If you want to succeed you need to stop shooting yourself in the foot.
That was a message contained in a recent CBS 60 Minutes interview with actor Mandy Patinkin. While Patinkin is a extremely successful as the star of the Showtime hit drama Homeland, he has built a career anchored in musical theater. He established himself in works by Stephen Sondheim among others. He also had a memorable role – perhaps the most memorable role – in the comedy Princess Bride where he played the role of Inigo Montoya a character bent upon revenging the death of his father.
What Patinkin discussed in his interview with the late Bob Simon were the sins of his arrogance. In two notable times in his career Patinkin sabotaged success, once being getting fired from a movie role where he did not belong, and the other after walking off the set of a hit TV series. Patinkin gained a reputation of being “difficult.” And rightly so! Today Patinkin has found what many successful people have found. Eventually. Peace and wisdom.
Patinkin’s story resonates with my experience in working with very successful people. As Marshall Goldsmith has written – and many other coaches attest – is before you can get to the top of your craft you need to stop acting like a jerk. Easy to say, but sometimes hard to do. It may seem obvious but getting to that point can take, as it did with Patinkin and so many others I know, a long time.
First off, failure to recognize one’s own jerkdom has little to do with intelligence and everything to do with one’s one self-image. If we relied upon our brains more, we would not do stupid things such as throw temper tantrums, hold our own counsel, and worse disregard advice from those we hold dearest. Yet again and again like a broken record we see executives derail because they put fail to think with clarity and instead act with emotion.
“The more we are committed to believing that something is true,” writes Marshall Goldsmith in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, “the less likely we are to believe that its opposite is true, even in the face of clear evidence that shows we are wrong.”
Unfortunately such stupidity does not occur in isolation it recurs repeatedly sometimes threatening, as it did with Patinkin, an individual’s career. Those who do not change wash out. They bounce from job to job always beginning with high hopes but ending by alienating those with whom they work the closest. And in time that ego gets tiresome and those in authority say “enough is enough.”
Why do such individuals sabotage themselves? The easy answer is ego; they act as if they know best. The hard answer is they don’t know any better because when you are so wrapped up in yourself the only voice you hear is your own.
Fortunately some folks realize they have an issue. So for the first time in their lives they seek the counsel of others -- a colleague, a boss or even a coach. With listening comes the awareness that what they are doing is not working, so they must make changes. Good news is the message hits home and the individual learns new behaviors that reduce the jerk factor and improve the likability quotient.
And life goes on for the better.
