you need to have great relationships with people you love. Don’t get so focused on work that you ignore people who love you, which unfortunately happens too much. And then after that, what matters is happiness. Meaning I happiness, I referred to the process of life. I really love what I’m doing. And meaning is the outcome of what I’m doing is important to me. And you have to have both because what happens is a lot of people near the, as they get older, they think about, well, I’m going to play golf or go on cruises or all that. Well that’s fine for about three months, but there’s no meaning.

Speaker 5: 13:18 And after that it’s your life starts to feel empty. On the other hand, if you do things that are meaningful but you don’t enjoy, you’re kind of a victim or a mortar, which not good either. You really need to find simultaneous happiness and meaning in challenges. No one can tell you what’s gonna make you happy and no one can tell you what’s meaningful for you. Those answers you have to come from it here. And so that’s what we spend time on. What does that mean to you? And then also legacy is, you know, what happens after you’re not here, what do you leave behind? And I’ve been working on a project, in fact this last week with my friend Ellen Malali, Ellen was the CEO of Ford, probably the most successful CEO in America in the last 20 years. And you know, he retired from Ford and now he and I are working together on a book and a process called the stakeholder centered leadership. And the idea is how his material and my material, we can combine it and in a way that’s transferable. So then when we’re not here, other people can still use what we know.

New Speaker: 14:24 Got It. So part of what I’m hearing you say is purpose and meaning, it’s what you pass on, right? it’s not something you’d develop all of a sudden at the end or as you begin to complete your career. It’s really a process that you have to begun much earlier on. So how you go about that huge.

New Speaker: 14:54 Again, you don’t have to think earlier on. It’s helpful though. Yeah. If you’re not careful. What happens to a lot of executives is they fall off a cliff. You know, you have this great career, then all sudden boom, you stop and they just go into an existential void. It’s not good. I’ll give you a parallel example. The numbers on professional athletes are hideously bad. Pro basketball players. So like 50% bankruptcy in five years. pro football players, 70% bankruptcy in five years. Huge divorce rates, depression, all kinds of problems because they achieved this fantastic success and then they fade away. Palka Saul is a famous basketball player, played for the Lakers and several teams and he is one of the people who have adopted and he’s thinking about this whole process as is Venus Williams who’s now 40. And she’s just beginning to deal with this issue of, okay, now what it is, what happens is if you don’t do that, you end up with this unfortunate chance of finishing this existential void, which is not good.

Speaker 5: 16:08 Not all other people like a actors and actresses, some positive stories like Sally field, great actress, winner of Academy Award, you know, and she’s really now more of a teacher, but very happy. Harry Kramer was CEO of Baxter. He’s also now a teacher. He does a lot of philanthropy, just incredibly happy, fulfilled guy. So we’ve got some very positive case studies. So that’s, I’m writing on another, I’m always writing books. I’m writing one book with my friend Alan. I’m also writing another book called “The Earned Life”. “The Earned Life”, And the essence of that book is as we journey through life, coasting really doesn’t work. Living on past glory doesn’t work. And I like every time I take a breath. That’s the new me. And the question is, What does that new me doing to really earn a good life?

Speaker 6: 17:10 You know Marshall, I have to just intersect that. I was talking with two principal dancers that used to dance with the Paris opera and then London and one of the things they used to do every day it was, they’d stand in front of the near and they’d say, how did our bodies change through the night as we slept? How do we dance differently today? Unbelievable, which is what you’re saying right?

New Speaker: 17:35 Every day. Yeah, go ahead. That’s a great analogy. So you were talking about everyday you breathe, you’re taking a new breath and yet so different,

Speaker 5: 17:48 Yeah, it’s a new you. And the extreme example of this would be my friend Doctor Jim Kim. I mean he was president of partners in health and and in prison of Dartmouth College, Head of the World Bank now is a global investment partners and he’s probably saved in his life. Literally tens of millions of dollars taking perhaps a million people out of poverty or amazing guy you think? Well, he could sit there and declare victory. Not so much. His attitude is I’m earning my legacy every day.

Speaker 5: 18:18 And if anyone you can say would look back on their life and say, well, you know, I did enough. Could be, no, that’s not the way you think. So I think it’s, the reason I’m very happy right now is he’s not living in the past.

