Leadership coach and adjunct Tuck School of Business Executive Education professor Marshall Goldsmith never stops moving. With roughly 10 million American Airlines frequent flier miles and homes in California and New York, Goldsmith is on a plane at least 200 days a year, according to his daughter, Kelly Goldsmith. As an executive educator, Marshall Goldsmith works with high-profile leaders from major companies including Alan Mulally, chief executive officer of Ford Motor Company, and Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of Girl Scouts of America and most recently signed College President Jim Yong Kim as a client.
Goldsmith began coaching Kim two months ago at Kim's request, Kim said. To help determine Kim's strengths and weaknesses as a leader, Goldsmith will conduct interviews with members of Kim's leadership team in the near future as part of Goldsmith's "360-degree" feedback method of coaching, according to Kim. Once Goldsmith has evaluated Kim through the eyes of those who work with him, he will create a specialized regimen of leadership tactics and tips for Kim to follow, Goldsmith said.
Coach Goldsmith
Goldsmith's 2007 New York Times best-selling book, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There," won him the Harold Longman Award for the best business book of the year, according to Tuck's website. In 2010, Goldsmith wrote "Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It," with Mark Reiter.
Goldsmith has been coaching for over 30 years and currently splits his time between delivering lectures, teaching classes, coaching executives and writing books and articles, he said.
As a coach, Goldsmith helps clients break habits that hold them back from success.
"I teach my clients to ask for input, to learn to be quiet and listen to people," he said.
The majority of executives' leadership weaknesses stem from an over-active ego, Goldsmith said.
"It's very hard for mega-successful people who are used to winning all the time not to win," he said.
Goldsmith's "gregarious" personality and ability to help top executives gain insight into their own weaknesses help him assemble successful action plans with his clients, according to Al Vicere, a professor at Pennsylvania State University's Smeal College of Business who has known Goldsmith for approximately 15 years.
Sally Helgesen, an author of leadership development books who has known Goldsmith for approximately 16 years, said Goldsmith's "magnetic" optimism and keen perception of his clients' weaknesses make him a "great" coach.
"The advice that he offers is rooted in a level of understanding of how to move people and organizations forward that is probably pretty much unmatchable," she said.
An added benefit of working with Goldsmith is gaining access to his "extraordinary" network, Helgesen said.
"His clients benefit hugely from who is in his network [and] who his connections are," she said. "He is very proactive in sharing that."
Goldsmith and Kim
Kim is one of Goldsmith's two "pro bono" clients this year, Kim said. The other client is The Nature Conservancy CEO Mark Tercek, whose daughter, Ali Tercek '11, attends Dartmouth. Goldsmith said he does not accept money from his clients unless they improve and does not charge nonprofit organizations or the military for his services.
"Marshall's time is very valuable, but I personally feel very lucky that he agreed to work with me," Kim said.
Kim said he realized the value of working with a professional leadership coach after participating in the Kellogg National Leadership Program between 1993 and 1996. The program brought together 45 leaders from business, academia and the military to improve their leadership skills over a three-year period, and included an "incredibly useful" week working with a leadership coach at the Gallup Leadership Institute in Nebraska, Kim said.
While serving as director of the HIV/AIDS division of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, Kim found working with renowned leadership coach Ian Martin "enormously helpful" when faced with "major upheavals" in his work, he said.
"It was really quite natural for me when I came to Dartmouth to at some point start thinking about working with a leadership coach," Kim said.
Paul Argenti, a management and corporation communication professor in Tuck's Executive Education program, recommended Goldsmith as the "best guy in the country" for executive leadership training, Kim said.
"Marshall is not about psychoanalyzing your relationship with your mother," Kim said. "He is about how to go forward and actually get better, and I just love that about him."
Kim said he hopes to incorporate more leadership training into Dartmouth students' educations at the College.
"We're really interested in expanding leadership training and leadership work for all of our students at [the College]," Kim said.
Personality and Beginnings
Goldsmith's clients responds so well to him due to his "absolute and fearless directness" and a "sly and wicked sense of humor," Helgesen said.
"He has an interesting blend of being a total realist but being very sunny in terms of his disposition," she said. "He has this attitude of real abundance and spontaneous generosity."
Goldsmith brings his energy and passion to his personal life, Kelly Goldsmith, a marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said. Goldsmith has been married to his wife Lyda, a clinical psychologist, for 36 years.
Kelly Goldsmith said her father "is not like everyone else's dad."
"He really has a boundless energy he seems like a genetic anomaly," she said. "Whatever there is to be done that's fun and amazing, he'll want to do it, regardless of context."
Goldsmith became involved with leadership coaching somewhat by accident, after his mentor executive development professional and founder of the widely-used situational leadership model Paul Hersey was double-booked for speaking engagements and asked Goldsmith to take his place at an event. The then 28-year-old Goldsmith taught a leadership program for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company executives and realized he had found his professional passion, Goldsmith said.
Raised in a small town in Kentucky, Goldsmith was the first in his family to attend college and never thought he would one day advise some of the most successful CEOs and executives in the country, he said. After studying engineering at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana, Goldsmith said he became "tired of math."
Goldsmith said that as a post-graduate, he had to decide between signing a job offer with IBM or accepting a four-year fellowship to pursue a PhD in organizational behavior at University of California, Los Angeles. Goldsmith said he ultimately opted to pursue his PhD, thinking, "Why not?"
Now, Goldsmith said his jet-setting lifestyle is more similar that of George Clooney's character, Ryan Bingham, in the movie "Up In the Air" (2009).Instead of criss-crossing the country to fire people at downsizing companies, however, Goldsmith is glad he works to further his client's professional lives.
