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What great leaders and thought leaders have to say about Triggers and working with Marshall Goldsmith:

“Triggers represents a natural progression in Marshall’s work and many of the ideas in it have already helped me and many of his other clients. As with all of his books, I know that Marshall’s focussed, practical and insightful approach will help you in leadership, but even more important, it can help you in life!” Jim Yong Kim, 12th President, The World Bank

“Reading Triggers is like talking with Marshall. You get clear, practical, and actionable suggestions.” Ian Read, CEO Pfizer

“Marshall Goldsmith’s contribution to our group has been immense and we have greatly benefited by his unparalleled experience and his knowledge. In Triggers he shares illuminating stories from his work with great global leaders. He helps us transform our lives and become more holistic human beings. This is a book worth reading for every practicing professional and for those who aspire to leadership.” G.M. Rao, CEO GMR Group (India), Indian Entrepreneur of the Year

“Triggers inspires us to be better people, better leaders, better fellow travelers. ‘Creating behavior’ is our new battle cry for a bright future.” Frances Hesselbein, President and CEO Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute, Presidential Medal of Freedom Award recipient

“How do we create the change we need for our organizations and for ourselves? Marshall Goldsmith is the master of helping us all find that path, avoiding the negative triggers and building upon the triggers that bring out our best. Here, again, he teaches with his unique insight, warmth, and positive energy. Our job is to learn and do better, for a better outcome for all, which this book helps guide.” Tony Marx, CEO New York Public Library

“Triggers will guide a new group of executives looking to reach their full business and personal potential.” Brian C. Cornell, Chairman and CEO Target Corporation

“We place a premium on developing strong leaders at McKesson and over the years we have relied greatly on Marshall’s leadership insights to support our executive talent development across the company. No matter what role a person plays in an organization, Triggers provides a hands-on framework for helping people live with intention and greater purpose, both professionally and personally.” John Hammergren, CEO McKesson, Harvard Business Review 100 Top Performing CEOs in the World

“No one can match Marshall’s massive footprint in helping people become what they want to be. He is the top thought leader in executive coaching because he drives new thinking about self-motivation. The importance of self-awareness, self-engagement and positive behavioral change is best captured in Triggers. It will help light up many lives!” Fred Hassan, Managing Director Warburg Pincus, former CEO Pharmacia and Schering Plough, Chairman Bausch & Lomb

“In Triggers, Marshall provides a rich set of new, practical, and life-tested ideas, concepts, and frameworks that will help those of us who want to change, be the best that we can be, and be the person we want to be.” Hubert Joly, CEO Best Buy

“Triggers is fantastic! It is a summary of all the things that Marshall has taught me over the past years...that we can’t really reach our personal goals until we move away from self-centered goals. In order to become the person we aspire to be, we need to embark on a journey of awareness that requires attention, action, and discipline.” David Chang, James Beard Foundation Outstanding Chef Award winner, Founder and CEO Momofuku Group

“I’ve known Marshall for years and loved working with him. Reading Triggers reminds me of being coached by Marshall. It makes me laugh, causes me to reflect, and, most importantly, gets me to do something positive.” Liz Smith, CEO Bloomin’ Brands (Outback, Fleming’s, Roy’s, Carrabba’s, and Bonefish restaurants)

“This is a great book. Marshall here tackles a much more important and fundamental challenge: ‘How can we each become the person we really want to be?’ Read this book and find out.” Mark Tercek, President and CEO The Nature Conservancy, former Managing Partner Goldman Sachs, author of Nature’s Fortune

“I had the great privilege of being coached by Marshall. He has been able to trigger change in my life and help me move to the next level of leadership. He has changed my life and my career. Triggers could do it for you!” Regis Schultz, CEO The Darty Group (France), one of Europe’s top electrical retailers

“Marshall has taught me the importance of making a positive difference in every aspect of my life. His coaching techniques and valuable lessons empower you to extract greater meaning from interpersonal relationships and provide a superior understanding of the great results that can be achieved through positive leadership.” David Kornberg, CEO Express

“Another phenomenal book from Marshall, full of practical advice to change behaviors for the better. A fun and very enlightening read.” Jan Carlson, CEO Autoliv (Sweden), world leader in auto safety

“Imagine that for the cost of a book, you can receive personal career guidance from the World’s Best Coach? Marshall Goldsmith is that Coach. Triggers is that book.” Jim Lawrence, CEO Rothschild North America

