Talking to Top Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith

Yesterday evening I had the unique opportunity to talk to Marshall Goldsmith who is considered by FORBES to be one of the Top 5 Executive Coaches in the US.

I was quite excited and somewhat nervous when I dialed his number. I guess he sensed that and suggested immediately to introduce himself first and then I would have the chance to introduce myself. This approach immediately broke my nervousness and the talk was very relaxed from that point.

I prepared a long list of questions, however, only approx. 50% of them I needed to ask, for the rest of them he gave the answers without me asking. I learned how he got into coaching and a few secrets of his outstanding success.

After talking about his work, I asked him whether he had a chance to have a look at my website which he confirmed. Then I asked him what he thinks about it and he said “It’s good.” Hmmm, I thought, this is a bit short, let me dig deeper and so I asked, “What do you think I could improve?” And then he took off and basically confirmed some thoughts I already had and that is that I need to become much more focused in what I am doing. He said that you will be considered as a top expert only if you narrow down your expertise to a few areas, even though you might be competent in a no. of other areas. The point is that you won’t get the credibility unless you clearly focus.

It is a leap I was hesitating to make but I realize more and more that this is a necessity to progress to a new level.

Also, I was asking him what he thinks about networking and he said that one can make a decent living from working within a network. However, you will be somewhat limited to this network. If you want to get broad exposure, then you must expose yourself. Good ways to do this are to get published (articles, books, etc.) and to do a lot of public speaking. A couple of months ago I started with such activities and very recently I even started writing a book about leadership which I plan to launch in Spring 2005.

After this phone conversation I am even more determined to follow my vision and to do the necessary. Marshall acted as a true ‘coach’, that is, he moved me forward faster than if I would have ‘walked’ by myself.