Speaker 1: 18:32 Okay.

Speaker 5: 18:33 He’s proud of the past. Right. He’s not living in the best.

Speaker 2: 18:37 Yeah. That’s an incredible distinction. Wow. so, you know, part of what I’m hearing you also say Marshall is In a way, as you look at, , what is it that you’re going to do living in the current, there’s a sense of what you want to it. There’s a sense of looking back in your life. There’s, so you have a goal that you want to get to and maybe it’s not x number of dollars, but there’s a goal. Am I hearing that correctly?

Speaker 5: 19:09 Yeah. And goals are very useful because they give direction. The key is goals is, so it’s good to have goals, right and good to achieve. It’s also good not to be fixated on results because a lot of times results are outside of your control. And so all you can do is your best at any point in time. But don’t get fixated on outcomes. For example, I golfer a golfer, it’s let’s say a bad shot. What are they gonna take the next shot? If they’re thinking about that previous shot that just messes up their mind and they hit a worst shot or they hit a good shot. If the theater about that great shot, they just hit, that also messes up their mind. You need to, you need to shoot the ball, you need to play the ball that’s in front of you, not the one that’s behind you. So it’s very important to try to achieve great results, yet not become fixated on the outcome of the results because at any point in time, all we can do is our best. So the key is, what am I doing now? Am I doing my best now? And that’s basically all we can do in one.

Speaker 2: 20:17 So let me go back to where we began a little bit with process. And the process that you take leaders through executives through that are building legacy. is there a process you take them through in terms of being able to identify that?

Speaker 5: 20:33 Well, the first thing is my coaching process. My coaching process is very structured as you said, formal process and you get feedback from everyone around you that’s confidential. You learn what are you doing well and what do you need to improve? A, you pick the most important behavior to improve your talk to your key stakeholders. You follow up on a regular basis and measure improvement. And then also everything you do is approved by the board of directors if you’re the CEO. So everyone knows, everyone knows what’s going on and then you basically repeat the process. So that is a very transferable process. And from a personal legacy point of view, that process had been 3000 people certified in the process. Tens of thousands of people use the process around the world or some variation on it. So I’m very happy with that. , because it is a process in, in terms of this business of legacy, though I say to CEOs, you have to first, who’s your replacement?

Speaker 5: 21:33 Be Developing those people. So when you leave, there’s some great personal to take place. And also start thinking about what do you want to do before you leave. Don’t wait till after you leave thinking about what’s next. You see the CEOs and the leaders that have a good sense of what’s coming in the future or happy to leave the CEOs that don’t have a sense, hang on. They stay too long. They can’t let go because they’re afraid of leaving. They’re afraid because there’s nothing out there. They don’t want to play bad golf with old people in the country club. By the way, some of the stories I have from these people are hilarious. , for example, Mike Duke was the CEO of Walmart. He was in my little meeting. So he said, you know, I had this joke. I told them, and it was a clean joke, not a fence, and everyone loved it. , and he said, I retired as the CEO of Walmart. I told my little joke, nobody laugh.

Speaker 5: 22:30 They must be grumpy. I told again another group, nobody laugh. He said, finally my wife came to me. She goes, Mike, you idiot. Did you actually think that stupid joke was funny? They have to learn. Their jokes are really not that funny. Their comments aren’t that profound and the world doesn’t hop up and down when they snap their fingers. And if you’ve been a CEO for awhile, you’re just used to people laughing at your jokes, doing whatever you say, acting like you’re smart and it takes a while to get get over that stuff. One Guy said, when did I learn I was no longer the CEO? When did it hit me? He said, I sat in the back seat of the car and it did not move.

New Speaker: 23:27 A lot. A lot. Meaning don’t get it. Yeah. And 70% I don’t know. I couldn’t give you an answer cause I don’t, you know, I have a degree in math so I don’t like to share numbers. That list, I have some pretty good idea. Okay. But a lot a, which means there’s a lot of people who retire and are unhappy basically.

Speaker 5: 23:50 Yeah. They just fall into, well that’s what we’re doing research about. I mean, I know the numbers for athletes, it’s awful. I know know the numbers for CEOs, but I do know the number of athletes is just terrible and it’s hard in any position like that. , another group that’s really tough as combat veterans, unfortunately more combat veterans kill themselves after the war than die in the war.

