Marshall Goldsmith opens with a paradox: the very habits and traits that drove your rise to the top can quietly sabotage your next level of success. Hard work, confidence, and decisive action get you promoted — but those same qualities, left unchecked, can make you a poor listener, an idea-dismisser, or a credit-hoarder as you climb higher.

This is the Success Delusion: successful people tend to attribute their results entirely to their own behavior, which makes them resistant to changing that behavior. If it worked before, why change it? The problem is that leadership demands a different skill set at each new level — and clinging to old habits creates a ceiling.