Top 70 Marshall Goldsmith Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “What got you here won’t get you there.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

2. “Those who lead by example and demonstrate passion for what they do make it much easier for their followers to do the same.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

3. “Great leaders encourage leadership development. By openly developing themselves.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

4. “Leadership is providing inspiration and vision, then developing and empowering others to achieve this vision.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

5. “To help others develop, start with yourself.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

6. “Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

7. “To help others develop, start with yourself! When the boss acts like a little god and tells everyone else they need to improve, that behavior can be copied at every level of management. Every level then points out how the level below it needs to change. The end result: No one gets much better.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

Featured in: Boss Quotes

8. “When we do what we have to do we are compliant. When we do what we choose to do we are committed.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

9. “The best knowledge workers are working for more than money.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

10. “Every decision that affects our lives will be made by the person who has the power to make that decision, not the ‘right’ person or the ‘smartest’ person or the ‘best’ person. Make peace with this fact.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

11. “After living with their dysfunctional behavior for so many years, people become invested in defending their dysfunctions rather than changing them.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

12. “Anybody can change, but they have to want to change.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

13. “Structure not only increases our chance of success, it makes us more efficient at it.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

14. “The major challenge of most executives is not understanding the practice of leadership – it is practicing their understanding of leadership.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

15. “Never confuse acquiring degrees with wisdom.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

16. “If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

17. “The only way to find happiness is to understand that happiness is not out there. It’s in here. And happiness is not next week. It’s now.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

18. “Peter Drucker, who said, “Our mission in life should be to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart or right we are.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

19. “People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

20. “Change is not a one-way street- it involves two parties: the person who is changing and the people who notice it.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

21. “Never wrestle with a pig – because you both get dirty but the pig loves it.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

22. “Leadership is not about me. It is all about them.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

23. “Fate is the hand of cards we’ve been dealt. Choice is how we play the hand.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

24. “Almost everyone I meet is successful because of doing a lot of things right, and almost everyone I meet is successful in spite of some behavior that defies common sense.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

25. “The only way to cure the disease is to find happiness and meaning now.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

26. “When you start a sentence with “no,” “but,” “however,” or any variation thereof, no matter how friendly your tone or how many cute mollifying phrases you throw in to acknowledge the other person’s feelings, the message to the other person is You are wrong.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

27. “The best way that we can begin to produce positive change is to make peace with what is in ourselves and others, and then work to move forward and make life even better.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

28. “Successful people never drink from a glass that’s half empty.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

29. “People don’t get better without follow-up. So let’s get better at following up with our people.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

30. “If you aren’t opening doors for people, you are closing them!”

— Marshall Goldsmith

31. “It works because helping people be “right” is more productive than proving them “wrong.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

32. “People will do something – including changing their behavior – only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

33. “But for some reason, many people enjoy living in the past, especially if going back there lets them blame someone else for anything that’s gone wrong in their lives. That’s when clinging to the past becomes an interpersonal problem. We use the past as a weapon against others.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

34. “Improvement is hard. If it were easy, we’d already be better.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

35. “The greatest challenge in behavioral change is not knowing what to do – the greatest challenge is doing it!”

— Marshall Goldsmith

36. “We can’t admit that we need to change – either because we’re unaware that a change is desirable, or, more likely, we’re aware but have reasoned our way into elaborate excuses that deny our need for change.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

37. “Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

38. “If you want to change anything about yourself, the best time to start is now. Ask yourself, “What am I willing to change now?” Just do that. That’s more than enough. For now.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

39. “An excuse explains why we fell short of expectations after the fact. Our inner beliefs trigger failure before it happens. They sabotage lasting change by canceling its possibility. We employ these beliefs as articles of faith to justify our inaction and then wish away the result. I call them belief triggers.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

40. “The extraordinary power of influence is now within everyone’s reach. Recent graduates, executive assistants, project managers, and business leaders can all benefit from Monarth’s simple steps for ‘getting everyone to follow your lead.’”

— Marshall Goldsmith

41. “But the higher up you go in the organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make it about winning yourself.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

42. “Research indicates that the desire to achieve the skills associated with success is more highly correlated with achievement than the desire for success itself.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

43. “Understanding the past is perfectly admissible if your issue is accepting the past. But if your issue is changing the future, understanding will not take you there.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

44. “Sometimes the better part of valor – and common sense – is saying, “I’ll pass.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

45. “The only natural law I’ve witnessed in three decades of observing successful people’s efforts to become more successful is this: People will do something – including changing their behavior – only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

46. “The more aware we are, the less likely any trigger, even in the most mundane circumstances, will prompt hasty unthinking behavior that leads to undesirable consequences.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

47. “If you’ve ever binge-watched a season or two of a TV show on Netflix when you should be studying, or finishing an assignment, or going to sleep, you know how an appealing distraction can trigger a self-defeating choice.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

48. “One of the greatest mistakes of successful people is the assumption, “I am successful. I behave this way. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way!” The challenge is to make them see that sometimes they are successful in spite of this behavior.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

49. “If you want to succeed at goal setting, you have to face the reality of the effort and the payoff before you begin. Realize that the ‘quick fix’ and the ‘easy solution’ may not provide the ‘lasting fix’ and the ‘meaningful solution.’ Lasting goal achievement requires lots of time, hard work, personal sacrifice, ongoing effort, and dedication to a process that is maintained over years. And even if you can pull that off, the rewards may not be all that you expect.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

50. “The more we are committed to believing that something is true, the less likely we are to believe that its opposite is true, even in the face of clear evidence that shows we are wrong.”

— Marshall Goldsmith