Speaker 1: 24:15 And it’s very hard to leave that adrenaline fueled, team oriented, meaningful life and become middle manager in a store somewhere. And a lot of them unfortunately kill themselves.

Speaker 6: 24:30 Yes. That is so true and we don’t have a lot of good data on what it is that impacts that. You know, you look at the homelessness rates in, it’s very, very sad.

Speaker 3: 24:44 So what kind of advice do you have Marshall, to emerging leaders who are moving up, they’re moving perhaps quickly, maybe not so quickly, but they know that they want to leave a mark somehow. What advise. Do you have for things for younger leaders say yes. The first advice is a brilliant listen to Peter Drucker taught me. Now as you mentioned, I got ranked number one leadership thinker in the world. My intellect compared to is that as a 10 year old child, so he was so, so smart. He taught me so many things and what I’m going to teach your listeners next is about one third of my whole consulting practice in 10 minutes. Are you ready? Ready.

New Speaker: 25:29 Lesson number one from Peter Drucker, every decision in the world is made by the person as a power to make the decision. Make peace with that. Number two, our mission in life is to make a positive difference, not the perverse smart not to pervert, right? And number three, if I need to influence you and you have the power to make the decision, there’s one word to describe you It’s called customer. It’s one word to describe me as cold salesperson. You don’t have to buy, I have to sell in life. You sell what you can sell, you change what you can change. If you can change it, you change it. If you can sell it, you sell it. You can’t sell it. You can’t change it. Let it go. Or waste your life on stuff you can’t change. Put your time and energy on what you can change. And my daughter and I have done some research on vicarious living does not lead to a happy life. Don’t waste your life on Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian or the sport team. They don’t care about you.

Speaker 1: 26:27 You wanna have a great life. How can you make a positive difference? If you’re not gonna make a positive difference? Why spend time on stuff? So focus on what you can do, not what you’re not going to change. Well, when you were a young leader, you need to learn this lesson because many young leaders don’t ever get it. They get lost in logic, rationality, proving how smart they are approved now, right? They are, and they forget. We’re not here on earth. We’re here on earth to make a positive difference. It’s hard. Why is it so hard? Because in our lives we were taking test after test, after test thousands of tests with one goal, it improves the smarter we were. Pardon me, stop.

Speaker 1: 27:08 Thousands of times you’ve been tested, thousands of times you had to prove how smart you are. Thousands of times when you prove how smart you are, people in hurray! Hey, good for you. And if you fail, very bad, right? This is very deeply in grade. One of the great leaders I’ve ever met said for the great achiever. It’s all about me for the great leader. It’s all about them. It’s very hard to make this transition from a great achiever to a great leader.

Speaker 1: 27:43 so Marshall, part of what I love about your feedforward process is it is probably one of the most pragmatic processes, I think for helping people maybe begin that transition process because you have to think past yourself,

Speaker 5: 28:02 right? I love feed forward. It’s a very positive, upbeat way. It’s kind of the central piece of my coaching and leadership development. And in feed forward, you’re asked to ask for input. You listened to it, you don’t promise to do everything and you think people and you don’t punish the Messenger. So you get in the habit of saying, how can I be a better? And one thing I’m proud of in Minneapolis is Best Buy. They have people doing this throughout the organization on a regular basis. No 1000 people do this. Well, they learned it from their CEO and you know, you do feed forward. How can I be a better store manager? How can I be a better coach, a better parent friend? How can I be better? And you’re learning to listen to people. You don’t promise to do everything. Leadership style or popularity contest. You do promise to listen to everybody to go and do what you can. And it’s, it’s a very powerful process. What’s works around the world. So the feed forward exercise, which I do in groups where you have people pair up and then they go and talk to each other. I did that in Moscow in November with 20,000 people in the Olympic Stadium. 20 wow. And only 20% spoke English. Wow. They loved it. They had 20,000 people do this at once.

