What Got You Success in the Past May Be the Very Thing Preventing Future Growth. New Levels Require New Behaviors and Mindsets.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Regularly Reassess Your Behavior</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Stay Adaptable</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Prepare to Evolve Your Leadership Style</li></ul>

New Levels Require New Behaviors

Successful People Often Have "Success Delusions"- They Overrate Their Own Contributions and Resist Change.<ol><li class="ql-align-justify">Challenge Your Assumptions</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Invite Outside Perspectives</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Stay Humble</li></ol>

Success Can Blind You to the Need for Change

There are 20 common interpersonal habits, such as the need to win, giving unsolicited advice, criticizing, and not listening, that can sabotage otherwise talented individuals.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Identify your personal habits.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Work on one habit at a time.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Track your progress daily.</li></ul>

20 Bad Habits That Can Sabotage Your Success

"The higher you go in the organization, the more your problems are behavioral."

Behavioral change — not technical skills — is what separates great leaders from good ones. Soft skills become critical at higher leadership levels.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Prioritize Communication and Empathy</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Develop Trust</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Lead Through Influence, Not Control</li></ul>

Behavioral Skills Become More Important Than Technical Skills

You must be willing to receive honest feedback and future-focused "feedforward."Growth requires openness to hearing what you need to change.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Seek forward-looking advice.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Listen without defensiveness.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Thank those who help you.</li></ul>

Honest feedback and "feedforward" are critical

Sincere Apologies and Gratitude are powerful tools for repairing and strengthening professional relationships.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Offer Sincere Apologies</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Express Gratitude Frequently</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Repair and Deepen Connections</li></ul>

Apologizing and thanking others strengthens relationships

"Success is the enemy of change."

Small Behavior Changes Consistently Applied Are More Important Than Grand Overhauls.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Focus on Micro-Changes.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Practice Daily Discipline.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Celebrate Small Wins.</li></ul>

Small, consistent behavior changes drive real improvement

Listening More and Speaking Less Dramatically Increases Leadership Effectiveness.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Listen Actively Without Interrupting</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Reflect Back What You Hear</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Value Understanding Over Being Right</li></ul>

Listening is More Powerful than Speaking

By publicly committing to change and following up, you can build trust and accelerate progress.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Share your goals with others.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Invite them to hold you accountable.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Build credibility through consistency.</li></ul>

Publicly Commit to Your Change Efforts

Long-term leadership success is built on humility, persistence, and continuous personal evolution.Changing perception is often just as important as changing reality.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Embrace Lifelong Growth</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Accept Setbacks as Part of the Journey</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Keep Evolving Your Leadership Approach</li></ul>

Long-term Leadership Success Demands Humility and Persistence

"People will do something — including changing their behavior — only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests."

This review consists of a holistic overview of the book, which I think is missing from the other reviews. One of the biggest take aways I found though were the 20 Bad Habits that Sabotage your Success. If enough interest I can post those as well, they are very helpful to reference and review. 

Your hard work is paying off. You are doing well in your field. But there is something standing between you and the next level of achievement. That something may just be one of your own annoying habits. Perhaps one small flaw - a behaviour you barely even recognise - is the only thing that's keeping you from where you want to be. It may be that the very characteristic that you believe got you where you are - like the drive to win at all costs - is what's holding you back. As this book explains, people often do well in spite of certain habits rather than because of them - and need a "to stop" list rather than one listing what "to do". Marshall Goldsmith's expertise is in helping global leaders overcome their unconscious annoying habits and become more successful. His one-on-one coaching comes with a six-figure price tag - but in this book you get his great advice for much less. Recently named as one of the world's five most-respected executive coaches by Forbes, he has worked with over 100 major CEOs and their management teams at the world's top businesses. His clients include corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson and Johnson and GE.

books

Books

Marshall Goldsmith is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Marshall Goldsmith has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Marshall Goldsmith's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Marshall Goldsmith

What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Societies developed differently across the world primarily because of environmental and geographic factors, not because of biological differences among people.

Geographic Determinism:

Access to easily domesticable plants and animals allowed some societies (especially in Eurasia) to develop food surpluses, which supported larger, more complex societies.

Domestication of Plants and Animals:

Stable food supplies freed people from subsistence farming, enabling the rise of specialized professions (like soldiers, rulers, and inventors), which accelerated societal development.

Food Surpluses Enable Specialization:

“The striking differences between the long-term histories of peoples of the different continents have been due not to innate differences in the peoples themselves but to differences in their environments.”

Proximity to domesticated animals in Eurasia led to the development of deadly diseases (like smallpox), which devastated indigenous populations elsewhere during periods of conquest.

Germs as Weapons:

Societies with more dense populations and interactions were more likely to invent new technologies — and crucially, to spread and refine them — accelerating innovation over time.

Technological Innovation is Cumulative:

Eurasia’s east-west orientation allowed crops, animals, and ideas to spread more easily across similar latitudes and climates compared to continents like the Americas or Africa with north-south axes.

The East-West Axis Advantage:

“Eurasia’s success was due to its size and its east-west orientation. These factors led to a greater number of domesticated plants and animals and to more intense competition and innovation.”

Larger, food-producing populations were able to form complex, hierarchical political structures (chiefdoms, states, empires), facilitating large-scale cooperation, warfare, and conquest.

Political Organization and State Formation:

Societies that developed writing could transmit knowledge, coordinate large groups, maintain laws, and preserve innovations, giving them a significant advantage over non-literate societies.

Writing and Record-Keeping:

Eurasian societies developed advanced weapons, armor, and military strategies that, combined with germs, allowed relatively small forces to conquer larger indigenous populations elsewhere.

Military Power (Guns and Steel):

The book argues that global inequalities arose from geographic and environmental luck, not from differences in intelligence, morality, or inherent capabilities between peoples.

Rejecting Racial Explanations:

“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of differences among peoples themselves.”

I hope you all enjoy. After reading a few different summaries I was surprised by how inaccurate or incomplete they were. I hope this one does it better justice.

"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."—Bill Gates In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.

What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Jeremy Hutton