Starting Stronger; What Got You Here Won't Get You There
Marshall Goldsmith's seminal work "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" offers valuable insights for professionals navigating career transitions in today's evolving workplace. As we move through 2025, with hybrid working established and AI reshaping professional dynamics, Goldsmith's principles maintain their relevance, while requiring modern contextualisation.
Processing the Ending
Goldsmith challenges readers to recognise that behaviours and skills that advanced their careers may now impede further progress. The book encourages an honest self-assessment of professional habits, distinguishing which practices have transformed from strengths into limitations.
For those preparing to transition roles, this means thoroughly examining your current position before moving forward. Reflect on your achievements, but more critically, identify behaviours unsuitable for your next role. Do you micromanage when you should delegate? Do you struggle to listen because you're preoccupied with formulating responses? Goldsmith provides a framework for identifying these unconscious patterns.
Understanding What Needs to Change
Central to Goldsmith's work is his list of 20 workplace habits that can undermine successful careers. These include excessive competitiveness, adding unnecessary value, passing judgment, making destructive comments, and failing to recognise others' contributions. In 2025's workplace, additional concerns I would rush to add in include digital communication overreliance at the expense of meaningful connection, and hesitation to engage with emerging technologies.
The book demonstrates how these behaviours become increasingly problematic as one advances organisationally. Goldsmith shows how many of these habits originate from the very qualities that initially drove success: competitiveness, meticulousness, and decisive action.
Navigating the Transition Zone
Goldsmith acknowledges that behavioural change creates discomfort. In what I call the "messy middle" or transition zone, the period between established and new approaches, professionals must navigate unfamiliar territory. The book offers practical strategies for this phase, including soliciting feedback, acknowledging past behaviour, improving listening, expressing appreciation, and maintaining consistent follow-up.
For today's professionals, this transition now often involves adapting to new digital tools, different team structures, or entirely remote working relationships. Goldsmith's principles of seeking feedback and consistent communication prove even more important when working across digital boundaries.
Building New Skills
Goldsmith's approach emphasises specific behavioural changes rather than abstract goals. He advocates for clear actions: avoid interrupting others mid-sentence, resist the urge to dominate every discussion, remove undermining language when responding to ideas.
In 2025, these interpersonal fundamentals remain essential but require supplementation with digital communication capabilities, asynchronous collaboration expertise, and multi-channel teamwork skills. Modern professionals must develop these abilities deliberately, using Goldsmith's structured methodology.
Starting Stronger
The book's distinctive strength lies in its actionable framework for meaningful development. By implementing Goldsmith's feedback-oriented approach, professionals can begin new roles with enhanced self-awareness and interpersonal effectiveness. His concept of "feedforward"—soliciting future suggestions rather than past assessments—provides a powerful tool for those beginning new positions.
For contemporary transitions, this means entering your new role with an exploratory mindset, actively seeking input, and demonstrating adaptability. As Goldsmith would likely observe in 2025, the capacity to adjust quickly and refine your approach continues to grow in importance.
Final Thoughts
"What Got You Here Won't Get You There" remains essential reading for anyone facing career advancement in 2025. While some examples may feel dated, its core message about the evolving requirements of leadership at different levels aligns perfectly with today's professional environment.
By guiding readers through processing endings, identifying necessary changes, navigating transitions, developing new skills, and beginning stronger, Goldsmith provides a framework for successful career transitions that transcends workplace evolution. In a professional landscape continuing to transform at remarkable speed, this guidance remains indispensable.