Chicago, July 25 — Talent Management magazine has been awarded a bronze National AZBEE Award in the category of Regular Contributed Column (under 80,000 circulation). The award was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Business Publication Editors held in Kansas City, Mo.

The column, Full Potential, is written monthly by noted author and executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. "I feel honored that my writing in Talent Management has been recognized by the American Society of Business Publication Editors," Goldsmith said. "Given the incredible quality of thought leadership demonstrated by the nominated writers – this award will always mean a lot to me!"

Norm Kamikow, president and editor in chief of Talent Management magazine, said, "The AZBEE awards program is very competitive, with more than 2,300 entries – making it the largest business publishing competition of its type – and is a very prestigious acknowledgement of excellence by our peers. We are delighted to have columnists and contributors of the stature of Marshall Goldsmith writing for the magazine and honored their contributions are being so highly recognized."

Talent Management magazine, a publication of MediaTec Publishing Inc., is a valued resource for executives in the talent management and HR industries, delivering in-depth editorial coverage of the issues and strategies vital to their success. For more information about Talent Management magazine, visit www.talentmgt.com.

So what is all the fuss about?

I always find it interesting when non-Christian material focuses on Christian values like love, humility and discipline. Goldsmith tells leaders in this book that, when they receive feedback on how to improve or concerning some weakness, they should "shut up and say thank you." Meanwhile, most Christian leadership material would tell those trying to give such feedback to "shut up and touch not God's anointed." That's why I read a lot more secular leadership books than so-called Christian.

Unlike some of the other books I've reviewed, I think these two will appeal particularly to men: What Got You Here Won't Get You There "

Because you have done well in the past, you may be reluctant to change. Why should I? you ask. Look at all I've accomplished up until now by acting the way I do.

That's certainly true to some extent, Goldsmith concedes. But, he adds, invariably "all of us in the workplace delude ourselves about our achievements."

For instance, Goldsmith says, we may overestimate our contribution to a successful project and forget our failures and dead ends. Because we have in our heads an overly inflated picture of our accomplishments, it becomes very difficult to change, even if changing would lead to even far greater success.

All of us in the workplace delude ourselves about our achievements. -on What Got You Here Won't Get You There To overcome the problem, Goldsmith lays out a straightforward approach.

Leading executive coach Marshall Goldsmith's new book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, hit #1 on Amazon.com today -- an impressive feat for any book, let alone a business book. Surely, one reason why the book is #1 is that you don't have to an exec -- or even at work -- to benefit from it. I particularly liked Goldsmith's simple, smart advice on apologizing. He writes:

"Integrity has always been important and a vision," said Marshall Goldsmith, a leading executive coach and author of "Global Leadership: The Next Generation."

"But the reality is that will be important a thousand years from today, and would have been important a thousand years ago. The real differentiating variable in leadership today is the fact that leaders today manage knowledge workers."

That applies to not just the business world, but all aspects of leadership, he said. "The role of leadership has changed from the top-down -- 'I'm going to tell you what to do approach' -- to a more asking, listening and participating [approach]."

Included in that, he said, is the ability to share a tangible goal or vision. President John F. Kennedy's push to the moon and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech are shining, historical examples of such goals.

The Leader of the Future 2: Visions, Strategies and Practices for the New Era: Edited by Frances Hesselbein and Marshall Goldsmith Jossey-Bass, 318 pages, $27.95

Consider the leadership example of Frances Hesselbein.

She turned around the Girl Scouts of the USA two decades ago and now works to strengthen the non-profit sector as chairman of the Leader to Leader Institute — until 2002 known as the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Non-profit Management.

Hesselbein and Marshall Goldsmith, one of the USA's top executive coaches, edited the collection The Leader of the Future 2. Its 27 eloquent essays provide a kind of hopeful, idealistic best-case scenario for future leaders of non-profits and businesses.

This is not a cookie-cutter, how-to approach. The job of the essayists is to provide food for thought and goals. The high quality of writing here should inspire anyone who has aspirations for leadership.

The first Leader of the Future book was published in 1996, in a far different world — five years before 9/11 and the first of the corporate scandals and seven before the second invasion of Iraq. Not everyone had cellphones, Google wasn't around and globalization had not made the in-roads it has today.

But life today might be better for all of us if leaders paid attention to such themes from the collection as:

•Servant leadership. The concept first articulated by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s says leaders should serve others before they think of their own interests.

•Values and integrity. Joseph Maciariello, who collaborated on the last two books by the late Peter Drucker, notes Drucker's idea of spirit in performance, which can be elevated only when executives act with integrity.

