The Hero Trap: Why Your Best Leaders Are Your Biggest Risk with Bill Flynn

Speaker A: For 50 years, organizations have poured billions into leadership development and yet we're not necessarily seeing engagement improve.

Speaker B: Everything that you were rewarded for now is going to start to work against you.

Speaker A: What's the uncomfortable truth that, uh, even people like myself and people listening to this would need to confront if we generally want our organizations to thrive without ourselves?

Speaker B: Your job is not to solve problems and your job is to prevent problems.

Speaker A: What does it feel like when onboarding, payroll compliance and even it access all through one platform? It feels like everything finally works together and HR finally has room to scale. Deal brings global people operations into one place. So new hires start strong, workflows, stay compliant, and teams move faster. See it in action@ah d e l.com NickDayHR Ah, for 50 years, organizations have poured billions into leadership development and yet we're not necessarily seeing engagement improve and organizations are becoming more, not less, fragile. While today's guest argues that the problem isn't necessarily leadership skills, it's leadership centrality. So welcome to the HR LND podcast where we explore the thinkers, innovators and pioneers who are shaping the future of work. My name is Nick Day. I'm the CEO at JGA Recruitment Group. We are specialist human resources recruiters operating worldwide. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, please do follow and leave us a five star review. If you're watching on YouTube, hit subscribe, drop a comment, give us a like or a thumbs up. It really helps us really reach a larger HR community. So please help us if you can. Now today's guest brings a perspective that is bold, challenging, and actually desperately needed. I'm joined by Bill Flynn. Ah. A researcher, a teacher, a coach, and author of Further Faster. Over the past decade, Bill has become known for questioning the traditional leadership development model and for showing why so many organizations remain stuck, fragile and overly dependent on a handful of what we might call heroic leaders. But Bill argues that the real issue isn't actually leadership quality, it's leadership centrality without giving anything else away. Instead, I'm going to welcome Bill Flynn to the HR LND podcast. How are you feeling?

Speaker B: I'm feeling great. That was wonderful. Thank you for that intro. That was well done.

Speaker A: Well, we've got some good stuff to get through today. I want to talk about things like the hero trap, the central argument, and more. So do stay tuned, listeners. We've got some really, really exciting content for you today. But before we dive into that, my first question I ask all of my guests, which is this. What do the words human resources mean to you?

Speaker B: To Stay on. Point of being challenging is I actually think it's an unfortunate term. When I hear human resources, I think things you tap into, things you mine and things that you use. Where I think humans should be considered more as a source than a resource, and we should be looking for people to push us and not for us to tap into them as much. So I think if it's just a term, but words do matter. So I think if we. When we use certain words in a certain way, it connotes a particular definition or a feeling within us. And I would love for us to move away from human resources to something else that shows how humans, especially in the workplace, are the ones that do all the work and get things done and are sources that we should be tapping for their innovation and creation and understanding, et cetera. So that's what. That's my take on that particular term.

Speaker A: I like it. You're not the first to bring it up. To be fair, this is something that a few of the leaders I've had on the show have mentioned. I think almost. It's like the human resources lacks a bit of humanity, to be fair. It almost makes. It sums it down into, as you say, tools or a thing, rather than really focusing on the human. I think a lot of people prefer people management now, people leadership. They still come to terms with how that sits. I always think it's an interesting opener. But look, I mentioned in my introduction, actually, that when we talk about problems in leadership, and we're talking about that with human resources, the people listen to this show often. The issue I've heard you say isn't necessarily leadership quality, it's leadership centrality. So I want to dive in by asking what you really mean by that.

Speaker B: Yeah, so as you said, we've been doing this leadership development thing since the 80s, uh, when it came into vogue, and the focus has been on. I believe the focus has been if we create better leaders, then we'll have better companies. And how do we measure whether we have better companies or not? And to me, there's really only two measurements that you really should care about. When you think about, is the company doing well? Is the organization thriving? Are the people engaged? And are they. Do they love coming to work? Uh, are they contributing in meaningful ways? And then the second one is delightful, delighted customers. To me, those are the two main things that we care about. If we're in business, we want to have delighted customers, clients, whatever it is, and we want the people here to also be enjoying themselves and contributing to their own enrichment, but also Obviously to the company itself. And the focus on leadership has, in my opinion, has improved tremendously. Right. I'm a neuroscience guy. I've been to a bunch of neuro, uh, Leadership Institute conferences and such. And I think I was at 1, 6, 7, 8 years ago. It was pre Covid and the L and D leader from IBM, I can't remember her name was up on stage and she said, we've learned a lot from David Rock and the folks at the NeuroLeadership Institute on how to deliver leadership training. And she said, I think she said we rewrote 70% of our content since the last conference. We're doing great things on how to do it better. But I think the issue is that when you create great leaders, your main focus is great leaders create followers. And so followership is something that one we, uh, really don't study very much, but it's focused much more on the leader itself than the mission. So I think leadership, we should not stop what we're doing, but we need to extend it beyond what we're doing today, which I know is a difficult proposition. It's a lot easier to teach didactically, one on one, et cetera, and to do systemic training is more difficult. But I think that's one of the reasons why we're falling short, is we focus on the leader as the main person or object in the process. And the assumption is that makes the business better. But as you said, the numbers don't really support that so far. If you look at, I think what the main numbers are, employee engagement, which hasn't changed really since Gallup's been doing it, it's 30 years. It stays somewhere between 25 and 35%. Doesn't really go outside that channel. Leadership tenures, CEO tenures are shrinking. Being listed on S and p or Fortune 500 or whatever it is has gone from 60 years, give or take, to about 15. So to me, the meaningful measurements show that whatever we're doing isn't good enough. It's great at what it does, but I don't think it's good enough.

Speaker A: I'm a football or, uh, soccer fan, and I'm a Spurs fan for my sins. We're not doing very well at the moment, but we've got. A lot of people would say we've got lots of leaders in our team, but we don't play as a team. And I think the interesting point here is you're talking about followers. You can be a great individual, lots of skill, experience. But actually it's something else. To be able to pull those things together, to make the sum of the parts better, that's the challenge. So from your perspective, what does a great leader look like? What are some of the attributes, the soft skills, the behaviors, personally, personality traits that you might find in what you would classify as a great or exceptional leader?

