The Difference Between Good Leaders and Great Leaders

What makes the most highly successful leaders different is what makes them some of the greatest leaders in history. I believe there are three characteristics that differentiate good leaders from great leaders. Learn more in this week's Newsletter!

Jim Masters: Is there a thread, I know I've asked you this already in interviews, but is there a thread? Are there other common mistakes that people at those levels make that you see universally made by all?

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith: Well, in my book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, that's my most popular book, it sold about a million and a half copies. In that book, I talk about classic problems of successful leaders. Maybe I'll mention a couple now.

Marshall: The first one is called "winning too much". Now I was interviewed in the Harvard Business Review and asked a question, "What is the number one problem of all those successful people you've coached over the years?" And my answer, "Winning too much." What's that mean if it's important? Win. Meaningful, win. Critical, win. Trivial, win. And not worth it, win anyway.

Winners love winning. I have a case study I use with my clients that almost all of them fail. Let's say you want to go to dinner at restaurant X, your wife, husband, friend, or partner wants to go to Y. You have an argument. You go to Y and it wasn't your choice. Food tastes awful, the service is terrible. Option A, you could critique the food and point out your friend or partner was wrong. And this was, "It could have been avoided if you listened to me, me, me." Or option B, just shut up, eat the stupid food, try to enjoy it and have a nice evening.

Then I say, "What would you do? What should you do?" Almost all my clients. "What would I do? Critique the food. What should I do? Just shut up." Another one is that you have a hard day at work, a hard day. It's such a hard day. You go home, your wife, husband, or friends are there. And the other person goes, "I had such a hard day today. I had such a tough day." And then we say, "You had a hard day. You had a hard day."

Jim:"Let me tell you about mine. The car didn't start."

Marshall: Oh yeah, yeah. We have to prove we're more miserable than the people we live with, and I gave that example at my class at Dartmouth and a young man raised his hand. He said, "I did that last week." So I asked him, "What happened?" He said, "My wife looked at me and said, 'Honey, you just think you've had a hard day. It's not over.'"

Jim: The toilet's clogged.

Marshall: It's not over. It's not over. Now the second classic problem I talk about, is called adding too much value. What's that mean? Imagine you're the boss. I'm young, smart, enthusiastic. I worked for you, I come to you with an idea. And you think it's a great idea. Rather than just saying, "great idea" our natural tendency is to say, "That is a nice idea. Why don't you add this to it?"

The problem is the quality of the idea may go up 5%. My commitment to execute this idea may go down 50%. It's no longer my idea. Now it's your idea. Incredibly difficult for smart successful people not to constantly add value.

One of my good coaching clients retired several years ago. His name is JP Garnier. CEO of a very large drug company, GlaxoSmithKline. I said, "What'd you learn about leadership as the CEO of this huge company?" He said, "I learned a hard lesson. My suggestions become orders." He said, "If they're smart they're orders, if they're stupid they're orders, if I want them to be orders they're orders, and if I do not want them to be orders, orders anyway."

For nine years I trained the admirals in our fine United States Navy. What's the first thing I trained those new admirals? You get that little star. Your suggestions become orders. Admirals do not make suggestions. When that Admiral makes a suggestion what is their response?

Jim: That's a direct command, right.

Marshall: Sir, yes, sir.

Jim: Right.

Marshall: So I asked my friend, JP, "What did you learn from me when I was your coach that helped you the most?" He said, "You taught me one lesson that helped me be a better leader and have a happier life." I say, "Fine, what was it?" He said, "Before I speak, breathe and ask myself one question. Is it worth it? Is it worth it?" And he said, "As a CEO of this huge company, 50% of the time, if I had just the discipline to stop and breathe and ask myself, is it worth it? What did I decide? Am I right? Maybe. Is it worth it? No."

Jim: That's an amazing way to look at it. What makes a good leader? What are the general characteristics of a good leader? Are there a few top five type or does it vary on the person?

Marshall: Let me answer that question from two different perspectives. First, the perspective of the people I coach. What are the qualities of people that get better? Really three things stand out. One is they have to have courage. They have the courage to get feedback. The courage to look in the mirror, which is not easy. They have to have courage.

Two is they have to have humility, because you see if you're going to get better. That means you're probably not thinking you're perfect to start with. So really it's very hard to help perfect people get better. They have to have the humility to admit they can improve.

And then the third thing, you have to have the discipline to follow up and do the hard work to get better. Courage, humility, and discipline. So that's part of that answer. Another way to answer the question is: What's different tomorrow than yesterday? So I did a book called Global Leadership. The Next Generation. We interviewed 150 young, high-potential leaders and said, "What are the qualities of the global leader of the future?"

Five things came up. One is global thinking. In the past, leadership was very much domestic. If you look at the history of the world, they didn't have cars, leadership was very local. Then it became a little more regional, maybe a town. Then it became a district, a region, a state, a country, and now leadership is global.

Jim: It's global, yeah.

Marshall: Number two, you need to have cross-cultural appreciation because in the past, diversity just meant dealing with people in your country. Now it's people around the world. Number three is something called technological savvy. You don't have to be a technologist, but you have to understand how technology impacts your business today. Even my business, your business.

Jim: Yeah. Absolutely.

Marshall: You have to understand that technology. Technology's a big deal. We talked about social media. It's a big deal. Then, number four, is building alliances and partnerships. In the past that wasn't so important. The old IBM, for example, had almost no alliances and partnerships. Today they're all alliances and partnerships, so the world has changed in that sense. So alliance is more important, partnerships are more important.

