Bill Kerr: CEO turnover tends to increase in volatile times. So it's no surprise that in mid-2024, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas is reporting the highest half-year churn on record. Whether the result of effective succession planning, burnout, technological change, or other factors, the exodus reflects increasing pressure at the top. What are the keys to corner-office success, and how do you make a corporate superstar a better team player?

Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I'm your host, Bill Kerr. My guest today is leading executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall has worked with a who's who of corporate CEOs during his industry-defining career. We'll talk about the value of framing behavioral change in terms of future goals rather than a critique of past performance. We'll also talk about Marshall's 360-degree review process and how effective leaders delegate and help their employees grow. And we'll discuss his ambitious use of AI to teach leadership and career development to a wider audience. Marshall, welcome to the podcast.

Marshall Goldsmith: Thank you so much for inviting me.

Kerr: Marshall, many of our readers will have not only heard your name but also read one of your many books. But let's start with a bit of your background and how you got into coaching.

Goldsmith: I got into leadership development almost by accident. I kind of randomly met a very famous man named Dr. Paul Hersey. He and Ken Blanchard invented situational leadership. He was kind enough to invite me to sit in on one of his programs. I sat in the back, basically taking notes. And I did it over and over. And one day he became double booked and Ken couldn't do it. And he said, "Marshall, can you do this?" I did a program for the Metropolitan Life insurance company in New York. They were so angry when I showed up, because it wasn't him. But I got ranked first place of all the speakers. I'm funny; all the others were probably showing finance slides. They said, "We love this guy. Send him again." And that's how I got into leadership development. And then coaching, also very much an accident. I was working with the CEO of Warner-Lambert at the time. And their CEO said, "I got this kid working for us, young, smart, dedicated jerk." He said, "It'd be worth a fortune to me if this kid would change his behavior." I came up with an idea. I said, "I'll work with this kid for a year. If he gets better, pay me. If he doesn't get better, it's free." There was nothing called coaching, I just made it up. And for many, many years, I didn't get paid if my clients didn't get better. Better wasn't judged by me or them, it was judged by everyone around them. So that's how I got into coaching. A lot of life is luck.

Kerr: Well, luck, and also success is then followed. So across your many decades coaching, tell us a little bit about what is both similar and also different now compared to when you began.

Goldsmith: Well, one of the things you mentioned in the introduction is leaders are under more pressure than ever. I've had the privilege with my friend, Mark Thompson, of spending 600 hours, 60 days with some amazing people. And we did this over Covid, so we spent almost two years. And they talked about their lives and weekly challenges. And these were president of the World Bank and head of the Rockefeller Foundation and CEOs, athletes, etc. It's tough. Social media, anything they say can be put online. Anything they say can embarrass them. The degree of critique has gone up. As you said, the turnover is higher than ever. One of the things that's positive about my coaching is to have my clients talk to each other. And, really, it's great to have them have peers to talk to who have a similar experience of life.

Kerr: Can you give us an example or two of an important transformation that's happened in an executive's career?

Goldsmith: Alan Mulally. Alan at the time was head of Boeing Commercial Aircraft, and then I was coach of him. He went to Ford. Was "CEO of the Year" in the United States. And had a 97 percent approval rating from employees in a union company. An amazing person. He wanted to get better at impacting people across the organization. So we came up with a system where he worked with his colleagues across the organization and really focused on getting better. And after about three months, I said, "Look, it's pretty obvious I'm going to get paid. I'm not doing much work for this money. Maybe we can perk it up here. Any ideas?" He said, "Why don't we do this with everybody?" So he kind of spread the process to everyone on his team and down throughout the organization, and just a huge number of people got better.

Kerr: Well, beyond the clients, everyone's got things that they need to work on, the challenges that they face. And I'm curious, across your clients, how many of them does the person you're coaching know the challenge, comes in with it, is aware of it, versus it's something that needs to be discovered by talking to other people around them who know the challenge? Or it's a third option, which is no one really has put their finger on the big issue, not the coworkers nor the person in question.

Goldsmith: Yeah, I would say of the first two, it's kind of both of the above. In some cases the person is reasonably aware of the issue. And on the other hand, for some it is a shocker. Do you know who David Chang is? The famous chef. He wrote a book about me coaching him. He wrote a book called Eat a Peach. Hilarious book. Well, I take it back. It's a serious book, the part about me was hilarious though, talking about me coaching him. And he would tell you, "It was a big surprise."

