Dating back to my days as a staff writer for
Fast Company, I’ve been a fan of the executive coach and author,
Marshall Goldsmith (he has written for the magazine many times.) I’ve been meaning to share an essay Marshall wrote for a presentation to the Conference Board last year. It’s called
“The Success Delusion:Why It Can be So Hard for Successful Leaders to Change.” (Read the whole thing on Marshall’s website
here.)
See if you remember the advertisement that Goldsmith describes below:
UNUM, the insurance company, ran an ad some years ago showing a powerful grizzly in the middle of a roaring stream, with his neck extended to the limit, jaws wide open and teeth flaring. The bear was about to clamp on an unsuspecting salmon jumping up stream. The headline read: YOU PROBABLY FEEL LIKE THE BEAR, WE’D LIKE TO SUGGEST THAT YOU ARE THE SALMON.
While intended to sell insurance, the ad seeded the notion for Goldsmith’s theory about The Success Delusion,
or “how we all delude ourselves about our achievements, our status and our contributions.”
According to Goldsmith, most of us:
• Overestimate our contribution to a project;
• Have an elevated opinion of our professional skills and standing among our peers;
• Exaggerate our project’s impact on profitability by discounting real and hidden costs.
Many of [these] delusions can come from our association with success, not failure. Since we get positive reinforcement from our past successes, we think that they are predictive of great things to come in our future.
But as founders we can turn this conundrum on its head, and to our advantage. As entrepreneurs — the salmon of the world — “success delusions” can actually help us become more successful. We believe we can be successful, and so we are more likely to be so.
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