This book describes how to recognize many of the pitfalls of leadership, and how to use feedback gathered from 360 degree reviews to grow as a leader. It's an extremely impressive accomplishment for a book to achieve five star ratings on Amazon. Yet over 95% of the over 100 people who have reviewed this book rate it that way! The author, Marshall Goldsmith, is a noted consultant to Fortune 500 CEOs. He summarizes those pitfalls in 5 main areas:

1. Overestimating our contributions to a project
2. Taking credit for the successes that belong to others
3. Having an elevated opinion of our professional skills and our standing among our peers
4. Ignoring the failures and time-consuming dead-ends we create
5. Exaggerating our projects' impact on net profits by discounting the real and hidden costs built into them

Unlike many books that emphasize what to do more of, Goldsmith instead teaches us what to stop doing, and highlights 20 workplace habits that must be broken. They are the:

1. Need to win at all costs
2. Desire to add our two cents to every discussion
3. Need to rate others and impose our standards on them
4. Needless sarcasm and cutting remarks that we think make us sound witty and wise
5. Overuse of "No," "But" or "However."
6. Need to show people we are smarter than they think we are
7. Use of emotional volatility as a management tool
8. Need to share our negative thoughts, even if not asked
9. Refusal to share information in order to exert an advantage
10. Inability to praise and reward
11. Annoying way in which we overestimate our contribution to any success
12. Need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it
13. Need to deflect blame from ourselves and onto events and people from our past
14. Failure to see that we are treating someone unfairly
15. Inability to take responsibility for our actions
16. Act of not listening
17. Failure to express gratitude
18. Need to attack the innocent, even though they are usually only trying to help us
19. Need to blame anyone but ourselves
20. Excessive need to be "me."
21. Goal obsession at the expense of a larger mission.

We all hate it when others exhibit such behaviors towards ourselves, but tend to have blind spots when we do these same things. This book can help realize when that occurs, and suggests four ways to move forward, with the cooperation of your co-workers:

1. Let go of the past
2. Tell the truth
3. Be supportive and helpful, not cynical or negative
4. Pick something to improve yourself - so everyone is focused more on 'improving' than 'judging'

Great insights, and advice!

ASIN: 

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

Author: Mark Reiter, Marshall Goldsmith

Publisher: Hyperion (2007)

Binding: Hardcover, 256 pages