Kerr: And then continuing on that, how difficult is it to get people, when it's surprising, to start to embrace the change that needs to happen? And your fee depends upon them actually experiencing the change and those around them experiencing, so it's an important hurdle to overcome.

Goldsmith: Well, for me, actually, I actually do very little motivation. Some people ask me, how do I inspire people? I don't inspire people at all. Everybody I work with, they have to get confidential feedback. They have to apologize for their mistakes publicly. They have to involve their coworkers on a regular basis. They have to follow up, they have to get measured. And if they don't want to do those things, I just don't work with them.

Kerr: And where did the structure of your arrangements, where you don't take any upfront money or compensation, it's only a year later if the success emerges, how did that get started?

Goldsmith: I'm glad you asked the question. I was brought up very poor, back in Valley Station, Kentucky, and we had the roof leak. And I was 14 and we got a roofer named Dennis Mudd. And we didn't have much money, so dad had me help him with the roof to try to save some money. So we worked hard on this roof. And he is very a detailed guy, he would try to make a nice roof. And he gets done with the roof, and I was kind of proud, and he says to my dad, "Bill..." And he was poor, too. He said, "Bill, I want you to inspect the roof." He said, "If that roof is of high quality, pay me. And if it's not, it's all free." Now Dennis Mudd needed the money. I looked at that guy, and I said, "I want to be Dennis Mudd when I grow up."

Kerr: Through your career, there's been a lot of changes in management thought, a lot of them sparked by you. I'm going to list some, like stakeholder-centric coaching, 360-degree feedback, which you mentioned a little bit earlier, the concepts of feedforward, versus feedback. Tell us a little bit about the concepts that have resonated most with you and that you think need to be maybe even today elevated further up, in terms of how business leaders approach their work.

Goldsmith: I didn't really invent 360-degree feedback, I invented something called custom 360-degree feedback. This means I worked with the company, figured out what are their values, and then designed a profile around that. I'm a great believer in confidential feedback—by the way, more today than ever—because the idea that people are going to go to a CEO and tell them their honest feelings about everything is a little naive. And it doesn't matter what the CEO's intent is, that just doesn't happen. They may pretend to or they may be good actors, but that just doesn't happen. And it's good for them to get confidential feedback from all the people around them. And the higher up they go, the more important confidential feedback becomes. Then people say, "I invented feedforward, they say I'm against feedback." That is not true at all of my clients who get confidential feedback, but they don't ask for face-to-face feedback. I don't have a CEO say, "Tell me what I'm doing wrong." No, people don't want to do that. After they get the feedback, then first we identify the key stakeholders. So I work with the CEO, for example, and say, "Who are your key stakeholders?" And the board has to approve it. If I work with the future CEO, the CEO has to approve it. I interview each one, develop a very long and comprehensive feedback report. They get feedback, they pick important things to improve. Either the Board of Directors or the CEO approves that. So then what happens is, we practice feedforward. They talk to people and say, "Thank you for the feedback. Here's what I feel great about. Thank you for participating. Here's what I learned." Then they publicly talk about what they want to improve, apologize for the mistakes, and then ask for feedforward. "Please give me ideas for the future to help me be more effective." They listen to the ideas, take notes, and I teach them, just say thank you. And then they say, "Look, I'm not going to critique or judge ideas. I'm just going to listen and thank you. I cannot promise to do everything you suggest. I'm going to promise to listen to think about your good ideas and do what I can. I can't change the past, I can change the future. And if you don't mind, I'm going to involve you and ask you to help me get better." And then they do that over and over again. I follow up with them, and then we measure, they get better. My coaching, the stakeholder-centered coaching, is quite different than most coaches. Most coaches don't give advice. Not only do I give advice, I teach my clients to get advice from everyone around them and be thankful for the advice they get.

Kerr: If you think about this process, it involves a lot of willingness on the part of the others that are around the CEO or the executive of being willing to forgive or forget or some combination of those two things, the things that happened in the past. So the apology gets made, I'm going to go forward, but they have to be willing to go forward with the executive. Is there a part of that process that you play? And do you ever come across situations that are just too far removed or you've gone too far down a bad path to be able to correct the situation?

