What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Stop trying to change people who are pursuing the wrong strategy for the organization.

When you start a sentence with “no,” “but,” “however,” or any variation thereof, no matter how friendly your tone or how many cute mollifying phrases you throw in to acknowledge the other person’s feelings, the message to the other person is You are wrong. It’s not, “I have a different opinion.” It’s not, “Perhaps you are misinformed.” It’s not, “I

The only natural law I’ve witnessed in three decades of observing successful people’s efforts to become more successful is this: People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.

Unlike feedback, which often introduces a discussion of mistakes and shortfalls, feedforward focuses on solutions, not problems. On the most elemental level, it works because people do not take feedforward as personally as feedback. Feedforward is not seen as an insult or a putdown. It is hard to get offended about a suggestion aimed at helping us

the higher up you go in the organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make it about winning yourself.

Stop trying to change people who don’t think they have a problem.

Stop trying to change people who should not be in their job.

When

The more you subsume your desire to shine, the more you will shine in the other person’s eyes.