Speaker B: So, to me, uh, and I don't know worldwide leaders as well, but here in America, uh, to me, there's only one leader that stands out above all the others, and his name is Alan Mulally. Have you ever heard of Alan Mulally?

Speaker A: I haven't. I'm intrigued now. I'll definitely be researching afterwards, unless you give me the inside track now. But I'm not familiar with Alan Mulally.

Speaker B: I'll give you the primer. Alan Mulally, he's still with us. He's in his 70s, and he ran Boeing commercial aircraft in the middle of 9, 11. And they came out better than they went in. Then Bill Ford said, can you do the same thing for me? And he did the same exact thing in the middle of 2008. I don't know any leader in the world that has come through an existential crisis that was aimed directly at that industry. And they came out better than they went in. And Alan has all of what I would consider the prototypical qualities that we look for or say that a great leader has. I'm going to argue against myself in a second. He is, obviously, he's extremely bright. He's, uh, a. He's an aerospace engineer. He worked at Boeing. He's a pretty bright guy. He has a quiet charisma about him. He has tremendous integrity. He is the reason you don't know who he is, because he is one of the most humble human beings you'll ever meet. And the reason I know this is because I now know Alan Mullally. And I've been speaking of Alan Mulally for decades. About five or six years ago, Alan Mulally sent me an email because he wrote. He read an article that I wrote about what he did at Ford. There's this book called American Icon, which chronicles what he did there, not by him, but by someone else. And the things that I teach were basically what he did at, uh, Ford. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. And so I said, basically, the article was, hey, if it's good enough for Alan Mulally, it's good enough for me. Right? So good enough for you. And he read it and he. And he sent me an email to my. To my website. And so this guy, just. This guy has been asked by two presidents to be on their cabinet in Covid. The Mayo Clinic called him and said, can you come and help us with our logistics and figure out how to do this thing? He's. He's not a small contributor to the world. And he took the time to. To send me an email. But not only did he say that, he said, I want to meet you. And I. And I, uh. First of all, I didn't even think it was him, but it was AlanLally.com I'm like, okay, that sounds like a real ad.

Speaker A: He's just giving his email away now to. Everyone here is going to be emailing him now, going, okay, Alan, I've heard about great leadership. Can you teach me?

Speaker B: And, uh, I said, oh, great. So I said, you must be super busy. So I sent him my calendar link, and he said, no, I want to meet you right now. So I spent 45 minutes chatting with Alan Mulally. He was wonderful and gracious. We're two brothers from the different mothers, and he was just so gracious. And now I've gotten to know him a little bit because he invited me into a coaching organization that he started with Marshall Goldsmith and Frances Hesselbein, who was the woman who transformed the Girl Scouts here in the United States. And he is who he says he is. And so that's, to me, what you strive for. But what I've learned. I've been studying leadership for a long time, and what I've learned is that none of that matters. Everyone is different. Steve Jobs didn't really have a ton of integrity. Marshall Warren Buffett, not the most charismatic guy you're going to meet. Elon Musk is not humble in any way, shape or form, but people follow them, right? There's something about them. There's some sort of gravity that they have that pulls people toward them. And that's what matters, right? You need to know how to create followers. And typically, that's some sort of vision, some sort of, this is how we're going to make the world better. And people will forgive you a lot of your faults if that weight is greater than the weight of those faults.

Speaker A: It comes to mind when he gave me those named examples. And, um, it just led me there. And I'm sure you've done the research, analysis to know more than I do here, but you use the word gravity. I was thinking the word magnetism that pulls people in. But everyone you've mentioned, whether it's Alan and I feel like I should know who he is because my brother works for Boeing. But that's something else. Maybe I should have known. Whether you're Warren Buffett without charisma, there's a lot of risk in what he does. Whether you are Elon Musk with the amount of debt that he's managed to being able to make his dreams come true, he's always been in the risk. I don't know all of the people he mentioned, I'm sure Fancy mentioned. Potentially. I'm just recognizing it now in the small handful of people you mentioned. A common, from my perspective is they're all different personalities. And there's been lots of analysis and research done, um, that they don't really know what the makeup is of a perfect leader because it's different for industry and everything else. But actually, in those examples, that does seem to be that risk is a common denominator. Have you found that as well in your work? Is that something that we're just picking up now, or is this well recognized?

Speaker B: Yeah. So this is interesting because we didn't talk about this beforehand, but the other thing, the only attribute that I have found across dozens, if not hundreds of leaders that I've looked at is courageous courage. Yeah, courage. Uh, encourage to give away their idea to others, to help them do it. Courage to do. Take the risk and go all in, like Elon Musk does. Courage seems to also be the only other thing that, you know, not humility isn't there everywhere. Integrity, integrity, charisma, whatever, innovation. But courage seems to be in every single situation that I have looked at. I haven't done a scientific process of, you know, figuring it out, but. So it's interesting that you. That's what you pulled out.

Speaker A: That's interesting. On the back of that. So you've done years and years of leadership research. My, My passion is fear, so I've done an awful lot of research, uh, into the psychology of fear. Of course, courage plays a big part in that. And this leads me nicely into something you've called the hero trap. So I would define bravery as something different to courage. Right. Bravery is something we do in the moment. We react. We can be a hero for a moment. But courage is something we cultivate over time. It's something where we consistently put ourselves in a position of risk or danger, or we have to overstep. That mark of something that frightens us, brings us anxiety. We do it again and again. Eventually we cultivate that. We become more of a courageous leader on the back of it, which I think leads me nicely into something that you've written a lot about, which of course is the hero trap. It's a pattern that you've termed. It's. I'll m. Let you tell us what it is. I've obviously researched a little bit prior to this conversation, but it's. Yeah, it's something you've written a lot about. Tell us a little bit about the hero trap.

Speaker B: Yes, it's great. I'm glad you've done some research because I'd love to, love to hear it. After your distillation of. Of risk. Uh, I want to. I definitely want to hear what you have to say. So the hero trap, to me it's a, It's a paradox of success. It is.

Speaker A: We.

