Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
Another year begins and so many of us resolve to improve. If our goals feel familiar, it’s probably because we had the same ones last year. Yes, we are excellent planners but not so great doers. In his 2015 book, influential coach Marshall Goldsmith identifies “triggers” as the key to closing the gap between intention and outcome. A trigger is any stimulus that reshapes our thoughts or actions – a person, place or situation that lures us into behaving in a manner diametrically opposed to reaching our goals. How we can control our response to triggers? We need to first recognize their existence and then devise plans to dilute their impact. Strategies include self-feedback, “Active Questions”, and scorekeeping. Something as simple as an index card (or an app) can help us avoid knee-jerk responses to the triggers we encounter. While covering similar territory as Richard Boyatzis’ well-established “Intentional Change Model“ and Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, Goldsmith, with his anecdote-filled, casual style, provides an actionable toolkit to improve our lives.
HIGHLIGHT(S): An executive coach can help us bridge the gap between the visionary Planner and short-sighted Doer in us. Coaches can do this because they’re objective, not caught up in the environment that so often corrupts us. They can remind us of our original intentions, and can recall the times when we displayed desirable behavior and help us summon the will to do so again.
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