Goldsmith: First, I talk to the key stakeholders and say four requests. One is let go of the past. Look, whatever they've done wrong in the past, I cannot fix, they cannot fix. And dredging up the past is not going to help anybody. Let go of the past, focus on the future. Two, be positive and supportive, not cynical or sarcastic. You can be cynical and sarcastic about everything else, just don't be cynical and sarcastic about this. Then number three, be honest. And then I ask them, "You pick something to do better." The boss talks to you and says, "I want to get better." Actually say, "Thank you so much for doing this. I can get better, too. Give me some ideas." So basically, the idea is, everybody's trying to help everybody. What your concern is has happened, but very seldom. Sometimes people say, "Forget this, I don't care about the guy." And what I do in that case, and it's happened very, very seldom, is I tell them, "Look, I'm not going to identify you in any way. I'm going to interview you just like everybody else. Whatever you say is not going to go into the score. Because you already told me your guy didn't have a chance anyway, so that's fine."

Kerr: Marshall, as you think about the organizations you're working with, they're often quite large. Ford has come up, the old Warner-Lambert came up in our conversation. How far down into the organization do these types of concepts pervade? When you coach the executive, is it changing the way that they're managing their employees and, in turn, workforce development throughout the organization, or is it more a senior leadership-type concept?

Goldsmith: It actually could be either of the above. I've got about eight examples of organizations that use the whole process corporatewide. And again, Johnson & Johnson is one of those examples. I helped them develop their original standards of leadership, had some fantastic success. The Northrop Corporation, which is now Northrop Grumman, fantastic success. So I've got some great measures of companies that did this with great effectiveness. Starting at the top, it goes next level. American Express, Harvey Golub was the CEO. Start at the top, next level, next level, next level, next level. And the process works just as well with the first-line supervisor as it does with the CEO. The only thing is, I just coach the CEOs, I don't coach first-line supervisors. But the stakeholder coaching process works just as well. And by the way, when does my process not work? One, it doesn't work with people who don't care. Two, it doesn't work with people who will not be given a chance. See, at lower levels, sometimes the employees don't really have a chance. They hire this coaching as some fake thing to, "We're going to hire a coach." Well, they're going to fire them anyway, right? It's just a game they're playing. So don't do that to people. It doesn't work with integrity problems. I never coach an integrity problem. Fire integrity problems, don't coach integrity problems. And sometimes the issue is not behavioral. I can't make a bad doctor a good doctor, or a bad engineer a good engineer. So behavioral coaching only solves behavioral problems.

Kerr: One of my curiosities here is that my project co-director, Joe Fuller, has been studying employee responsibility toward the future of work, upskilling, kind of making ourselves the best that we can for the future. And he went around the world and gave people the option of who's responsible for skills: you, the government, your employer, and so forth. And in most countries, in most settings, people were saying, "I'm the one that's most responsible." Those are oftentimes, the corporate also had some responsibility, but they were saying, "I'm the one that's most responsible." And from your work and research in this area, what can we do to help improve that broader employee engagement and employee ownership of their skills and success and responsibilities?

Goldsmith: Well, I went to a program at the National Academy of Human Resources, so I'm a fellow of this National Academy. Three chief human resource officers spoke about employee engagement. And they said, "Employee engagement around the world's at an all-time low." Then they said, "Here's what we need to do." And they talked about these "solutions," training programs empowerment. I'd heard the same stuff for 30 years. There was absolutely zero new. Then I realized something: 100 percent of the dialogue was what can the company do to engage you. Zero percent of the dialogue is what can you do to engage yourself. They were missing half of the equation. I developed a process with my daughter, Kelly, called "active questions." If every employee asked themselves these six questions every day, employee engagement is going to get better. And they all began with the phrase, "Did I do my best to…?" So my daughter, Kelly, has a PhD from Yale, and she's a chairman of the marketing department of Vanderbilt. She taught me this. This gets people to look at themselves. If I ask you, do you have meaningful work? And you say no, you'll blame the company. If I ask you, did you do your best to create meaningful work, you got to look in the mirror. Six questions. One, did I do my best to set clear goals every day? Rather than waiting for the company, did you do it yourself? Two, did I do my best to make progress toward achieving the goals I set? Three, did I do my best to find meaning? Rather than waiting for the company to give you meaning, did you try to create meaning every day? Four, did I do my best to be happy? Five, did I do my best to build positive relationships? And six, did I do my best to be fully engaged? So every day, people that evaluate themselves on these questions get better.

Kerr: I love that concept, and I think in many settings it could work very well. The executives that you're working with often are in large global companies. They have a very diverse set of colleagues and cultures that their employees are under. Is there a way that you help your clients think about how to manage across those different environments? And should they adjust those questions or their methods in more traditional business cultures, versus maybe the U.S. business culture?