Speaker B: I'm sure you have had this in your life and other folks that have gained some sort of success is you were rewarded for your individual contribution or aptitude. I'm sure in school you've. You got great grades. You probably were a, uh, rewarder. You were on the honor roll, whatever. Maybe as you came through an organization, I don't know what your career was like. But if you went through sort of the corporate world, my guess is eventually you became the go to person, the one who people relied on decisions. And then eventually you were rewarded because we have a verticality to our reward system. Corporate, uh, in the corporate world, a team, right? You were given this. Now everything that you were rewarded for now is going to start to work against you. Because when you, if you've, if you ever run a team and you've done it, you know that it no longer is about you. And if you keep it about you, then you create learned helplessness. Uh, you create a situation where you're now, as you get better and better at what you're doing, you get more and more responsibility. So it's this insidious situation that the more you do it, the worse it gets because then you acquire more and this weight now becomes heavier and heavier. And then as I like David Marquette from Turn the Ship around, he says, and you can't go to dinner anymore, right? You can't, you're not. You can't go home. Uh, so to me, it's being rewarded for being great at what you're doing, but then put in a situation where almost all of those things now, uh, work against you over the long term. Now it doesn't. Even in the short term, it doesn't affect you much because it's a team. Small, it doesn't, you know, matter that much. But it builds up and it's the proverbial frog in the pot thing. Right. You don't even notice it until all of a sudden it's. You're indispensable and exhausted at the same time.

Speaker A: Yeah. No, I think it's interesting. I think you used the word a success paradox. I have an idea around the fear. What I'd call the fear of success paradox, which is probably something similar along similar lines where certainly in leadership positions, people don't always push themselves. They feel like they're imposters. Imposter syndrome is something that is a lot of people are affected by. But actually I'd argue in many of those cases it's not the fear of failure that they think it is that they can't deliver. It's the fear of success on the other side. If they get that extra bit of responsibility now they've got to show up every day. It's that weight of having to show up now that they prove themselves. And we doubt ourselves whether we can show up every single time to the same level, to the same level of capability to. And that, as you say, the more responsibility you have, eventually that weight becomes sometimes too heavy for people to bear. Right. But I think, uh, if I use my recruitment lens here, and we specialize in placing payroll on HR professionals around the globe, I think there's a real gap in leadership coaching, leadership development for those that end up sometimes top of the tree. Now, that's not taking. Suddenly criticizing all of my listeners, but a lot of them have been promoted through great technical expertise, particularly in the payroll world. If I use the payroll world as an example, they could be really accurate, really technically competent. They understand all the legislation, all the complian. And because they're great at what they do, they get promoted into these leadership roles without ever having the development or the training or the coaching to understand what it feels like to coach others or to lead others. And you've been pushed through due to your technical competence, but not because of your ability to coach, lead and develop. Is that something you've seen in your work? And how do we help those leaders that are suddenly thrust into leadership positions because of their technical expertise, but not because of their leadership competency? Necessarily.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, again, I think that's another puzzle that we haven't figured out because there's. It's hard to tell if someone's going to be a great leader of people.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: By looking at their past, if they've never been a leader of people, you can look some sort of enjoy that process. And very. Simon Sinek would Say they ask how they can help and they show up that way and that gives you an inkling of it. But that's. I think that's a rare situation. So I really like what you said about the fear of success. And I wonder if you also believe that there's something about. It's more about am I going to continue to be successful? And now you're thrust into this situation that is different than you've had before. Now you have these team of people and very likely they're not as competent as you at certain things and you're concerned that you're going to have to do their work or you don't know how to get them competent. Whatever those things are, whatever those aspects of fear that you throw into the situation. And as far as I can tell, we haven't really.

Speaker A: We've.

Speaker B: We're really good at giving them behaviors that they should be good at. You have to be good at delegation and feedback and whatever it is. But we don't give them the opportunity to understand that you're basically a team is a system in real sort of technical terms. And it's got components and maybe subsystems inside of it. And we don't look at team leadership, in my opinion, or even business leadership, uh, from a systemic standpoint as much as we should. So the way I think we could help them is to have them understand just I, uh, use like a garage metaphor, right? So is when you often what we do is we say, hey, build a high performance vehicle, right? As the metaphor of the team. And they say, here's the garage and go in and they're all the parts in there. And you go in and you're like this, this is different than that and this doesn't fit. And so you're like, all right, I'm going to. Trying to stick these things together and get some glue and some. Get a torch out and try to mold this thing into that and whatever. And you deal with whatever you have and you do the best you can. My recommendation is before you even go into the garage, say what kind of vehicle are we building here? Uh, are we building an F1, a Formula 1 car? Are we building a stock car? Are we looking to do Dakar with 24 hour race in the sand? And whatever you first, you have to understand that and say, okay, if that's what we're building, what would be the ideal configuration for doing that? And then you go into the garage and now you're looking for the things that you need and you're looking for the things that you don't have. And now you can go in and say, can I take any of the pieces in here and mold them into the thing that I need, or do I need to go out and get other pieces? To me, that is a, uh, way to say, this is how I build a better team. Yeah, we don't really ever do that as far as I can tell. We just take what we got and deal with it. And then we wag our finger at people a lot and hope that they comply.

Speaker A: I get bringing my fear element into this slightly more than probably I meant to. But I was thinking if you asked that same question about the car and the garage as a metaphor, as soon as you add the word for me, so go and build a high performance car for me. Immediately the bias in our minds go, what kind of car does Nick want as my CEO? And suddenly that changes you trying to predict almost M without asking the right questions. As you went there later and said, actually, what are we trying to build this for? But often we try and interpret what we think as someone else above us in the hierarchical structure of things once. And we can go in completely the wrong tangent because we have that fear of not actually asking the question in the first place. Do you want a Formula one car? Do you want a stock car? Nick and I go, actually, I want a stock car. I'm glad I asked. I was going to build you something that I thought was high performance, which would have been an F1 car. So we don't always ask those questions to begin with. And I know that when we talk about the hero trap, uh, my research from it is you talk a lot in your work about how some of the behaviors that create that early success actually can become the things that limit us later on and not actually just in the world of work. This can be personal. This can be emotional. So is there a tipping point? Is there a point in our leadership journey where we go, actually, they've served us up to here and now. I need to take a pivot in my career. I need to go for more development, more coaching, more reflection. We've moved from M operational to strategic. Maybe where's that pivot point where those initial skills stop serving us in the way they used to? Or is it more of a mindset shift to go, they still serve you, Nick, but you've got to understand that with more responsibility or more power comes more responsibility to coin a well known comic strip phase.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think there's two things. One is systemic, which is I think we need to move from followership to membership. We want to create members of organizations because the inspiration of the leader gets you going, but the mission gets it done.