Speaker 6: 29:23 You know what I love about it is I do a lot of work, , globally. So Trot Trans culturally in one of the things that I realize is how global business, we tend to use English, right? But it’s not the native language for most of the people who are going to be present, right and forward take some of that pressure of language out of the process because it’s looking at what is it that I can do to improve? And you’re doing it one by one by one, right? You can take that in and you can process that.

Speaker 5: 29:59 Yeah. When I worked in row in Russia, they did it in Russia. Yes. I mean I didn’t need to hear everything everyone was saying. Right. Although I spoke English and they had a translator, the exercise itself was all done in Russian.

Speaker 6: 30:15 That was great. Brilliant. So Marshall, our time is almost up. And I have one more question that I really want to ask of you and that is, what is one thing in your life for which you are grateful for that has really shaped who you are?

Speaker 5: 30:33 I would say one thing in my life, I’m really grateful for his great teachers in my life. ,

Speaker 1: 30:41 My heroes have been great kind and generous teachers, Peter Drucker, Paul Hersey, Alan Malali, Jim Kim, Francis Hellsell, mine, Richard Beck, wonderful people who went out of their way to help me and what I’m doing. As you know, as I’ve grown older, as I’m basically adopting people, I teach them all in know for free. And my goal is to try to help them and a kind of sign of recognition for all of the Nice people that helped me. And the only price of me helping them is they have to do the same thing.

New Speaker: 31:18 I just wanted it. Pause for a moment because I heard you talk about what you’re grateful for before and teachers, but I do think that was the two adjectives that you use, which was kind and generous. You know, generally when we speak of great teachers, we think of a motivating teachers, , charismatic teachers, and neither one of those words are in your descriptor of your teachers. It’s kind and generous to me that the distinction as those are people who really get back. It’s what we can take in as people at a feeling level. And it’s at the feeling level where transforms basically.

Speaker 5: 32:03 Yeah, and the one thing I was very happy with is in the documentary, many people were interviewed about me and they were asked what word would describe me in by far the most common word was generous.

Speaker 1: 32:15 One last thought you would like to leave with our audience before we close this interview, Marshall,

Speaker 5: 32:26 take a deep breath. Imagine you’re 95 years old and you’re going to die.

Speaker 1: 32:32 The right before you die, you’re given a beautiful gift. The ability to go back into life and talk to the person who’s listening to me, right now? What advice would that wise old you have for the you that’s listening to me right now? Whatever you’re thinking now, do that.

Speaker 1: 32:51 Of performance appraisal as all our matters back to legacy. That’s all it matters. That old person says you did the right thing you did and that’ll person say you made a mistake. You did some friends who I interviewed old people and the answers come out in three groups. Number one, you happy now? Not next week, not next month, not next year. Be Happy. Great Western disease. I’ll be happy when I get the money status with BMW. We all have the same. Number two is do whatever we can do to help people, not because of status or money, but because the 95 year old you will be proud of You the vision you had and then finally go for it. Have a dream. Go forward because you don’t go for it when you’re 40. You may not. When you’re ready.

Speaker 1: 33:34 old people will. You never regret the risk we take and fail. We always regret the risk we failed. so finally, thank you

Speaker 6: 33:44 Marshall. Thank you so much. You have been just incredible and this has been a gift to me and I know to the audience and I just look forward to so much more with you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye Bye.

Speaker 1: 33:59 I’m going to stop the recording and let me see if I can find it up here. And, , I know I have to put my glasses on. Defend the right button. Here we go. And just really, really thank you for all of what you have contributed. , I have learned so much and I appreciate more than anything that pragmatic newness of what you, what you offer and , yeah, so I take that everywhere I go. I made leadership too complicated, so I just appreciate it.

Speaker 5: 34:37 Yeah. When is this going to be released?

Speaker 6: 34:39 , it’ll be released very shortly and I will send you when the date that we’re going to release that. So we’ll now we’ll do this in a couple of ways. Marshall. , I will do a transcription of it, and so we’ll create a blog out of this. We’ll do the podcast, obviously in, in voice. Then I’ll turn it around and put it on youtube as well.

Speaker 5: 35:01 Okay. Well let me know and then I’ll put it out on social media.

Speaker 6: 35:04 Perfect. You are wonderful. Thank you so much. I’ll send you that information. Probably it’ll be in a couple of days when my team pulls it together. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye.