Qualities of great leaders: heart and backbone

In this episode of Let Go & Lead, renowned author and leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith talks with Maril about the hard work of becoming a better leader — work that is, in his words, "incredibly easy to understand and difficult to do."

Across this wide-ranging conversation, Marshall and Maril touch on cognitive dissonance theory, and the "superstition trap" that leaders often fall into. Marshall introduces the idea of happiness as a product of alignment between aspirations, ambitions and day-to-day actions; and the deep mindset shift to go from being a high individual achiever to an effective leader of an organization.

 Learn about:

7:39 The Building Blocks of Discipline from "The Earned Life"

13:18 Finding true happiness

19:16 Motivating behavioral change in your people

21:49 Why following up is vital to making change happen

25:50 The path to achieving genuine success

29:36 Why results are a poor measure of success

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Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is a member of the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame.  He is the only two-time recipient of the Thinkers 50 #1 Leadership Thinker in the World. He has been ranked as the World's #1 Executive Coach and Top Ten Business Thinker for eight years. Marshall was chosen as the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Award for Leadership by the Harvard Institute of Coaching.

Dr. Goldsmith, a New York Times #1 bestselling author, has written or edited 51 books which have sold over 3 million copies, been translated into 32 languages and become bestsellers in 12 countries.  Amazon recently recognized the '100 Best Leadership & Success Books Ever Written'  — and included Marshall's Triggers and What Got You Here Won't Get You There. He is the only living author with two books on the list. His other bestsellers include: MOJO, Succession: Are You Ready?, The Leader of the Future and How Women Rise (with lead author Sally Helgesen). His new NYT bestseller, The Earned Life, is an Amazon Editor's Choice for Book of the Year So Far in 2022.

Marshall's acknowledgements include: Global Gurus — Corps D 'Elite Award for Lifetime Contribution in both Leadership and Coaching, Harvard Business Review — World's #1 Leadership Thinker, Institute for Management Studies — Lifetime Achievement Award for Teaching, American Management Association — 50 great thinkers who have influenced the field of management and BusinessWeek — 50 great leaders in America.  His life is featured in the documentary movie, The Earned Life, and the New Yorker profile, "The Better Boss."

Dr. Goldsmith served as a Professor of Management Practice at the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business.  His doctoral degree is from UCLA's Anderson School of Management, where he was the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year. His MBA is from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, where he was the Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year.  He is one of a select few executive coaches who has worked with over 200 major CEOs and their management teams. He served on the Advisory Board of the Peter Drucker Foundation for 10 years. He has been a volunteer teacher for U.S. Army Generals, Navy Admirals, Girl Scout executives and leaders of the International and American Red Cross — where he was a National Volunteer of the Year.

Dr. Goldsmith has over 1.4 million followers on LinkedIn and over 3 million views on YouTube.  Hundreds of his articles, interviews, columns and videos are available (at no charge) online at www.MarshallGoldsmith.com. People from around the world have viewed, read, listened to, downloaded or shared his resources tens of millions of times.

ABOUT LET GO & LEAD

Let Go & Lead is a leadership community created by Maril MacDonald, founder and CEO of Gagen MacDonald. Maril brings together provocateurs, pioneers, thought leaders and those leading the conversation around culture, transformation, and change. 

Over the course of the past 12 years, Let Go & Lead has existed in many forms, from video interviews to resource guides to its current iteration as a podcast. At its core, it remains a place where people can access a diversity of perspectives on interdisciplinary approaches to leadership. Maril is also working on a book incorporating these insights gathered over the past several years from global leaders and change makers.  

To date, Maril has interviewed over 120 leaders — from business to academia and nonprofits to the arts — through the years. In each conversation, from personal anecdotes to ground-breaking scientific analysis, she has probed the lessons learned in leadership. From these conversations, the Let Go & Lead framework has emerged. It is both a personal and organizational resource that aims to serve the individual leader or leadership at scale. 

ABOUT GAGEN MACDONALD

At Gagen MacDonald, we are dedicated to helping organizations navigate the human struggle of change. We are a people-focused consulting firm, and our passion is improving the employee experience — for everyone. For almost 25 years, we have been working with companies to create clarity from chaos by uniting employees across all levels around a single vision so they can achieve results and realize their future.

We have been a pioneer in bringing humanity to strategy execution, leading in areas such as organizational communication, culture, leadership, and employee engagement.

Our Vision is to lift all humanity by transforming the companies that transform the world.

Full episodes also available on:  

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/let-go-lead-with-maril-macdonald/id1454869525  

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Gaf7JXOckZMtkpsMtnjAj?si=WZjZkvfLTX2T4eaeB1PO2A  

Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9sZXRnb2xlYWQubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M  

Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/let-go-lead  

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Gagen MacDonald is a strategy execution consulting firm that specializes in employee engagement, culture change and leadership development. Learn more at http://www.gagenmacdonald.com.