Speaker A: Okay, that's nice.

Speaker B: I think you need both. Uh, right.

Speaker A: I like that. That's quotable. We'll. We'll timestamp that and put it in listeners. I hope they caught that bit. That was nice. I get it. I was about to ask you where you were going to go with it, so I didn't interrupt, but I was like. Actually, I was like, where's he going here? And I was like, because. And you crystallize that really nicely.

Speaker B: Thank you. I love the pithy little thing. So that means we have to make sure people understand the why the identity? Who are we? What are our values? What are our purpose? What do we care about? How do we do things here? Make sure that they understand that. And then where are we going? What does it look like either for the organization and. Or for the team? What is it? What is an ideal contribution of this team to this organization mean? What does it look like? How do we measure it? That's sort of, uh. If we could go back to the conversation we had earlier. You kind of need that. You either need that from the CEO or whomever put you in charge to say, look, when this team is going, contributing, uh, optimally to this organization, this is the output that, that we expect from you. And whatever the parameters are around that. Now when you do that, it's easier to go backwards and say, okay, what do I need to do to make that output. The chance of that output happening consistently all the time happen. So you have to have this membership thing. But it. To me it is an. It is not an identity shift. It's understanding that you have an identity repertoire is that sometimes you need to be the hero. Sometimes something's going to happen. There's urgency to it or there's uniqueness to it that only you have that you have to come in and do it. But you want to be striving towards this architect. Right? I have this model, which is con, which is controller, which is the hero to builder to architect. And you have to move through this model and every now and again you're switching identities. And I m. Think just knowing that those things are available to you as opposed to this is the way I get it done. As Marshall Goldsmith is famous for saying, what got you here won't get you there. You have to understand that most people don't. They lean into, especially when things get difficult. It's pressure, financial or otherwise, you lean into what you're most comfortable with. And if you're most comfortable being the hero, you will lean into being the hero. And my, uh, point of view is that it's not a bad thing to be a hero, but it's a bad thing to just be a hero if you're going to lead a team. So you go in, you solve the problem, you're the hero. That's great. But then you should then say, let me teach my team how I just did that. Let me walk them through my algorithm, my heuristics that got me to that wonderful conclusion. So then now they're starting to think like I do. This is a builder model, right? But eventually you have to create systems where you're not necessary. Because my feeling is that when you become a leader of people, your job is to fire yourself from the day to day as much as possible, because your job is to look out, not down. Where is, what's the future of this team or the future of this company? And it's very hard. Since you're a fear guy, you probably have some neuroscience back there, right? We can't really focus on two things at the same time. Right. It doesn't work. So I say, look, you're not going to fire yourself completely, most likely, especially if you're in a small company. But if you have that mindset where my job isn't to have all the answers and do all the work and make sure all the work is done, and I create a system where I'm not necessary, then that's when you have a lot more time to think and create and innovate and take care of your people better and think of how you can delight your customer, whether it's an internal customer or an external customer.

Speaker A: Yeah, it makes sense. Well, I mentioned introduction around operational fragility. Right. And I think often leaders become single points of failure. And if we don't share that knowledge as an entrepreneur, as a starter solopreneur, we've now got a business of 25 people. But if I was to suddenly be incapacitated for whatever reason, part of my job as a leader of the organization that I run is to make sure that they can run with or without me. I'd like to think that I can still have an input. It's not about taking me out the business completely, but I need to have the confidence that they have the ability, the skills. And I've trained them and coached them in the right so they can handle that without me. Apple have done that very well, as an example, but I think sometimes I see this in organizations all the time. A lot of organizations become overly dependent on just a few strong leaders. And I think that would give me some cause for concern. Is that a pattern that you see quite regularly as well in the work that you do? And is the answer to that then making sure that we're able to impart that knowledge on our teams around us and bring them up?

Speaker B: Yeah, and I think you bring up a really good point is, uh, there was an interview done with Bill Gates 30, 40 years ago and he admitted that. He said there are 20 people in this organization, There are now thousands of people. There are 20 people in this organization that if they weren't here, we wouldn't be Microsoft.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: M pride in that. And I always found it interesting. Right. That's a problem. And I would say, I would argue, I don't know if this is true. That's probably why they were late on Internet, late on mobile. Right. Because the sense making, you want the organizational sense making at the edges, not in the center. So then you're ahead of the things that are happening because they're seeing it. Right. And it's, it's getting fed into the organization in such a way that you can adapt more quickly. I think that's one of the reasons they didn't adapt very well is because he didn't have that. He had a core set of people that he relied on and you kind of insular and you can't know everything and you've got hundreds of thousands of people who could, who can be feeding you information up to you, and they weren't doing it. So I think you're dead on with that. Is, it's, that's more the rule than the exception that I've seen is we don't have that. And because I've, uh, been doing this work, I've actually written seven books. Hero Trap is the first one of the seven. And it's looking at again this whole idea of, I think it's a shame that great ideas, great people and great businesses struggle or fail for completely preventable reasons. The data here is similar to what I said before, is we're still at about. In five years, half of new businesses fail. And if you keep going, there's only about 15 to 20% of them left after 25 years. So we don't flatten out. We keep getting worse. You think we'd get better. So there, the work that I've done, I've said, okay, let me. What are the companies that are out there that uh, are doing this well, because there are some and I've only found seven and I've been looking for over a year. And we know a lot of their names, right? That's Amazon and Netflix and Toyota Zingerman's, there's a few others in there as well. But they're the ones who have been able to do this. And I think whether you like Bezos or not, we all have opinions on him as a person. But he built a tremendous systemic infrastructure and we know that because he no longer runs it and it's still growing. It's the equivalent of five Fortune 500 businesses right now. And C runs it. He One man is the CEO of five Fortune 500 businesses because this 14 principles that they've been working on for decades are just instilled in everyone. And Toyota is the ultimate example is they've been doing it since 1975 or something like that. Right? So it is doable, but it's hard and I understand why we're not doing it. It's a really hard. And you have to be patient. And we're not patient. Especially in America, we are not patient when it comes to business. We don't want to wait five, uh, ten years.

