Questionnaire for requesting feedback at your workplace – based on the book “What got you here won’t get you there” by Marshall Goldsmith

by krishnamoorthyb

In 2017, a dear friend of mine recommended the book “What got you here won’t get you there.” by Marshall Goldsmith. He told me that it was one of the most influential books in his life.  After having read and reread the book, I am grateful to my friend for his recommendation. The author lists and elaborates on 21 workplace habits that people accumulate over a period of time. These habits not only affect our growth but more importantly annoy and create a difficult workplace environment for our colleagues.  Though the title of the book may indicate that the book is tailored for leaders and the workplace, I find that attention to the habits can help in our personal lives as well.  The book is not necessarily for successful people to become even more successful as the title indicates. It is important at any stage of our lives. I would recommend every college kid to read it.

Here is a 40-minute talk by the author himself – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY7UJVYM9n0 . It’s entertaining and illuminating in equal parts.

On my first reading of the book, I was convinced I was guilty of some of the habits listed by the author. The next logical step was to ask the people I work with for their feedback (about me) on each of the 21 habits listed in the book. I captured all the habits in an Excel sheet as a questionnaire. I also added an extra question to the list that I thought would be useful to get an answer to. The questionnaire had one question for each habit. Each question included a short write-up on what the habit meant.  I emailed the questionnaire to my colleagues and managers with a short write up on what I was trying to achieve. The feedback I received was the best feedback I had received until that point in my career.  One manager in my group replied back saying that the questionnaire took him on a journey of self-introspection. I am truly grateful to my colleagues who invested their time in providing me feedback in this form.

If you would like to use the questionnaire, you can download it from here – https://github.com/kay-m/what-got-you-here-wont-get-you-there

Nearly all of the content in the questionnaire is from the book. The book is available on Amazon – https://www.amazon.com/What-Got-Here-Wont-There/dp/1401301304/