Goldsmith: I work all around the world. The stakeholder process works everywhere. Why? You're learning from people around you. You're learning from the people in that culture.

Kerr: One of the things that we've observed and others have also commented on is, for leaders, a shift in terms of maybe what helps them most likely to succeed—and maybe an old version was something that was around subject area and market expertise, and today it's communication and collaboration, actually, many of the things that you are describing in terms of being able to listen to those around them and kind of absorb that in there—is that consistent with your view? Or do you kind of see a different mix of that recipe for success?

Goldsmith: A very wise man wrote a book that sold almost 2 million copies called, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. The world is changing, and if you want to coast on what you've done—just as you mentioned, the skills, knowledge—that got you to the past won't necessarily get you to the future. I'd say the biggest project I'm working on right now is artificial intelligence. What did I know about that two years ago? That would be absolutely nothing.

Kerr: Well, why don't we continue on AI for a little bit here. I'm going to increasingly push us into some more future of work themes. But tell us a bit about your specific work with AI and the medium and how you see it for teaching and coaching purposes.

Goldsmith: Well, I've always wanted to give away what I know. Now I've got a process, marshallgoldsmith.ai, where I give away all that I know for free. And my goal was, it would answer, oh, it would answer about 80 percent of the questions you asked me as well as I could. About 80 percent of the time, it can answer almost any question better than me. And it can answer 100 times more questions than me in a way that I would answer them. And it provides amazing answers almost instantaneously. My daughter wanted to trick it. She said, "How is your coaching related to utilitarian philosophy?" "How is your coaching related to utilitarian philosophy?" Well, I don't know what utilitarian philosophy even is. My computer bot studies utilitarian philosophy, it studies my coaching. And it then answers the question—in my voice, in a way I would answer it—in five seconds. This is mind-blowing. One of my clients, Dr. Patrick Frias—I'm a volunteer for the Rady Children's Hospital, he's going to be a co-CEO—he said, "What are the challenges and opportunities being a co-CEO?" I asked the computer bot. Boom, unbelievably good answer.

Kerr: And Marshall, a lot of people are interested right now in avatars and creating these bots and so forth. What do you think was important for you to be able to have success in this area? And as an example, you've got a lot of content, so that's got to be a very helpful starting point.

Goldsmith: To make this work, on a personal level, you have to have a lot of content. I mean, I've written or edited 56 books, so it's not like you have no content. You have to have a lot of followers. So on LinkedIn alone, I have 1.5 million followers. And then the hard part is, somebody's got to pay for it. And there's a wonderful company called Fractal Analytics is paying for this thing. And they have spent a huge amount of money, with eight engineers in India and countless hours putting this together. So this is not easy or simple or trivial, this is a lot of work has gone into this one. So I'm just very, very lucky to be able to do this. It's pretty amazing. You ask it deep questions. How is your coaching related to Buddhist philosophy? I'm a Buddhist. I've read 400 books on Buddhism. I mean, the answer is unbelievably good.

Kerr: Now, Marshall, I'd like to maybe continue with your Buddhism spirituality and so forth. Reflect a little bit about how that has informed your coaching or your teaching approach.

Goldsmith: Well, I'm actually not a metaphysical Buddhist, so I'm not a believer of spirits and demons and particularly all that stuff. I'm a philosophical Buddhist. My coaching is definitely influenced by Buddha. Feedforward, which is a key part of my coaching, I learned from Buddhism. Buddha said, "Only do what I teach if it works for you. If it doesn't work for you, it's okay. It doesn't mean it's a bad idea, it just doesn't work for you. It's okay." Well, feedforward, you ask for input, you listen, you thank people. You don't critique, you don't judge, you don't put them down. You don't promise to do it. It may not work for you. It's okay. You haven't lost anything. Just shut up and say thank you. Well, MarshallBot, my computer bot, is the same premise.

Kerr: Marshall, what other kind of future-of-work issues come up when you're interacting with your clients? And I know you focus on behavioral change. But, whether it's skills-based hiring or the new responsibilities of the CEO that we began with, what are the other big topics, beyond technology and AI, that really kind of jump out right now?

Goldsmith: One of them is global thinking. I mean, historically, leadership was local. Number two is cross-cultural appreciation—being able to work in different cultures. And, as opposed to the U.S. definition of diversity, which we have our pretty insular narrow definition of diversity here, looking at diversity on a much broader sense of cultural diversity around the world. Then number three is building alliances and partnerships. So more and more, leadership is not top down; it's across. And then number four, it's technological savvy, which we've talked about. Leaders can no longer hide from technology in almost any field. In almost any field, you have to at least understand how technology impacts your business. And then finally, I would say the leader is facilitator. And one of the great leaders at Harvard Business School is a teacher there, is Hubert Jolie. I'm very honored to have worked with Hubert. And Hubert, when he went to Best Buy, he wrote a book about it, called The Heart of Business. A great example of a leader who he didn't pretend to be better than people. He asked for input, he said, "I'm trying to get better. I need you more than you need me." Hubert was not an expert on Best Buy. Alan Mulally went to Ford. He wasn't an expert on Ford. He never worked for a car company. Well, you can't tell people what to do and how to do it. You have to ask, you have to listen, and you have to learn.

Kerr: I want to go back on that listening side, because I agree, it's so important, to something that you mentioned earlier where people give you biased feedback the further up the executive hierarchy you go. And you can go all the way to this sort of echo chamber that's around the corner office. And so how do you also kind of coach leaders to avoid hearing all that and getting lost in this echo chamber, versus the true listening part?

Goldsmith: The higher up you go, everything you just said doesn't become less important. The higher up you go, it becomes more and more and more important. Now, I'd give people a little chart to help them. I'd say, "Rank order your direct reports four ways." Number one, how much do they like me? Now, see, you don't know how much they like you. How much do you think they like you? Number two, how much are they like me? A different type of favoritism. A lot of engineers play favorites with other engineers. Now he's a jerk, but he's an engineer. They don't even know they're doing it. Number three, what's their contribution to the company and the customers? And number four, how much personal recognition do I give them? It's a great exercise. It gets people to think about it.

Kerr: As we get close to the end here, let me ask you to also reflect on the personal side of leadership here. And by that I mean, you've counseled in your work against being a workaholic, infinitely delaying enjoyment; obviously, not being egocentric. But talk to me a little bit about the personal side of the life of the executive and how they can balance against all these professional demands that are being placed upon them.

Goldsmith: It's a great question. And over Covid, as I said, with my friend, we spent 600 hours with 60 amazing people. I wrote a book about this called The Earned Life. And more than half of the discussion had nothing to do with work. More than half of the discussion had to do with life at home, happiness, stuff like that. And it's a pretty deep question, but I'm going to give you at least a subpoint for the answer. This is the point very few people understand: Happiness and achievement are independent variables. See, the great Western myth is, I will be happy when... When I get the money, status, BMW, condominium, promotion. Happiness and achievement are independent variables. Achieve to achieve, be happy to be happy, but never believe you're going to find peace and happiness through achievement or results. Well, the important point is, learn to accept the fact that to have a great life, I need to do three things. One, Hubert talks about in the book, I need to have a higher purpose. Two, you need achievement that is connected to that higher purpose. And three, you need to enjoy the process of life, itself, so you're not so wrapped up in this achievement, even for a higher purpose, that you forget to enjoy yourself.

Kerr: Marshall, if you had one bit of final advice for our listeners, what would it be?

Goldsmith: Imagine you're 95 years old and you're getting ready to die. What advice would the wise 95-year-old you—who knows what mattered in life and what didn't, what was important and what wasn't—have in terms of a performance appraisal, that is the only one that will matter. Some friends of mine interviewed old folks who are dying, got this question, "What advice would you have?" Personal side, three themes. Theme number one we've already discussed, be happy now. Number two, friends and family. Don't get so busy climbing that ladder of success, you forget the people who love you. And then number three, go for it. Your higher purpose, you got a dream, go for it. May not win, at least you tried. Business advice isn't much different. Number one, life is short, have fun. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, find someplace else. Number two, do whatever you can do to help people. And then finally, just go for it. Go for it. "Hey, man, I went and at least I tried." And then finally, my mission. My mission is, I've grown old, pretty simple, just hope to help people have just a little better life. So I hope me, something I've written, my computer bot will help you have a little better life.

Kerr: Marshall Goldsmith is the author of a number of books, including What Got You Here Won't Get You There, and also, more recently, The Earned Life. Marshall, thanks for joining us today.

Goldsmith: Thank you so much for inviting me.

Kerr: We hope you enjoy the Managing the Future of Work podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts. You can find out more about the Managing the Future of Work Project at our website hbs.edu/managingthefutureofwork. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter.