Maximum Success: Changing the 12 Behavior Patterns That Keep You From Getting Ahead

Maximum Success is a compelling exploration of the behavior patterns that cause people to undermine their careers-as well as specific advice on how to overcome them. Have you ever wondered why some people seem to rise effortlessly to the top, while others are stuck in the same job year after year? Have you ever felt you are falling short of your career potential? Have you wondered if some of the things you do-or don't do-at work might be hamstringing your ambitions?

In Maximum Success, James Waldroop and Timothy Butler, directors of MBA career development at the Harvard Business School, identify the twelve habits that over and over again-whether you are a retail clerk or a partner in a law firm, whether you work in technology or in a factory-are almost guaranteed to hold you back.

While an examination of the habits of highly effective people has made Stephen Covey's book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People a self-help classic, the fact is that most people learn their greatest lessons not from their successes, but from their mistakes. Maximum Success offers the flip side to Covey's approach, zeroing in on the most common behavior patterns that can impede a career. The authors claim, based on over twenty years of research as business psychologists, that the reasons people fail in their jobs are the same everywhere. Yet, once these detrimental behaviors are identified, the patterns that limit career advancement can be broken.

Using real-life accounts of clients they have worked with at Harvard and as executive coaches at such companies as GTE, Sony, GE, and McKinsey & Co., Waldroop and Butler describe the habits that have derailed even the most successful people. More important, they offer invaluable-and, in some cases, job-saving-advice on how readers can modify their behavior to get back on track.

Among the Career-stoppers that can stymie Maximum Success:



Focusing on the downside of any situation and obsessing over all the things that can go wrong

Cherishing the naïve belief that merit alone is enough and that office politics, networking, and self-promotion don't matter

Feeling that you aren't "good enough" to deserve a promotion-and unconsciously sabotaging yourself once you get it

For anyone seeking to achieve their career ambitions, Maximum Success is a powerful tool for unleashing your true potential.

James Waldroop, Ph.D., and Timothy Butler, Ph.D., are directors of MBA career development at the Harvard Business School, as well as the creators of the Internet-based interactive career-assessment program CareerLeader, currently used by over 100 corporations and MBA programs worldwide. Leaders in the area of executive coaching and intervention, they have consulted with many of the top corporations in the country. They are the authors of Discovering Your Career in Business, as well as articles that have appeared in the Harvard Business Review and Fortune. They live in the Boston metropolitan area.