The key ideas

Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts, Becoming the Person You Want to Be

Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter, 2015

Why do we promise ourselves in the morning to keep our cool, then lose it again by evening? Marshall Goldsmith, a coach to leaders of major companies, has an answer: our environment pushes us. People and situations trigger the wrong behavior in us. This book is about noticing those triggers, buying yourself a pause before you respond, and checking your own effort honestly every evening.

Who it is for

For anyone who has promised themselves more than once that they would change and slipped back into old ways. And for leaders who care how other people see their behavior.

Getting angry at people for being who they are makes as much sense as getting angry at a chair for being a chair.

He fell, and there was no one to call

Phil, an acquaintance of Marshall Goldsmith, fell at home. He was alone, he was hurting, and he picked up his phone to call for help. Scrolling through his contacts, he realized something unpleasant: there was not one friend he could call at a moment like this without feeling awkward. When it was all over, he told himself one simple thing: I need to learn how to make friends.

Goldsmith has spent many years working as a coach to leaders of major companies, helping successful adults change their behavior. He wrote this book with Mark Reiter. Its key word, trigger, means any stimulus that changes our thoughts and actions. The fall worked as a trigger for Phil: in a single minute he saw the person he had become, and he wanted to be someone else.

The author starts with two truths. First, meaningful behavioral change is very hard. Second, no one can make us change unless we truly want to. And the most powerful source of triggers, in his view, is our environment. Day after day, people and situations push us to behave in ways that do not match how we see ourselves.

Next, you will learn which thoughts we use to get in our own way, and why a good plan falls apart by evening. There is also a short question that keeps you out of pointless arguments. And at the end comes the book's main tool: the questions Goldsmith has asked himself every evening for years.

Understanding is not doing

Goldsmith collected fifteen beliefs we use to excuse doing nothing. He calls them belief triggers. They sound like common sense, which makes them hard to spot. But each one hands us permission, in advance, not to change.

First on the list: if I understand what to do, I will do it. It sounds logical. But as the author writes, understanding does not guarantee doing. A person can know perfectly well that they should interrupt colleagues less, and keep interrupting them for years.

Another belief: today is a special day. A holiday, a vacation, a hard week, and the rule can wait. Goldsmith's answer is blunt. If we really want to change, we cannot let ourselves off the hook every time the calendar offers something more pleasant.

One more: I can judge my own behavior accurately. The author's surveys show that most people think they are better than average. That is why, in Goldsmith's view, the people around us often see us more clearly than we see ourselves.

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About the author

Marshall Goldsmith is an American executive coach with a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. For many years he has helped leaders of major companies change their behavior. Mark Reiter, his co-author, has written several books with him.

All books by this author: Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter

Terms from the book

  • Ford
  • Kelly
  • Drucker
  • Coach
  • Self-control
  • Trigger
  • Phil: An acquaintance of Goldsmith's whose story opens the book. After falling at home, alone, he realized there was no one he could call.
  • Belief triggers: The author's term. Fifteen familiar thoughts, like "today is a special day", that sound reasonable but give us permission in advance not to change.
  • Planner: An image from the book, not a scientific term. The part of us that makes plans and believes the day will go by without interruptions.
  • Impulse: A sudden urge to respond to a stimulus right away, for example by snapping back. In the author's model it sits between the trigger and the action.
  • AIWATT: The author's abbreviation for the question: Am I willing, at this time, to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic? You ask it of yourself before getting into an argument.
  • UCLA: The University of California, Los Angeles, one of the largest universities in the United States.
  • Wheel of change: The author's model of four kinds of change: creating something new, preserving what is good, eliminating what does harm, and accepting what cannot be changed.
  • Active questions: Questions about your own effort, not about what others have done for you. They begin with the words "Did I do my best to...".
  • Mulally: Alan Mulally, an American executive. He ran Ford from 2006 to 2014 and is known for his weekly meetings with color-coded progress reports.
  • Daily questions: The author's method: a list of questions about effort that a person answers every evening with a score from 1 to 10.

All terms

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