Speaker A: We don't always have it. Uh, patience isn't, is sometimes a privilege, it shouldn't be. But if we are under pressure, profit is always pushing on profits. Competitive landscapes. It's the old adage of it's really hard to look up when you always head down. Where do we find the time to look up? A couple of things I want to bring back on just some observations really. One is I like your three step model. I love the fact I finished Architects specifically for our listeners here for this show because I think a nice phrase for HR professionals, particularly those at the top of their game, is a cultural architect. For an organization. They really do set the strategy, they set the tone, the culture. And I think that's a much nicer uh, phrase for what they're responsible for. For me that encompasses the compliance elements, the legalities as well. Really. And I thought that's quite a nice top point for your model because for me it reflects how I see the profession that listens to this show. So I wanted to make the observation. The second bit I wanted to mention is you talked about if we don't got to have leaders being that single point of failure, they need to share their knowledge, we need to bring people up with us. And actually this is a shout out to you and you won't know I was going to say this, but your website, catalystgrowthadvisors.com I don't think I've had a leader on this show before who shares quite so many resources quite so openly. I'm uh, telling you, if you're listening to this, go and check out the website you can get. The link will be in the show notes. There's a resources section on there. You've got about 50 different articles, blogs, models, obviously access to all your books and I let our listeners go and check it out. But if you want to, there's an article on there about fearless leadership. I found that when I was looking at my research and I think, was he done anything on fear? And then it popped up. Whatever it is you're looking for, there's probably something on your website that will help. So there's a little plug for you that we weren't m planning but I think it's relevant to the conversation because even in your own model here, you're living and breathing it. You're not hiding or enclosing all your ideas for those that suddenly come to you on a one to one. But whatever it is, you're going, hey, this is out there because knowing it is only half the challenge, right? Or reading it, it's the implementation of it, is the embodying of it, the long process of that, of making sure it sustains over time. That really where organizations struggle. HR leaders. I know you're driving culture transformation, engagement and now digital reinvention as well. But none of that works without the right people in the right seats. I'm M. Nick Day, host of this podcast, but also founder of JGA Recruitment Group. And here's what I hear every week from top HR leaders. They say, nick, we can't find the talent. It's our biggest challenge and when we do, we can't retain them. Well, that's where we come in. At uh, jga, we specialize in HR recruitment and only HR recruitment. From executive search assignments, placing chros to contingency hires, finding HR pros to global HR transformational contract placements and every people role in between. Across every vertical and at every single level, we know where the top people are, what motivates them and uh, most importantly, how to get them excited about your opportunity even if they're not actively looking. Working with engagement rates over 90%. We don't rely on job boards, we rely on relationships. We place fast, we place right. And we do it in a way that reflects your brand, your values and your goals. So if you're building a strategic HR function. Please, please don't leave it to chance. Visit jjrecruitment.com or reach out to me directly and, uh, let's build the future of work together. So I want to bring it back to. This is going somewhere. Bring it back to the point of mission. That great statement you gave me earlier. So how much, how important is mission then, in ensuring that we're not falling down with the operational fragility traps of the past with these leadership, if we bring people into that mission, which stops it from being. I think you mentioned from followers to members, is that right? A mission is a central part. Tell me a little bit more about that because I think that will really align and resonate with our audience.

Speaker B: Yeah. So as I mentioned, I'm a neuroscience geek and purpose is, is what sustains life. When we lose purpose, we don't really want to continue. And if you don't give people that and remind them of it and have them understand how they're living that purpose and working with it, then you're always working at a deficit, in my opinion. Because we have this, we have this really tense dichotomy of things that we care about as human beings, and that is that we want to feel like we're unique in most places. And there's, there's Asian cultures that don't. But for most, especially Western cultures, we want to feel like we're unique, but we also want to belong. So how do you make that happen? Right, that's. Those are, those are competing forces, but you see it all the time, right? And there's a great, there's a great sort of humorous, at least I found it humorous meme where you see a, like a university that sort of has a stadium kind of seating, right? And all the students are there and they all have laptops out and they're all Apple, Mac and MacBooks. And at the bottom it says be different. And so to me, that embodies, they felt unique. They felt unique that they were. They had an apple and. But they felt like they were part of something else. So if we create that environment in a positive way, this is cultish as well, then the people that are there with you are now saying, okay, now I know what we're doing. And they'll. Those. If you've hired the right people, they'll be like, okay, but why are we doing this that way if it's not moving us towards that or we need to do more of this? Because I think that'll get us even closer to where we want to be now you have. Instead of the few dozen people or a handful of people, you've got hundreds, if not thousands of people pushing the company towards that goal, as opposed to 20 people pulling. To me, if you can do that, then you're one of the seven that I have found that have done that. But that takes a lot of work, a lot of effort. Again, patience. People are not going to do it. Right. You're not going to have hired well. You're going to have to call people out of the situation, et cetera. You're going to have to give up decision making to other people, which is uncomfortable. So there's a lot of discomfort to it. Which gets back to your fear thing, which is probably one of the reasons why there are only seven that I could find.

Speaker A: Although there's a lot of science and research that would say that actually we need that discomfort to find true joy, true happiness. Right. We need to. That's. That's the journey we're on. We don't always love it at the time, but that's how we have the yin and the yang. You have to have that discomfort to feel the elation when you come through it and you feel like you've achieved something. So some of those qualities you mentioned then, is that. Are they the qualities that would help embody that top layer you mentioned, that architectural leadership that you termed? Um, idea of. It's a different set of skills. Right. It's. Tell us a little bit about how what that architectural leadership would look like in a top leader.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm a sales guy. So my example would be more for sort of a sales situation. And it happens similar to what you said. In the payroll world, generally the best salesperson becomes the head of sales. Yeah. And it's almost always a mistake because then sales drops and they don't know what they're doing and then they're impatient and people aren't as good as they are and they have. The Martha Stewart issue is like they want everyone to be perfect like they are. And they just. It's not going to happen.

Speaker A: You end up with loads of attrition. That's what happens next, usually.