And then finally, a great teacher of mine, Peter Drucker said, "The leader of the past knew how to tell. The leader of the future knows how to ask." Most people today manage people called knowledge workers. Now, what is the definition of a knowledge worker? They know more about what they're doing than their boss does. So if you work for me and you're a knowledge worker, I cannot tell you what to do and how to do it. Why? You know more than I do! I have to ask, I have to listen to, I have to learn.

And the higher up you go. For example, like the people I coach, they manage almost all knowledge workers. By the way, if I'm the CEO and the head of marketing, I know more about marketing than they do. And I know more about finance than a finance person and HR than the HR person. I don't have a leadership problem, I have a selection problem. I got the wrong people in the job. At that level, you hope everyone is a knowledge worker because they should know more about what they're doing than you do. You're the CEO, but they're the expert at their jobs, so you can't just boss them around.

Jim: And that's changing a lot too, just in corporate culture and society. Isn't it? Where some bosses are becoming not necessarily even bosses. They're more hands-on, they're taking more input from the employees as opposed to being up in the ivory tower. They're rolling up the sleeves, getting more immersed in the company, in the staff. Do you see that happening a lot?

Marshall: Well, let me give you a great case study of my friend, Alan, who totally turned Ford around. He goes to Ford. The stock is at $1 and one cent. He left, it's $18 and 40 cents. Again, number three ranked leader in the world, CEO of the year in the United States, fantastic leader. People said, "Well, how can you lead Ford? You've never been a car company." He could lead anything. He might even be leading as a Secretary of State of the United States. I don't know what's going to happen, but he could lead about anything.

Well, he didn't feel a need to be the boss all the time. He helped people find the answers without having to provide. Let me give you a funny story. So he goes to Ford, company's losing $17 billion with a B dollars, $17 billion. So he says to the top sixteen leaders, "Set those top priorities, red, yellow, green. Five priorities. Each red, yellow, green. Green is "I'm on plan." Yellow, "I'm not on plan. I've got a strategy to get there." And red, "not on plan, no strategy."

First meeting, sixteen leaders, five priorities each, red, yellow, green. Everything's green. Now they're losing $17 billion with a B dollars. Everything's green. Everyone's on plan. So Alan goes, "Well, let's see. We're losing $17 billion. And we're all on plan. I guess the plan must be to lose $17 billion because we are."

Marshall: Finally, Mark Fields who's now the CEO of Ford said "Red. I'm not on plan. Don't know how to get there." My friend Alan stands up and applauds. He says, "Thank you for having the courage to say red. Thank you. Thank you for having the honesty, transparency and courage to say red." Now he said, "Mark, you're not on plan. You do not know how to get there. You're lost." Then he said, "I want to assure you of one thing. I know less than you do. I don't have the answer."

He said, "We manage hundreds of thousands of people. There are a lot of smart people here. We can hire people. Why don't we just form a team and solve the problem?" Alan said within 10 minutes, problem solved.

Jim: And it was solved.

Marshall: Once they got over that egotistical, "I have to show how smart I am. I have to prove myself all the time and realize we all need help. It's okay."

Jim: And asking for it is important.

Marshall: Admitting it, saying red. We're all red for something.

Jim: Right, exactly. Being a good leader too, you have to get the ego in check, but you also have to be a really good listener. Don't you? You have to listen to people's concerns, listen to what's going on and not just, "I'm going to go in there and say what I want to say," but I need to listen because sometimes there could be some incredible ideas and possibilities in front of you, but if you don't listen to them, they go by the wayside. You find that to be the case a lot?

Marshall: And also you have to read between the lines because the higher up you go, if you're not careful, well, like I said, my suggestions are orders. At that second, if Alan Mulally would have said, "Have you thought of what would probably happened?" Stupid idea with no commitment. The worst of all worlds. And you really need to be able to read between the lines because every time you get promoted, they start laughing at your jokes. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Those comments. "Oh, even look like you've lost a pound or two," every time you get promoted, "Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm." And so, it is harder and harder to hear the truth.

Jim: It really is. The other thing I like about your process and your style, and I want to talk a little bit more about your presentation style at the speaking engagements but also the method of coaching, is you really dig deep to try to bring out or for people to realize the good within. Sometimes maybe they're very negative about themselves. "I can't do that. We can't do this," but to really bring out the good in them and the good in them reinforces everything that they're about. Right?

Marshall: Well, it's interesting. We often stereotype ourselves in really unfortunate ways. And this goes back to maybe when we're children. So I coach them. They say, "I can't listen. I can't listen. I've never been able to listen." I look in the guy's ear. "Why can't you listen? Because I'm stuck in there?" Well, as long as you say I can't listen, you probably can't listen.

"I'm no good at recognition." Well, why not? Are you genetically mean? Why are you no good at recognition? Well, you could be. You just chose not to be. So, I really encourage people to look at their identities.

Our identity is often a function of programs that we've been given since we were children. Some may make some sense and a lot of them make no sense. And we just live these out for decades, sometimes. And challenge that and say, "Can I be something different?" And the answer is, unless you have a genetic defect, you can be better. You can change. If nobody could change, I'd never get paid.

I hope that you enjoyed The Marshall Goldsmith Newsletter and that it is helpful to you!

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