The Hindu Business Line : Behaviour bottlenecks

You may think you have all the answers but to others that may reek of arrogance. You think you are contributing to a situation with helpful comments; others see you as butting in. You pat yourself for effective delegation, not knowing that behind your back your colleagues see you as shirking responsibilities. You think you are holding your tongue, but others take it as unresponsiveness…

These are some of the situations that Marshall Goldsmith paints in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There ( www.vivagroupindia.com). “It’s not that these people don’t know who they are or where they’re going or what they want to achieve,” he explains. “In fact, they tend to be very successful (and their self-esteem can often be excessive). What’s wrong is that they have no idea how their behaviour is coming across to the people who matter – their bosses, colleagues, subordinates, customers, and clients.”

A valuable section in the book is about the 20 habits that are holding you back from the top, and these include: winning too much, adding too much value, passing judgment, making destructive comments, starting with negative qualifiers, speaking when angry, failing to give proper recognition, claiming credit that we don’t deserve, making excuses, clinging to the past, playing favourites, refusing to express regret, punishing the messenger, not listening, passing the buck, and so on.

Goldsmith offers hope to those who would like to overcome the predicament. ‘Feedback’ is the first in the list of seven tips. “Treat every piece of advice as a gift or a compliment and simply say, ‘Thank you.’ No one expects you to act on every piece of advice. If you learn to listen – and act on the advice that makes sense – the people around you may be thrilled.” Listening is another saving technique discussed in the book. “Eighty per cent of our success in learning from other people is based upon how well we listen,” the author avers.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com