5 - Art of asking good questions - Marshall Goldsmith – A masterclass on Executive Coaching

Marshall speaks about how he has thought about staying relevant over the 40+ years in the profession. He speaks about the Buddhist concept of starting a new life with every breath. He speaks about how we need to think about each breath, each moment and each day as a new beginning and not live in the past.

Marshall speaks about the advice that he once got from Alan Mulally about how he needs to be thoughtful about the clients he works with. Marshall speaks about some of the criteria he uses to pick the clients he works with. 1) Courage to look in the mirror 2) Humility to admit that they can improve 3) Discipline to do the hard work.

Marshall speaks about how one could think about becoming the world’s best at something. He speaks about leveraging parallel experts (people who are experts in an adjacent yet related space) and developing one’s own point of view and a voice.

Marshall speaks about the challenges in getting behaviours to stick and the need for a Coach to keep you accountable and ensure that you be at it. He speaks about how he gets somebody to call him every day to get him to ask him a few questions around areas he wants to improve and how that has helped him with behaviour change.

Marshall speaks about the 6 questions that he often asks the leaders he works with. 1) Did you do your best to set clear goals 2) Did you do your best to make progress towards achieving your goals 3) Did you do your best to find meaning 4) Did you do your best to be happy 5) Did you do your best to be fully engaged 6) Did you do your best to build positive relationships

Marshall speaks about how we should think about what matters in the end and use that to guide our actions and choices today. He says that old people don’t regret the risks they took and failed. They regret the risks that they never took.