Speaker B: Yeah. So one of the things that I, uh. What I did. So I was. I guess I was unusual. I was generally the number one, unfortunately, number two salesperson everywhere we went. And then I eventually became the head of sales and I wasn't. You can talk to the people who worked me. I think I was pretty good because I was very hands off. Right. I was more Architect like in my thinking already. And I brought that. And I said, look, I said, here's the deal. I said, you know, I uh, need to figure out how to hire really well. And I didn't do that very well at the beginning, but I got better at it and I got went from about a 5050 rate to about a 90% hit rate on my hiring. So once I got to good at hiring and I had good people, I said, guys, I only have two rules. I said, I just need you to be honest and responsible and I don't care how many calls you make, I don't care if you go after big deals or small deals, whatever it is, we can argue about the quota, but just be honest and responsible and let me know what I need, what you need from me to help you get there. And I would do spot checks and do ride withs and all that kind of stuff to check in. I didn't just be hands off. And to me honest is obviously having integrity and being able to back up what you promised. That's easy. To me, responsibility was margin beats revenue. And the customer and the company are what you should have in mind when you're selling. If you can keep those four things in your head, then go to town and I just let them go. Uh, so that's to me an example of what that means to be an architect.

Speaker A: It's an interesting example. So I've never really reflected on my own sales process. Right. So I'm a sales leader as well. I run a recruitment business, 25 staff. I'm similar to yourself. I was number one salesperson in my own firm as I started just myself and bought the team around me. And every year until I came off the tools without fail, I was number one salesperson end of the year. And I've never reflected on why that was. I just assume you just m built for it, good at it, whatever. But actually and literally it's the first time I'm reflecting on what you've just mentioned there. How did I make my revenue? Actually what I used to do, we had certain rules in our business. I'll m try and make this quick for our listeners, but it'd be interesting. You have an insight into recruitment. When you, when you secure a new vacancy or a new client, typically you have two hours in your to try and find the right candidates for that position before you open up to the wider team. You might need something your network, Uh, I never did that. As soon as I got a vacancy on, I'd open it to the entire team, I would trust them to find it. It was almost delegation. Without realizing it, I was like, I. They're going to be more competitive and they're going to work harder if I haven't had two hours first to look. So that was the first thing I changed. I end up okay. I'm splitting revenues more than I could because I'm not placing it myself. But I was securing so many opportunities. I was placing more because I was opening it up in the first instance and equally I was doing on the flip side. So I, I never really. I, uh, became a really good facilitator between candidate and client. I was able to facilitate the conversation. I built trust with the client, trust with the candidate that what they were putting the right people with the right places. But I also trust my team that they would find the right candidates for the positions I was securing and without. This is generally the first time I've ever reflected on it. I've realized now in this moment that I was just a really good. I had to get, do the sales to get the jobs in the first place. But internally I just facilitated, I just allowed everyone else to do that. I trusted them to do it and they did it exceptionally well. And actually without knowing it, that propelled me to be a top salesperson every year in that field. So without knowing it, maybe that's again, came to the top in a different way, but it's. I've never reflected on that before. So I guess a question I want to ask then is what's the uncomfortable truth that even people like myself and people listening to this would need to confront if we generally want our organizations to thrive without ourselves? It's definitely something that I want in my business. I'm trying really hard to achieve this. But there probably are some uncomfortable truths in there. And I know you don't mind being controversial and you don't mind challenge. So this is good. You can hit me with your hardest work. It's fine. And maybe I'll listen. Need to hear it as well. So there probably is something that's a little bit, uh, uncomfortable within that, I would imagine.

Speaker B: We like it. We like being the hero.

Speaker A: Yeah, that is true. To be fair, I'll accept that.

Speaker B: It feels good. It's a dopamine hit. It's immediate, it's satisfaction, it's worth it's value. It hits all those things that our brain loves. And because our brains wants more reward, right, it goes towards rewards. So whatever rewards us is what we're going to gravitate towards. And unfortunately the problem With. With the architect model is that it doesn't do that. Well, you don't. You're great at what you do because you solve problems and you solve them quickly. You solve them well, you solve them wholly. But when I interview my clients, I typically do an intake interview and I say, what do you love doing? And I do the Marcus Buckingham thing, where it's about energy and feeling, and it's not necessarily what you're good at. I said, you might be great at it, but it's what you love. It gets you energy. You can't wait to do it, et cetera. And. And I would say 60, 70% of the time, I hear, I love to solve problems. And then I wait. And then in my first meeting with them, I say, I'm going to disappoint most of you in the room and I'm going to tell you your job is not to solve problems. And they look at me and I just pause and I say, your job is to prevent problems. And that's the problem, is if you prevent something from happening, you're not a hero when something goes well. And you, even though you did all the work ahead of time, like you did all the work facilitating, and I'm sure what happened over time is your team got better at doing whatever it is you needed them to do because you made them do it right. And so eventually you weren't as necessary, but you put all that work in ahead of time and you paid off months or years later, which. There's no dopamine hit. There's no even notification that it was you. So you have to be okay with that. You have to be okay with the fact that being unnecessary is what you're striving to be rewarded for. The running of the day to day, not. Not your job, the future. Your job is to create the future of the business when you're leading things, not run the day to day. I think that's the uncomfortable truth, is we just love it. And I'm the same way. I love when I'm smart and I say something pithy and wonderful and people are like, oh, wow, amazing, Bill. That feels really good. But I have to fight it. And being a coach, I have to often not say things.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Because I need them to. And I know I have the answer.

Speaker A: Listen, I work as a coach as well. I get it. It's one of the. Yeah. We often teach the things you most need to learn.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And it's. You know what the answer is? Staring. But it's my answer. Uh, that's the other thing. It's not their answer. And what's true for you is not true for me.

Speaker B: My favorite is anyone else? Does anyone else have a thought here? Because that stops me from doing my thought. That's my favorite. Go to. Don't say anything. Say anything.

Speaker A: Anyone else.

Speaker B: Anyone else. Anyway.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So that's.

Speaker A: I think, I think it's. I think it's. I think it's. It's a lot. There's quite a lot to reflect on there. But it's. I think what you said. I don't mind my ego talking. It's absolutely true. Uh, you do like it.

Speaker B: It.

