Published: July 04, 2008 09:20 am            

He coaches the corporate elite

By Mark Bennett_The Tribune Star

TERRE HAUTE, Ind.

Marshall Goldsmith travels the planet, coaching CEOs of major corporations, and earns an income - according to Forbes magazine - of $1.5 million.

Yet Goldsmith found his work ethic as a poor teenager, growing up in Valley Station, Ky.

He was 14 years old when his family home needed a roof. Goldsmith's father, a gas station owner, hired a local guy named Dennis Mudd to roof their house, and had Marshall help.

“After putting on that roof, Dennis Mudd looked at Dad and said, 'Bill, if this roof is of high quality, pay me, and if not, it's free,'” Goldsmith, now 59, recalled earlier this month. “I said, 'Man, that guy's got class.' So that's the way I work. If it's worth it, pay me. If it's not, it's free.”

Obviously, judging by his income, nearly 20 books he's authored or co-authored, and a long list of testimonials from executives at some of the world's most powerful corporations, Goldsmith's clients think he's worth it. He started coaching corporate leaders more than 30 years ago, and has drawn attention from, among many publications, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and Business Week. Goldsmith writes a weekly column for BusinessWeek.com that gets an average of 200,000 hits per week. His Web site MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com has been visited by people in 188 countries. And his 2007 New York Times best-seller book “What Got You Here Won't Get You There” has been translated into 20 languages.

Goldsmith had no clue of that destiny when he came from Kentucky to Terre Haute to study at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He was one of the first Rose students to pursue a major in mathematical economics, developed by Professor John Ying.

“When I was at Rose, my first year or so, I wasn't a great student at all. I was lucky to graduate,” Goldsmith said, though he did just that in 1970. “But my last year and a half, I did real well. I graduated from Rose in three years. I don't imagine too many people have done that.

“I'll tell you one thing about Rose - Rose is hard,” he added.

Goldsmith got verification of that recently on a call to coach a corporate CEO. After they linked up, Goldsmith discovered the CEO was also a Rose grad.

“We both agreed that after going to school there, the rest of life is easier,” Goldsmith said. “I got an M.B.A. at Indiana [University] and a Ph.D. at UCLA, and it was nothing after going to school there. It was hard. He said the same thing. He's the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company now, and said that wasn't as hard as going to school there.”

The lives of corporate CEOs aren't simple, though, despite those gawdy salaries so often seen in business news headlines.

“They're making much, much more money than they ever made before, but they're also under much, much more pressure,” Goldsmith explained by telephone from his home in Rancho Sante Fe, Calif. “You've got much more pressure now, making sure everything is perfect. They're under scrutiny. The business press is very critical today. These people are under a lot of pressure today.”

So those CEOs hire Goldsmith, and Goldsmith's fellow coaches from his company Marshall Goldsmith Partners LLC, to improve their leadership skills. Sometimes companies also call on Goldsmith to coach an up-and-coming executive they see as a potential CEO. In either case, Goldsmith starts that task by talking to everyone who works most closely around that executive.

“I don't deal with business issues. I'm not an expert on business strategy,” Goldsmith said. “My only area of expertise is behavioral. What I do is help executives seek positive, long-term change, and typically leadership behavior. So I give them feedback about how they're perceived by everyone around them, and then I help them pick what they want to approve, and then facilitate the process. Most of what they learn, they don't learn from me. They learn it from their co-workers.”

Sometimes, those perceptions are hard for an executive to accept.

On one of Goldsmith's coaching missions, a CEO had hired him to work with that firm's top five executives. The No. 2 guy, the chief operating officer, didn't like Goldsmith's honesty. Later, that same exec became the CEO of a different company, and that firm called Goldsmith for a leadership session.

Dumbfounded, Goldsmith tried to tactfully drop hints to the company that their new CEO may not remember him or their frictional experience. Goldsmith even sent them his photo and asked them to show it to the boss. He still wanted Goldsmith to come there as a coach, so Goldsmith did. The CEO insisted on working in tandem with Goldsmith. Through the first couple sessions, the past difficulties weren't mentioned. Finally, Goldsmith confronted the guy, and said, “I thought you couldn't stand me.” The CEO acknowledged as much.

Finally the guy explained why he'd sought out Goldsmith for his own firm.

“Six months later, you know what I decided? You told me the truth,” he told Goldsmith. “I didn't want to hear it, but you were telling me the truth. You had the guts enough to stand up and tell me the truth. I tried to kill you, but you stood there and told me the truth, whether I wanted to hear it or not. You were right.”

Then the guy added, “I'm the CEO now, and nobody's going to tell me the truth.”

Bosses hear “yes” more than pure truth, Goldsmith said.

“One of my clients is the CEO of a huge company and he's just retiring,” he recalled. “And I asked him, 'What did you learn about leadership since you've been a CEO?' And he said, 'I learned a very hard lesson - my suggestions become orders. If they're smart, they're orders. If they're stupid, they're orders. If I want them to be orders, they're orders. If I don't want them to be orders, they're orders.”

So Goldsmith gets those working around CEOs to vocalize their perceptions honestly. Communication improves, along with the strength of their leadership, in most cases. If not, then Goldsmith expects no pay.

“The measure of my success with my coaching clients is not what I think,” he said. “It's not what they think. It's what everyone around them thinks.”

He stays busy getting those assessments. Goldsmith travels all over Earth, because the 21st-century business world is global. He's racked up 9.5 million frequent flyer miles on American Airlines. They have two grown children, Kelly - a Duke grad with a Yale master's degree who was a contestant on “Survivor: Africa” - and Bryan, a college student in Orange County.

“Over the years, I figure I've been gone about 185 days a year from home, and I've been doing it 30 years. So that's about 15 years on the road,” he said. “But I'm home half the time.”

Work brings him back to Indiana occasionally. High school reunions take Goldsmith back to Valley Station, Ky. He still remembers the lesson he learned in that small town from Dennis Mudd.

“Dennis Mudd, in many ways, has more character than I have,” he explained. “If I don't get paid, my life's not going to change that much - at least now it wouldn't. But that guy needs the money.”

        

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