“Marshall continues on his journey of creating tools to develop effective leaders. In Triggers, he presents simple and effective methods that we can use to reinvent ourselves. A must-read for leaders and those who aspire to be very successful leaders.” Joe Almeida, CEO Baxter Health

“Marshall’s coaching invites leaders to focus relentlessly on our behavior. The leader’s behavior as well as the team’s behavior becomes the basis for great results and continuous improvement. This will be a key to success for the connected, global, knowledge-driven companies of the future. Triggers accelerates our focus on creating the change we need to succeed.” Aicha Evans, Senior Vice President and General Manager Intel, Fortune Top 10 Next Generation Female Leaders

“Triggers is just like Marshall—a combination of great coaching and a fun personality!” Jonathan Klein, Founder and Chairman Getty Images

“Marshall Goldsmith’s Triggers is a wonderful read. By using real-world examples to teach key leadership points he adds tremendous credibility to the valuable leaders’ lesson contained throughout the book.” Nils Lommerin, President and CEO Del Monte Foods, Inc.

“Once again Marshall Goldsmith proves why he is not just one of the top 10 business thinkers but one of the top 10 all-round thinkers! What I love most about this book is that it’s not just for business leaders; it provides a clear path to improvement for anyone who wants to make positive change in their lives.” Fred Lynch, CEO Masonite International

“Triggers is this year’s must-read for leaders who want to learn what they can do to generate lasting, meaningful change for their organizations—and themselves. Marshall has this seemingly effortless way of guiding people to what really matters. He has taught me, as he has countless others, how to bring rigor and compassion to being a leader.” Sandy Ogg, Operating Partner The Blackstone Group

“Marshall is an amazing coach who helped me become a better leader and a better person. He has a unique blend of intelligence, insight, and practical steps to improve performance. As he says in his new book, Triggers, there is a big difference between understanding and doing—we all understand what to do, but Marshall gives us the tools to actually change for the better.” Robert Pasin, CEO Radio Flyer

“In Triggers Marshall helps us understand behavioral traps we are constantly exposed to, and how to either avoid them or turn them into positive experiences. As usual, he is logical and intuitive—it all makes sense, but that does not mean that change is easy. You have to want it. As with my coaching sessions with Marshall, I have come away with valuable insights, which will help nudge me toward becoming the person I want to be.” Soren Schroder, CEO Bunge

“Triggers is Marshall at his story-telling best. Marshall has a unique ability to enable leaders to put down their well-developed guards, to see not what is wrong, but what is possible if they dedicate themselves to getting better. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to get better at work and life.” Brian Walker, President and CEO Herman Miller

“Marshall brings to this book the full force of his nearly four decades of coaching experience and shares profound insights, compelling stories, and powerful techniques that you can put to use now that will benefit your career, your relationships, and your peace of mind for years to come. His questioning routines are alone worth the price of the book. Triggers is Marshall Goldsmith’s finest work yet, and I highly recommend it.” Jim Kouzes, co-author of the multi-million seller, The Leadership Challenge, and the Dean’s Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

“At the Thinkers50 we have long appreciated Marshall Goldsmith’s blend of practical advice and timeless human insight. Triggers is his best book yet.” Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove, co-founders of Thinkers50, world leaders in the evaluation and dissemination of management thinking

“I’m a raving fan of Marshall Goldsmith—and you will be, too, when you read Triggers. Marshall promises that if he does his job as author and you do your job as reader/learner, you will move closer to becoming the person you want to be and also have fewer regrets. Not too bad! So read it!” Ken Blanchard, one of the bestselling non-fiction authors in history, co-author of The One Minute Manager and Refire! Don’t Retire

“Packed with awesomely real truths about how we are with ourselves and how to make life better, Triggers is the next step forward in his amazing career.” David Allen, world leader in personal productivity and multi-million selling author of Getting Things Done

“In Triggers, Marshall Goldsmith distills wisdom gained from decades of helping people—clients and friends—struggle with truly changing their behavior. Though the book is written in an engaging, approachable way, it is nonetheless profound. Marshall is more than just a coach. He’s a provocateur, a humorist, and a challenger. If it’s feedback you need to hear to ‘trigger’ the change you need to make, Marshall would be my top choice.” Rita Gunther McGrath, Thinkers50 Most Influential Strategic Thinker in the World, author of The End of Competitive Advantage

