Top 70 Mark Goulston Quotes

The crux is this: you can’t be sincerely empathic towards and angry at someone at the same moment. In other words, you can’t walk in someone else’s shoes and step on their toes at the same time.

When you know you haven’t been connecting with, persuading, or getting through to someone, consciously pause before meeting them and say to yourself, ‘During this conversation, I am committing to being present and to connecting.’

One of the most important keys to getting through to anyone and then influencing them is to realize that inside everyone’s mind, they listen to someone or something.

Be it terrorists or ‘blinded by greed’ capitalists or ‘deaf and dumb and siloed’ officials, special interests will always tyrannize the common good.

The most influential people strive for genuine buy-in and commitment – they don’t rely on compliance techniques that only secure short-term persuasion.

More often than not, CEOs are conflict-avoidant because their role is to define vision and strategy than it is to get into confrontations with negative and toxic people which they can’t stand.

Be comfortable in your own skin. Comfort and discomfort are contagious.

When you listen with memory, you have an old agenda, and when you listen with desire, you have a new one. You can’t listen to the other person if your agenda is overtaking you.

When you’re trying to persuade people, more often than not, they feel you’re being pushy. When you focus on influencing them, they’re much less defensive and open to hearing what you have to say.

Terrorism thrives when the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ becomes so wide and when the ‘have nots’ reach the point of such desperation, pain, and agony that they have nothing to lose.

Know what’s important and what isn’t. Have the wisdom to know the right thing to do, the integrity to do it, the character to stand up to those who don’t, and the courage to stop those who won’t.

Given the choice between instant gratification and the lasting satisfaction of earning the esteem of someone you respect and admire, all but the most small-minded would choose the latter.

If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.

One word that seems to connect both leaders and employees is: ‘outcomes.’ Built into that word is the implicit and explicit understanding and agreement that effective actions lead to good outcomes; ineffective actions lead to poor outcomes.

Presence is in the eye and ear and gut of the beholder. When you are totally present in a conversation or in a meeting, others around you perceive you as totally focused on the matter at hand and on being of value to them.

Do what you say you’re going to do. Follow through means never having to say you’re sorry.

Do not go out first thing after signing a contract and buy assets that are huge compared to the contract signed. Just because you have money for the first time doesn’t mean you have to spend it before you know all the ramifications of buying the assets.

If instead of completely focusing on what you are doing, you are racing ahead to something shinier or to the next best thing, you will not develop excellence.

Self-esteem is crucial to how much or how little contentment you feel at the end of your life.

People who can’t take advantage of opportunity take advantage of people.

The best way to learn to be present and develop presence is to have the experience of someone you respect and admire being present with and for you.

When men act up by being degrading, dismissive, condescending, shut off, or sullen, that can often dumbfound you as a woman and get you off balance. At that point, you can feel and look like a deer in the headlights, which makes you even more vulnerable to such a man’s next volley of vitriol.

People often say, ‘I don’t need recognition,’ and the truth is they are right. We don’t need it. But like healthy food and exercise, life is a whole lot better with it.

The more comfortable you become at accepting recognition, the more comfortable you will be with giving it.

In my line of work, I frequently communicate with CEOs and their executive assistants, and nowhere is the need for gratitude more clear.

Sadly, most labor attorneys will advise you not to say you’re wrong to anyone, because that might lead them to have something they can use to sue you.

As safe and secure as you believe you are is as vulnerable as you can turn out to be.

Why do people who consider themselves good communicators often fail to actually hear each other? Often it’s due to a mismatch of styles: To someone who prefers to vent, someone who prefers to explain seems patronizing; explainers experience venters as volatile.

As a general rule, when your child, or anyone in the work force, doesn’t know what he/she wants to do, they should instead always be developing skills and competencies that will qualify them for the jobs that companies are most looking to fill and increase their hireability.

One of the best ways to see how critical being present is to effective leadership is to notice what being absent, distracted, hiding something, and/or agenda-driven does to people’s ability to trust, respect, and have confidence in you.

If, during childhood, you were fortunate to have a parent who drilled into you, ‘You can be anything you want to be if you try hard enough at it,’ and then supported you in actions, that is something you take with you all your life.

Too often, founders make decisions before determining whether they are the right thing to do. These decisions often create chaos in their companies where people are having to jump from the last ‘great idea’ to yet another unproven-and-about-to-be-poorly-executed one.

Salespeople are in the decision business. Their livelihood depends on the decisions of others.