Speaker A: You do like it. I think there's a, uh, There comes to a point where you've got to. It's the same is true in recruitment. You. I would tell all my clients, you want to try and recruit someone that's ultimately going to be better than you have that mentality. Don't try and find someone where you can just keep them in a box where they never quite outperform you. And you're worried about your job. If you're going with a fear of about who you're recruiting because you're worried they might replace you. It's the wrong mindset. The right person will help elevate you. If they're better than you, they'll help you get to the next stage of your own growth. But that can be really challenging for people. They're worried about their own position. I understand that we have a negative bias. You'll know from your neurological research as well. Well, we tend to sometimes stay on the side of caution. It makes us anxious to bring someone in that might be better than us. So we end up going with the safer option that we think we can control. But it doesn't really elevate you because you don't. They don't. You're not then able to hit your objectives or have the growth or achieve your ambitions because you haven't got the workforce or the team around you that's able to support it. So it can be quite. It's like a mirror sometimes. You've got to be able to look at it and face it.

Speaker B: And if I. You sparked one more uncomfortable, comfortable truth, it's because I've been studying the brain for 25, 30 years and what I learned is that your brain is not yours. You're borrowing it from your ancestors and it's working against you all the time. Uh, the problem is you don't know it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, uh, there's this Jonathan Haidt has this metaphor of elephant and rider. And your brain is an elephant and a rider, and the old brain is the elephant, right? It's the one that's been around for hundreds of thousands of generations and has basically done been. Has been developed to keep the plumbing and the scaffolding below it alive. Right? That's its job. And it's. So we've been running away. All those of us who ran away are the ones who survived. Right? Bias, Right. And I do this. I do this one thing because everyone knows that. I said, so if you don't believe me, I said, have you ever seen the moon when it's full on the horizon? And, uh, every. Almost everyone has, right? And I said, what does it look like? And it's huge, right? And I said, why do you think that is? I said, it's still 240,000 miles away. It's a satellite. It doesn't. It stays in the same place. I said, because your brain is trying to understand relativity. And since it's close to something, it takes the building or the trees and says, oh, the moon, that thing has to be bigger because it looks like it's connected to these things. I said, so later in the night, you look at it, it's tiny again. And there's a cool trick. That is if you're standing there and you turn upside down and look through your legs backwards, it shrinks again. Ah.

Speaker A: Uh, okay. I'll have to try that with my kids. That'd be quite fun.

Speaker B: Your brain doesn't know how to do that, Right. Because your brain is used to a certain way of looking. It does it all the time. And the rider in us is basically justifying the actions of the elephant, which is if the elephant wants something, it's going to get it.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. Uh, we could segue into a whole world of anxiety here. But I do think the evolutionary evolution will tell us that we are. Are wired to be anxious because, as you said, it's allowed us to survive. But the world around us is evolving quicker than our brains are. So we're in this kind of dichotomy now where we're constantly anxious and the whole world is anxious because that's how we're hardwired. But we don't need to be like, that's our, um. I would say our modus operandi now is not to be anxious to survive. It's to be happy. We've got everything. We live in a world of abundance. How can we switch that off a little bit and actually Embrace what's in front of us. But it's, as you said right at the start of the show, it's much easier said than done. I think there's two questions I've got left before we open HR L&D vault. The first is if you could leave our HR senior leaders that listen to this show at the moment and the partners and things like that, what's kind of one reframing that they can have that's going to guide them through their next decades? A long time in the world of work at the moment, let's call it next decade of growth for leadership. What would that be?

Speaker B: So to me, HR is the redheaded stepchild of business. And it's unfortunate because people, we're run by people, and people do the work, they make the decisions, etc. And I think this is me wagging my finger a little bit is stop asking for the seat at the table. You are the table. Everything revolves around human beings. And people are wired to be irrational, emotional and impulsive, and that is by default. And you are the guy, you are the people who know that best. And your job is to get those senior leaders that you're working with to understand that way more about how to make a business great than they do. It's not, um, strategy and execution. Those are outcrops of what people do. If you can do what we said earlier, if you can create a situation where you have 80% of the company pushing the organization towards the vision, then you're far ahead of anyone else. So it's not a great answer, because I'm saying I think it is.

Speaker A: I think it links to your mission, I think it links to the membership rather than followers. And understanding what modern leadership looks like in your vision, I think it sums up a lot of what you've said today. I think it's very powerful. And if the HR leaders can come away with that reframe, then I think they'll be better for it. So, no, I think it's actually quite

Speaker B: clear I'm not wagging my finger at anyone. Right.

Speaker A: No, actually, interestingly, this is again, slight segue, apologies, but I'm bringing it back into a world of recruitment again. But when I train the people that come into my business or when they're working in recruitment, I'll say the one thing you've got to understand very early is you're not selling a phone. We're not selling a, uh. The people, the thing that we're selling, they have personalities that can change at any moment. They can be Impulsive, they can be aggressive, they can be emotional, sensitive, driven. All these different things. And you can think you got it all the way to the end. You found the perfect client, the perfect candidate. Something completely unpredictable could happen in their lives that cancel that sale without any kind of, uh, word of warning. And you could have done everything right. So you've got to be able to, uh, handle that level of change at any moment. And that volatility, it's very different to selling a product with its USPs like a phone. It does this. Your current one doesn't. It's not going to change. And that sometimes takes people, they think they get it until they come into recruitment. They go, oh yeah, that's a challenge. People are challenging. Sometimes we love people, but they can also be really challenging. So my last question, just before we open the vault is a question for you, really tell us a little bit more about, uh, your business. Cassius Growth Advisors obviously are going to put a link to your website. He's got some brilliant links in there already. But for those that do want to find out more, that maybe want to work with you, Bill, and maybe something you said stays really resonated with them. So a little bit more about what you do.

Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. So I basically do three things. My main business is I work with leaders in their team. So the CEO or the head of the business and his or her team, coincidentally, I work mostly with women, uh, because they're, they seem to get what I do. What I do is uncomfortable with people. And, and so that's my main business where basically all I'm, I'm teaching management science, I'm teaching Drucker, Deming, Shine, McGregor, Bennis, Edmondson, Porter, et cetera. That's what I'm teaching. I'm putting it in a framework that's easy to understand. And yours. Right. I'm not a consultant. I'm not telling you how to run your business. I actually prefer working with people whose businesses I don't know anything about because then I don't have to do that. Anyone else here? Because I don't know the answer. So that's my main gig. And I guess I'm a writer now. I'm much more of a thinker. I don't really like writing. I'm not very good at it. But, but as you intuitively wisely saw, is I'm, I want to help people, right? Is I've lived through this. I've done 10 startups. I've. 10 startups is equivalent of being at a hundred Companies. But there's a lot. There's. It's a crucible of things. And I've just seen so many things. I just want to be able to help people. And I have the abundance mindset as well. If I give stuff away, I'll get stuff back. So I have the books. Hopefully I got one book coming out in October. Maybe I'll have more if that goes well. And then I do some speaking to support that or help people out. So that's my main.

Speaker A: Tell us about the book in October.

Speaker B: Yeah. So the hero trap is with Barrett Kohler. And it. The essence of the book is really what we've been talking about is that, uh, it's. I didn't know this at the time because I'm a neuroscience geek and I understand learning theory. I wrote a book that I would want to read, and it has the accessibility of multipliers. It has the readability of stuff that Lencioni does. There's actually a parable that. That goes throughout it and then there's rigor, like the Heath Brothers or Dr. Jonah Berger or Jonathan Haidt. So you can not only read a story that hopefully you get into, but you can say, oh, I can. I can see why that makes sense. I also wrote it. I didn't know this at the time, but if you pull the parable out, it's about 60% of the book. It is an L and D guide. It is. I take the stuff from Dr. John Medina with Brain Rules. I have the ages stuff in there. I have Kirkpatrick Method throughout the book. Book. And so you can actually teach the book to others. That. And so it has a nice sort of feel to it. So hopefully L and D people. Actually, I was talking to someone you probably know, the Rosses of Mind Tools.

Speaker A: Um, I might have it on my bookshelf. Uh, I'll have a little look. What is it? I'm looking that way. I'll change that to. I'll change camera view. You can have a look. I've look. I hear what I'm looking at. Am I over here? But sorry, go on. You carry on.

Speaker B: And so I had them. I had. I was on their show yesterday and they had a woman who was an LD person and she was. She really liked the idea. That's how it came about and what the ultimate vision of the book is. So it's. To me, it's. I've never read a business book like I wrote. Hopefully it is. What they say is, if you're all alone, then you're in A good spot or a bad spot? I don't know which one it is. Uh, but we'll see if people like it or not. But I tried to make it so you can read my book and you don't again, you don't need me. You should be able to for the most part do it yourself if you want to do it faster then you'd have someone like me walk you through it. But. But that's the goal of the book is to.

Speaker A: Sounds exciting. I wish you every success with the book for sure. I'm assuming that's going to be available on the same website. People can find in the, in the show notes as well. So uh, do have a look at the at the link. Go and check out catalystgrowthadvisors.com let's open the HR LND vault, Bill. We end every episode with this. So four quick questions. Here we go. If you could change one thing about the world of coaching overnight, what would it be and why?

Speaker B: Uh, it is to stop focusing on behaviors and start focusing on systems of behaviors again. Uh, back to the individual. Let's focus on how to be a great team leader as opposed to how to create leader.

Speaker A: Yeah, perfect. What's one piece of career advice you know now that you'd wish you'd known at the beginning of your career?

Speaker B: Uh, energy and time. I've been lucky because I intuitively did that. But when you find something that gives you energy and time passes without you even recognizing it, you need to pay attention to that. That is what you should do. That's when you get to the point where it doesn't work anymore. It's play. You just happen to get paid for it. I think that's uh, I would have done that earlier. I think I, I got better at as I went. But if I did that earlier, I think I would have been happier as a 20 something year old.

Speaker A: Yeah, I understand. One most, one of the most powerful things I've done with m my clients and this is not mine. I don't know who, who came up with it first time around, but it's an energy audit looking at the people, places, projects that give you energy and those that take it away. And I've been really surprised. I did this for myself and I have some tasks that I was doing every day that I just hated. Some spreadsheet based tasks and I didn't give them out because I was thinking, oh, this is just really, I have to do it because it's just mundane work and I offered my teams. Does anyone want to do this. And someone's. I love spreadsheet work all day. I was like, oh my God, the thing that drains me actually energizes them. That was such a learning curve for me. Now anything I don't want to do, I offer not. Sometimes no one wants it, but you'll be surprised. Sometimes people love the things we hate. And it's, uh, I found that quite energizing for me. What's the one mindset shift every leader must make if they want their organizations to outgrow them?

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think we've just basically talked about to move to what I'm calling an architect mind shift or cultivator mind shift, whatever you want to call that thing is, you have to be comfortable with being unnecessary for the day to day.

Speaker A: Yeah. Nice. And last one, a bit of fun, really. If you could sum up human resources as a song, a movie, a book, or even a quote, what would it be and why?

Speaker B: I think so. The first thing that popped in my head was when Harry met Sally.

Speaker A: Uh, okay.

Speaker B: Yeah. And they struggled with their relationship and then at the end they both realized that they were worthy of each other.

Speaker A: Nice. I like that. Uh, you came up with an answer very quickly. I'm impressed, Bill. It's been a really provocative. It's been a refreshing, a really deeply insightful conversation. I really do thank you for your time today. I think there were a lot of challenges here that our leaders that listen to this show I've been confronted with every day. I think you've challenged some of the assumptions we have as leaders. And I think that all of our listeners will be leaving with something to rethink in terms of the models maybe they've inherited. Maybe the way they view leadership at the minute is going to be a little bit different to how perhaps they perceived it before coming into the show. So I really thank you for that. Again, for those who want to explore Bill's work further, there are so many resources on that website. There's seven books he's mentioned. Another one come out in October. So M Book market. Come back to it in October. Get the Heroes, the latest book coming out. And yeah, I've really enjoyed this conversation, so I hope our listeners have too. Do remember to subscribe. Please do follow the show. Leave us a review, leave us a comment if you're watching on YouTube and leave us a five star rating if you can. It's shows like this that I think really raise the profile of the industry and improves the industry for everyone. So, uh, it's been a real privilege, Bill. So thank you so much for joining me today on the HR LND podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you.

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