“My professional career has been devoted to helping organizations create strategy, implement strategy and achieve breakthrough innovation. Triggers can help you create a strategy for your life, implement your strategy and achieve breakthrough innovation.” Vijay Govindarajan, Coxe Distinguished Professor Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School and the New York Times bestselling author of Reverse Innovation

“There is a reason Marshall is the world’s #1 Executive Coach, it’s because he understands people and how to get them performing at their best. This book is a breakthrough in how you and your people reach your peak levels of performance and stay there. As the Chairman of the world’s largest business coaching company, I read a lot of books on business and personal success; very, very few deliver the way Marshall has here.” Brad Sugars, President, Chairman and Founder of ActionCOACH

“Triggers is your must-read roadmap to become the person you deserve to be! It’s like having the world’s top executive coach as your personal mentor, with rich stories and breakthrough research that give you just the practical tools you need to take your career to the next level.” Mark Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of Admired, Success Built to Last and Now, Build a Great Business!

“A wise book with delightful stories on how to self-actualize.” Philip Kotler, SC Johnson Distinguished Professor of Marketing, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, the world’s leading thinker in marketing

“Marshall Goldsmith is the most disciplined thought leader I know. He personally practices what he preaches, with great results. Triggers is his latest gift to leaders who want to achieve positive behavioral change.” Geoff Smart, Chairman of ghSmart, New York Times bestselling co-author of Who and Power Score

“Marshall and Mark have done it again!!! Reading this book feels like having Marshall ‘knee to knee’ coaching me. What a privilege to learn from his insights, savor his stories, and fully engage in positive personal change. Marshall is truly a gift to all of us who want to get better.” David Ulrich, Professor, University of Michigan, bestselling author and world’s #1 thinker in human resources

ALSO BY MARSHALL GOLDSMITH WITH MARK REITER

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

Mojo

MARSHALL GOLDSMITH is corporate America’s preeminent executive coach. He is the 2015 Thinkers 50 award winner as the World’s Most Influential Leadership Thinker. He is one of a select few consultants who have been asked to work with more than 150 CEOs in the world’s top corporations. He has written or edited 35 books that have sold over two million copies. His PhD is from UCLA and he is on the faculty of the executive education programs at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. The American Management Association named Marshall one of fifty great thinkers and business leaders who have impacted the field of management, and Businessweek listed him as one of the most influential practitioners in the history of leadership development.

MARK REITER has collaborated on thirteen previous books. He is also a literary agent in Bronxville, New York.

Triggers

Sparking Positive Change and Making it Last

Marshall Goldsmith

and Mark Reiter

images

Triggers is dedicated to my two wonderful grandchildren, Avery Reid Shriner and Austin Marshall Shriner.

This edition published in 2016

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

PROFILE BOOKS LTD

3 Holford Yard

Bevin Way

London

WC1X 9HD

www.profilebooks.com

Copyright © Marshall Goldsmith, Inc, 2015, 2016

First published in the United States of America by Crown Business, an imprint of Random House, Inc., New York, 2015

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Illustrations by Nigel Holmes

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 1 78283 079 5

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, “You must not ask for so much.”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?”

—Leonard Cohen, “Bird on a Wire”

Contents

Introduction

PART ONE

Why Don’t We Become the Person We Want to Be?

 Chapter 1: The Immutable Truths of Behavioral Change

 Chapter 2: Belief Triggers That Stop Behavioral Change in Its Tracks

 Chapter 3: It’s the Environment

 Chapter 4: Identifying Our Triggers

 Chapter 5: How Triggers Work

 Chapter 6: We Are Superior Planners and Inferior Doers

 Chapter 7: Forecasting the Environment

 Chapter 8: The Wheel of Change

PART TWO

Try

 Chapter 9: The Power of Active Questions

Chapter 10: The Engaging Questions

Chapter 11: Daily Questions in Action

Chapter 12: Planner, Doer, and Coach

Chapter 13: AIWATT

PART THREE

More Structure, Please

Chapter 14: We Do Not Get Better Without Structure

Chapter 15: But It Has to Be the Right Structure

Chapter 16: Behaving Under the Influence of Depletion

Chapter 17: We Need Help When We’re Least Likely to Get It

Chapter 18: Hourly Questions

Chapter 19: The Trouble with “Good Enough”