•Sustainability. Leaders must take into consideration environmental issues and the importance of stakeholders beyond the immediate members of the organization.

•Global leadership. Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of The Change Masters, offers the concept of "cosmopolitan leaders." She says these people increasingly will come from Brazil, Russia, India and China and will be "innovative, diverse and values-oriented."

Self-Management: Stop trying to win

The number one challenge for successful people -- according to Marshall Goldsmith, who coaches many of them -- is to try to stop winning.

Their entire life has been focused on trying to outdo, and outsmart, and outwork others. But when they hit the top in an organization, their every suggestion is treated like an order. "In other words, you always get to win. You need to learn to let others win," he says in his blog.

He points to one CEO who had to teach himself before he spoke to stop, breathe in, and ask himself: Is it worth raising this issue? That CEO only manages to display such discipline about half the time, deciding that he may be right in what he wants to suggest but it's not worth intervening if employees are to develop and be empowered in their jobs.

Receiving feedback rarely ranks as one of work's more pleasurable activities.

Now, management guru Marshall Goldsmith has devised a concept he calls "feedforward" -- the focus being on how to do things better in the future, rather than raking over the past.

The fundamental problem with feedback is that there is nothing the recipient can do to change what has already occurred, Mr. Goldsmith, a California-based executive coach, said in Toronto this week at a convention of the Canadian Society for Training and Development.

In a rousing session, the unrelentingly cheerful Mr. Goldsmith had hundreds of delegates practice feedforward by turning to total strangers and confessing one aspect of their behaviour that they would like to improve.

Many said they wanted to be better listeners, some wanted to be more patient, less judgmental or better able to handle disappointment.

These were the rules: Delegates were to speak to as many randomly selected fellow participants as they could in 15 minutes, and ask each for two suggestions for the future that might help them achieve a positive change in their behaviour.

If the two people involved in the conversation knew each other, there was to be no reference to the past. Participants were to listen attentively to the suggestions of others, take notes and refrain from passing judgment on the advice they received. In other words, "that will never work" was not part of the approved script.

In turn, each participant was to ask the other person what he or she wanted to improve on and offer two suggestions.

The intent was not to suggest that managers should never give feedback or that performance appraisals should be abandoned, Mr. Goldsmith wrote in a background paper distributed to delegates.

There is no avoiding the fact that, at least once a year, employees need to know if their performance is meeting expectations, he wrote.

However, "feedforward can often be preferable to feedback in day-to-day interactions [and], aside from its effectiveness and efficiency, feedforward can make life a lot more enjoyable," he wrote.

Few employees relish being told by their manager "I have some feedback I want to share with you. Come to my office please," Mr. Goldsmith told delegates.

In theory, constructive feedback is supposed to focus on the performance, not the person, he said. In practice, however, almost all feedback is taken personally, no matter how it is delivered.

The beauty of feedforward is that it cannot be construed as criticism because it focuses on something that has not yet happened.

Mr. Goldsmith wrote that athletes are often trained to focus on a positive future, rather than a failed past. "Race car drivers are taught to look at the road ahead, not at the wall. Basketball players are taught to envision the ball going into the hoop and to imagine the perfect shot."

Such techniques are applicable, as well, in business and are particularly effective with already-successful people who are receptive to ideas aimed at helping them achieve their goals, he said.

In his executive coaching practice, Mr. Goldsmith said his clients often struggle with the notion of becoming a supportive coach to their employees, rather than a critic or judge. Executives, by nature, tend to be driven, competitive and demanding, he said.

When he works with executives, Mr. Goldsmith said he asks how they would respond in the following situation: They want to go to Restaurant X and their spouse wants to go to Restaurant Y. After a debate, they go to Restaurant Y and the food is terrible.

Do they criticize the restaurant choice and the food, and say it would have been better if their spouse had gone along with their suggestion?

Or do they "shut up, eat the food and try to have a good time anyway?"

Seventy-five per cent of his clients say they would criticize their spouse, the restaurant and the food, even though they know the better option would be to make the best of a bad situation, move on, and do better next time, Mr. Goldsmith told delegates.

"It can be more productive to help people be right than prove they were wrong," he said.

"Negative feedback often becomes an exercise in 'let me prove you were wrong.' This tends to produce defensiveness on the part of the receiver and discomfort on the part of the sender.

"Even constructively delivered feedback is often seen as negative as it necessarily involves discussion of mistakes, shortfalls and problems.

"Feedforward, on the other hand, is almost always seen as positive because it focuses on solutions -- not problems."

Marshall was listed as one of 50 great leaders and one of three top CEO coaches in this report.