Transcript
Vasco Duart (0:00)
Hi, I'm your host, Vasco Duart. Welcome to the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast where we share tips and tricks from Scrum Masters around the world. Every day we bring you inspiring answers to important questions that all Scrum Masters face day after day. Welcome, Agile friends. My name is Vasco and we have for you today a star among the topic of leadership, Marshall Goldsmith in Daily. In this session, we're going to talk about leadership and AI in leadership specifically. Welcome, Marshall.
Marshall Goldsmith (0:38)
So happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Vasco Duart (0:41)
Well, it's an absolute pleasure to have you here. Both, of course, because of everything you've done. I mean, you've been a bestselling author several times in the New York Times list and sold over 3 million books. That's amazing. One could even say you're like the Taylor Swift of AI writing.
Marshall Goldsmith (1:04)
Now, that is a little bit of a stretch. As we discussed earlier, Taylor Swift does own the house across from me, so I am sort of her neighbor. She has 15 homes though, so I'm hardly her only neighbor.
Vasco Duart (1:19)
I'm sure she has many and of course been ranked twice as Thinkers 50, number one leadership thinker in the world and also a number one executive coach who's coached people leaders all over the world and been to more than 100 countries. Marshall started a project recently that takes advantage of AI to help leaders succeed, and we will be learning about that in this talk. So we'll talk with Marshall in a second. Let me just tell you that the Agile Online Summit has many more talks and you can check them all out@agileonlinesummit.com so make sure you check that out. But now let's get back to our guest and the topic of leadership. Now, Marshall, you have a long story in the field of leadership and leadership coaching, but what was that pivotal moment in your life that got you started thinking about and wanting to coach leaders all over the world?
Marshall Goldsmith (2:21)
Well, there are two things that happen, and number one, I've been phenomenally lucky. I think anyone who's successful says they're not lucky, is just arrogant. So I've been very, very lucky. When I was very young, I was just finished my PhD at UCLA, I met a very famous man named Dr. Paul Hersey. And he and Ken Blanchard invented something called situational leadership. So I was able to, I told Paul, I want to be like these guys when I grow up, like Paul, like Ken Blanchard. And I said, look, I'll sit in the back of the room and follow, follow. I'll follow you around, sit in the back of the room, serve coffee, do anything, just to learn. Well, that was smart. So one day he got double booked and Ken couldn't do it either. And he said, can you do what I do? I said, I don't know. He said, I'll pay a thousand dollars for a day. I was making $15,000 a year. I was brought up very poor and I was a 28 year old kid. I mean, $1,000 a day to a 28 year old kid 47 years ago, that was a lot of money. I said, yes, sir. So I do a program for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New York. They're incredibly angry when I show up because I'm not him. But I got ranked first place of all the speakers because I'm funny, having a good time. The other speakers are boring. They say, oh, send this guy again. He's good, he's good. Send him again. So he called me up, said, you want to do this again? Yeah, I'll do this again. So that's how I got into leadership development and in coaching. I was working with a CEO of a company called Warner Lambert, big drug company at the time. And he said, I had this young guy working for us, young, smart, dedicated, jerk. It'd be worth a fortune to me if you could change that kid's behavior. I said, I like fortunes, maybe I could help him. He said, I doubt it. I came up with an idea. I still work with a kid for a year, he gets better. Pay me if he doesn't get better is free. You know what he said? Sold. There was nothing called coaching. I just made this up. He got better, I got paid, and for 45 years I didn't get paid if my clients didn't get better. My whole coaching was done. Pay only after the results.