Chapter 20: Becoming the Trigger

PART FOUR

No Regrets

Chapter 21: The Circle of Engagement

Chapter 22: The Hazard of Leading a Changeless Life

Acknowledgments

Index

Introduction

My colleague Phil tripped down his basement steps and landed hard on his head. For a few moments as he lay on the floor, his arms and shoulders tingling, he thought he was paralyzed. Too wobbly to stand up, he sat against a wall and assessed the damage. The tingling in his limbs meant he still retained feeling (a good thing). His head and neck were throbbing. He could feel blood trickling down his back from a lacerated scalp. He knew that he needed to go to an ER so they could clean up the wound and check for broken bones and internal bleeding. He also knew he was in no shape to drive himself.

It was a Saturday morning. Phil’s wife and grown sons were not home. He was alone in his quiet suburban house. He pulled his cell phone out to call for help. As he scrolled through names he realized he didn’t have a single friend nearby whom he felt comfortable calling in an emergency. He’d never made the effort to know his neighbors. Reluctant to call 911 since he wasn’t gushing blood or having a heart attack, Phil tracked down the home number of a middle-aged couple a few houses away and dialed. A woman named Kay answered, someone he acknowledged on the street but had rarely spoken to. He explained his situation and Kay rushed over, entering Phil’s home through an unlocked back door. She found Phil in the basement, helped him to his feet, and drove him to the local hospital, staying with him during the five hours he was examined. Yes, he’d suffered a concussion, the doctors said, and he’d be in pain for a few weeks, but nothing was broken and he’d recover. Kay drove him back to his house.

Resting in his dark house later that day, Phil thought about how close he had come to disaster. He recalled the moment when his head hit the concrete floor, the bright brittle sound at impact, like a hammer coming down on a marble counter and shattering the stone into tiny pieces. He remembered the electrical charge coursing through his limbs and the terror he felt at the prospect of never walking again. He thought about how lucky he was.

But Phil’s fall triggered more than gratitude for not being crippled. He also reflected on the remarkable kindness of his neighbor Kay, and how she had selflessly given up her day for him. For the first time in years, he thought about how he was living his life. Phil told himself, “I need to get better at making friends.” Not because he might need people like Kay to save him in the future, but because he wanted to become more like Kay.

Not all of us require a violent life-threatening knock on the head to change our behavior. It only seems that way.

| | |

This is a book about adult behavioral change. Why are we so bad at it? How do we get better at it? How do we choose what to change? How do we make others appreciate that we’ve changed? How can we strengthen our resolve to wrestle with the timeless, omnipresent challenge any successful person must stare down—becoming the person we want to be?

To answer these questions, I’ll begin by focusing on the triggers in our environment. Their impact is profound.

A trigger is any stimulus that reshapes our thoughts and actions. In every waking hour we are being triggered by people, events, and circumstances that have the potential to change us. These triggers appear suddenly and unexpectedly. They can be major moments, like Phil’s concussion, or as minor as a paper cut. They can be pleasant, like a teacher’s praise that elevates our discipline and ambition—and turns our life around 180 degrees. Or they can be counterproductive, like an ice-cream cone that tempts us off our diet or peer pressure that confuses us into doing something we know is wrong. They can stir our competitive instincts, from the common workplace carrot of a bigger paycheck to the annoying sight of a rival outdistancing us. They can drain us, like the news that a loved one is seriously ill or that our company is up for sale. They can be as elemental as the sound of rain triggering a sweet memory.

Triggers are practically infinite in number. Where do they come from? Why do they make us behave against our interests? Why are we oblivious to them? How do we pinpoint the triggering moments that anger us, or throw us off course, or make us feel that all is right in the world—so we can avoid the bad ones, repeat the good ones? How do we make triggers work for us?

Our environment is the most potent triggering mechanism in our lives—and not always for our benefit. We make plans, set goals, and stake our happiness on achieving these goals. But our environment constantly intervenes. The smell of bacon wafts up from the kitchen, and we forget our doctor’s advice about lowering our cholesterol. Our colleagues work late every night, so we feel obliged to match their commitment, and miss one of our kid’s baseball games, then another, then another. Our phone chirps, and we glance at the glowing screen instead of looking into the eyes of the person we love. This is how our environment triggers undesirable behavior.