A leader who is confused or confusing causes too much anxiety, and a leader who is too controlling is revealing more insecurity and a lack of leadership.

Women work and feel like they have to take care of so many details. Sometimes they don’t get much help from their husbands.

I am blessed to count among my friends and colleagues people who are very thoughtful and who deeply care about our country.

MIA stands for ‘missing in action,’ which is the way others can experience you when you’re too busy multi-tasking, being pulled at by the world and by everything that’s going on in your head, and, essentially, when you’re too busy being busy.

There will always be people who think that money and benefits and even just having a job should be thanks enough. There are also those that think they do a great job without anyone having to thank them. But study after study has shown that no one is immune from the motivating effects of acknowledgement and thanks.

Lousy, ineffective actions lead to lousy outcomes. Terrific, effective actions lead to terrific outcomes.

People really don’t like to be inconvenienced. If you don’t agree with that, ask yourself how you like it when it happens to you.

To many in the global community, American business – especially our financial institutions – are seen as a bunch of thieves, and as the saying goes, ‘There’s no honor among thieves.’

Without the ambition to raise oneself to life’s challenges, growth and innovation would never happen.

I think people don’t want to be persuaded. And people don’t even like to do the persuading.

In my executive advising role, my persona, which seems to work very well with both women and men, is being ‘the big brother you always wanted.’ I am fortunate to have two such big brothers, so this isn’t just a theoretical construct.

Just like the athlete who has mapped out a plan to become one of the best athletes in the world by putting together a training program and executing it, he too should map out a financial plan from the beginning of his athletic career throughout every stage of his career.

Technology loves and thrives and makes gobs of money on conspicuous consumption.

Do something to help your community or people around you. That will help you feel more worthwhile and less alone.

One of the most important aspects of an athlete’s financial life is that he needs to be personally responsible for his own finances.

Speak the truth. People will forgive an honest mistake; they won’t forgive you if you lie.

Few things detract more from your credibility and the respect of your colleagues and peers than being called on the carpet to deflect accusations and defend an untruth.

Gen X entrepreneurs are frequently smart, tough, tenacious, and self-made. That said, to succeed in their companies, they often have sacrificed being emotionally involved in their marriages and with their children.

Despair – or as I like to call it, des-pair – means feeling unpaired in a world in which it feels like everyone else is paired with a good job, a happy marriage, loving family, caring, and hope – and you’re not.

President Reagan preached ‘trickle down economics’ but naively did not reckon on the fact that the wealthy would only care about getting more for themselves instead of caring about helping those with less.

Leadership is more about clarity than it is about control.

Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps.

Being alone with fear can rapidly turn into panic. Being alone with frustration can rapidly turn into anger. Being alone with disappointment can rapid turn into discouragement and, even worse, despair.

PTSD occurs following a trauma that was so awful that in retrospect you don’t understand how you survived. What that causes is an extreme feeling of vulnerability that you get past but that doesn’t go away.

Is it possible that the collective global psyche of the world is like an overloaded modem and can no longer meaningfully communicate, comprehend, or listen to anything or anyone else?

One reason some people are long-winded is because they’re trying to impress their conversational counterpart with how smart they are, often because they don’t actually feel that way underneath. If this is the case for you, realize that continuing to talk will only cause the other person to be less impressed.

Women have always run the world; maybe it’s time to give them a chance at ruling it.

If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.

It’s no fun being a salesperson when it feels like you’re talking to a wall. That’s what it feels like when you haven’t learned your customer’s points of interest.

Connecting is always better than disconnecting.

When someone is complimenting you, they are sharing how your actions or behaviors impacted them. They are not asking if you agree.

I know CEOs, and they get sick when they have to lay people off, especially around Christmas.

Very often, when you get into a conversation that’s more of a debate, you’ll pick up that the other person is venting at you. And when someone vents at you, it triggers a reaction. You get defensive and vent back.

When winning is everything and everyone does whatever they need to win and to not lose, including lying, you have a world in which ‘basic trust’ is lost.

If fun puts a smile on your face, beauty and elegance put a smile in your heart and take your breath away. It’s longer-lasting and more satisfying than fun.

Braggarts are insecure and need attention, and bragging often has the opposite effect on most people when you’re trying to gain their respect and increase your influence.

In my life, I think I have had more than two hundred significant breakthroughs that exponentially accelerated my life forward. However, each and every one of them was preceded by a breakdown that was not pretty, was often scary, and often felt like something I would not get past.