Today, March 20, Marshall Goldsmith turns 74. Continuing to chug along toward what will probably eventually be 50 books published and 12 million air miles flown, don’t expect him to slow down anytime soon. When he’s not in Nashville, with neighbors such as Taylor Swift and Nicole Kidman, you can expect him to be doing his thing in some far-flung corner of the globe.
For many years, Marshall has been considered the world’s foremost executive leadership coach. He’s helped a vast array of leaders ranging from Alan Mulally, former CEO of Ford Motor Company, to Pau Gasol, NBA superstar.
Looking back on his life, one wouldn’t necessarily predict this outcome. Marshall grew up in a small town in rural Kentucky, Valley Station. It had two gas pumps, both of which Marshall learned to operate.
Economically, his parents were poor yet from his mom who’d had two years of college, Marshall developed a passion for learning. Despite his high school coming in second-to-last academically in Kentucky, Marshall persevered. A perfect score on the SAT math test enabled him to get a scholarship to Rose–Holman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Subsequently, Marshall obtained a master’s degree in business at Indiana University, Bloomington, and then a Ph.D. in business from the University of California Los Angeles where he focused on organization behavior.
While getting his Ph.D. and then teaching at Loyola Marymount for a number of years, Marshall was blessed to learn from some of the masters in organization and situational leadership, including Warren Bennis, Bob Tannenbaum, and, most importantly, Paul Hersey.
Marshall’s speaking career had a serendipitous beginning. Paul Hersey called him and said, “I’m in a bind. I’m double-booked. Can you cover a speaking event for me?” Marshall wasn’t fully confident but when told there’d be a $1,000 fee, he said, “Absolutely!” (Marshall was then making $15,000 per year.) As Marshall recounts, initially the audience was disappointed and even angry that they weren’t getting the great Paul Hersey, but then they settled in and “liked what I had to say.” Marshall adds, “So I thought, ‘Hey – maybe I could do this again!’”
Fast forward to today and Marshall as speaker is sought after throughout the globe. In addition, along with his longtime friend and colleague, Frank Wagner, and the late Chris Coffey, Marshall has created one of the largest and most respected executive coaching organizations in the world, Stakeholder Centered CoachingÒ, which is modeled on his core coaching concepts.
Marshall feels gratitude for how his colleagues have helped scale his work. He laments Chris’s sudden, unexpected passing last year. “Chris didn’t have the research or educational background Frank and I had,” Marshall says, “Yet he was probably our best coach. Almost religiously, he implemented the coaching process and was incredibly successful in producing positive results.”
Marshall is quick to deflect his enormous success. “I’ve been incredibly lucky,” he says, adding that “anyone who thinks their success is a function of talent alone is both wrong and arrogant.”
Marshall’s coaching philosophy is simple: “I help make successful people more successful,” he states. “At the end of the day, it’s not about me the coach. It’s about the leader I’m coaching. If the leader possesses the humility to recognize he or she isn’t perfect and has room to grow, the courage to try things outside of his or her comfort zone, and the discipline to follow up and follow through, success will follow.”
As Marshall states, the “bottom line” is not the coach; it’s the commitment the leader makes to the coaching process. He adds that one of his greatest coaching successes was former Ford CEO, Alan Mulally. “Alan,” he says, “simply grabbed and ran with everything. Pretty much all I had to do was get out of his way, observe, and applaud.”
Now, as an established septuagenarian, Marshall has been increasingly focusing on giving back or, in his preferred way of describing it, “paying it forward.” This includes donating his time, energy, and even intellectual property to leaders engaged in making the world a better place. He started a movement, the 100 Coaches Project, in which he teaches others all he knows for free with the promise they will do the same with others when they get older. Of all his accomplishments, Marshall is most proud of Stakeholder Centered Coaching® and his 100 Coaches Project.
In addition, there’s now the Paying It Forward program with Stakeholder Centered CoachingÒ by which leaders of nonprofit organizations throughout the world receive six-month coaching engagements from certified coaches without charge.
After Marshall blows out his 74 birthday candles, what’s next? All I can say to the reader is this: Much more is still to come. Happy birthday Marshall and we look forward to your next book, idea, and innovation.
I’ll leave the last word to basketball great Pau Gasol: “Best wishes to Marshall on his 74th anniversary! I hope he continues to inspire us all. An admirable person whose books have guided me for years. Happy birthday my friend! I wish you the best health to continue making a great impact in our world.”