Because our environmental factors are so often outside of our control, we may think there is not much we can do about them. We feel like victims of circumstance. Puppets of fate. I don’t accept that. Fate is the hand of cards we’ve been dealt. Choice is how we play the hand.

Despite a hard knock on the head, Phil didn’t bend to circumstance. His fate was to fall, hit his head, and recover. His choice was to become a better neighbor.

| | |

There’s an emotion we’re all familiar with hovering over these pages rather than coursing through them. It’s not explicit. But that doesn’t mean it’s less real. It’s the feeling of regret. It’s implied every time we ask ourselves why we haven’t become the person we want to be.

A big part of my research for this book involved asking people the simple question, “What’s the biggest behavioral change you’ve ever made?” The answers run the gamut, but the most poignant ones—guaranteed to raise the emotional temperature in the room—come from people recalling the behavior they should have changed but didn’t. They’re reflecting on their failure to become the person they wanted to be. And it often overwhelms them with desolate feelings of regret.

We are not like Jane Austen’s overbearing Lady Catherine de Bourgh (from Pride and Prejudice), who boasts of her natural taste in music, then without a sixteenth note of irony, says, “If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.” Unlike Lady Catherine, we feel regret’s sharp sting when we reflect on the opportunities squandered, the choices deferred, the efforts not made, the talents never developed in our lives. Usually when it’s too late to do much about it.

Regret was definitely in the air when I interviewed Tim, a once-powerful executive producer of a network sports division. Tim’s network career ended prematurely when he was in his mid-forties because he didn’t get along with his superiors. A decade later, in his mid-fifties, Tim was getting by with consulting jobs. He still had an expertise that companies needed. But he would never find the stable executive position he once had. He has a reputation: doesn’t play well with others.

Tim has had years to confront the reasons for this reputation. But he never articulated them until the day his daughter asked for fatherly advice before she started her first TV job.

“I told her the greatest virtue is patience,” Tim said. “You’re operating in a business where everyone’s looking at the clock. A show starts and ends precisely at a given time. The control booth screens display everything in hundredths of a second. And it never stops. There’s always another show to do. The clock is always ticking. This creates an incredible sense of urgency in everyone. But if you’re in charge, it also tests your patience. You want everything done now, or even sooner. You become very demanding, and when you don’t get what you want, you can get frustrated and angry. You start treating people as the enemy. They’re not only disappointing you but making you look bad. And then you get angry.”

That was a triggering moment for Tim. Until he said it he hadn’t realized how much his professional impatience was influenced by a savage network TV environment—and how it had seeped into other parts of his life.

He explained: “I saw that I’m the kind of guy who emails a friend and gets mad if I don’t hear back within the hour. Then I start harassing that friend for ignoring me. Basically, I’m treating my friends the way I used to treat production assistants. It’s how I face the world. That’s no way to live.”

Tim needed an intimate father-daughter encounter to trigger an insight that fed the powerful feeling of regret. “If I could change anything about my life,” he concluded, “I’d be more patient.”

Regret is the emotion we experience when we assess our present circumstances and reconsider how we got here. We replay what we actually did against what we should have done—and find ourselves wanting in some way. Regret can hurt.

For such a penetrating and wounding emotion, regret doesn’t get much respect. We treat it as a benign factor, something to deny or rationalize away. We tell ourselves, “I’ve made stupid choices but they’ve made me who I am today. Lamenting the past is a waste of time. I learned my lesson. Let’s move on.” That’s one way of looking at regret—if only as a form of self-protection from the pain of knowing we missed out. We’re comforted by the fact that no one is immune to regret (we’re not alone) and that time heals all wounds (the only thing worse than experiencing pain is not knowing if and when the pain will go away).

I want to suggest a different attitude, namely embracing regret (although not too tightly or for too long). The pain that comes with regret should be mandatory, not something to be shooed away like an annoying pet. When we make bad choices and fail ourselves or hurt the people we love, we should feel pain. That pain can be motivating and in the best sense, triggering—a reminder that maybe we messed up but we can do better. It’s one of the most powerful feelings guiding us to change.

If I do my job properly here and you do your part, two things will happen: 1) you will move closer to becoming the person you want to be and 2) you’ll have less regret.

Shall we get started?

Part One

Why Don’t We Become the Person We Want to Be?