Marshall Goldsmith on triggers: prepare for the leadership moment you repeat
You intend to listen, but the same kind of interruption makes you take over. Preparing for that moment is more concrete than promising to be calmer.
Name the recurring situation, recognise the impulse and prepare a response before the pressure arrives.
A situation can make a habit easier to repeat
Goldsmith describes how surroundings and recurring triggers can influence behaviour, and how awareness creates an opportunity to choose a different response. Our application is a preparation sheet for a familiar leadership situation. It is a practical workplace exercise rather than a clinical method.
Choose something ordinary and repeatable. A rushed status meeting, an unexpected request late in the day or a colleague challenging a plan can be easier to examine than a rare crisis. The goal is to recognise the moment early enough to act deliberately.
Describe the moment without assigning motives
Write what happened in observable terms: a team member raised a delivery risk while you were presenting the schedule. Then write your reaction: you interrupted and explained why the schedule had already been agreed.
Avoid starting with an interpretation such as “They were trying to undermine me.” You may not know that. A description of the event leaves more room to understand the concern and to choose a useful response.
Note the conditions too. Were you short of time? Had the meeting started without a shared brief? Did you believe that changing the schedule would make you look unreliable? The answers can suggest both a behavioural change and an operational repair.
An original pause-and-response plan
For the next schedule review, prepare a short sentence: “Let us separate the new information from the decision we made earlier.” Ask the colleague to explain the risk and its evidence. Summarise it before deciding whether the schedule should change.
Give the meeting a visible place for unresolved questions. If the issue cannot be settled immediately, name the person who will investigate it and the time of the next decision. This makes a pause possible without letting the discussion dissolve into an indefinite delay.
The prepared sentence is a cue, not a magic technique. A colleague may still be upset or the information may still be difficult. Your responsibility is to handle the issue accurately rather than use calm wording to dismiss it.
Change what happens before the trigger
Some repeated reactions are easier to prevent through meeting design. Circulate the schedule in advance, invite risks before approval and make the escalation route clear. A founder who is surprised by every problem may need a better information flow as well as a different personal response.
Ask the team which conditions make it easier to raise an issue. Listen for practical answers: enough preparation time, an explicit invitation or confidence that a concern will not automatically be treated as disloyalty.
Review a specific attempt
After the next meeting, record what you noticed, what you did and what happened next. Ask a trusted colleague for an observation if that is appropriate. Keep the review narrow enough that it can inform another attempt.
If you interrupted again, identify the point where the planned response disappeared. Perhaps the cue was too long or the meeting structure stayed unchanged. Revise the plan. A useful review produces an adjustment, not a sweeping conclusion that you can or cannot change your leadership style.
Try it in your business
Write four lines: the situation that repeats, the impulse you notice, a short response you want to try and one change to the meeting or workflow beforehand. Use the plan once, then record what happened without assigning motives to other people.
Sources & editorial note
- Marshall Goldsmith: Mastering Environmental Triggers
NEXT MBA editorial analysis, prepared with AI assistance from the public sources above. The applications, scenarios and exercises are NEXT MBA examples, not quotations or transcripts. Product recommendations are ours; they do not imply the speaker’s endorsement of those products. Sources checked on 1 October 2026.