Stop Being the Hero: The Hero Trap with Bill Flynn

On January 4, 2009, Bill Flynn's first official day as general manager of an email hosting company, the entire technical infrastructure collapsed. For two and a half days, customers couldn't reliably send or receive email. He calls it the best and worst day of his professional life, and it's the reason he became a coach.

Bill talks with returning guest Bill Flynn, founder of Catalyst Growth Advisors and author of The Hero Trap, about what happens when the leader who got everyone here becomes the thing slowing them down. Flynn walks through how he handed his leadership team a blank sheet of paper and told them to build the map, why two of them later said they hated it and were glad he made them do it, and how his own workday ended up finished by eleven in the morning. Along the way the business roughly doubled in two years and customer ratings climbed from 2.9 to 4.6 out of 5.

They get into David, a founder who kept grabbing the wheel every time a quarter looked shaky and churned through 13 people on an 8-person leadership team in five years, and Sarah, who turned Flynn down as a coach, came back two years later ready, and learned to let her team make the calls. Flynn lays out his Controller, Builder, Architect model, the Microsoft partner who told him his company was a B player, and how a single article led to a phone call with Alan Mulally. Bill pushes on why you can't copy Toyota's playbook and become Toyota, and why dropping your daily huddle because people grumble isn't leadership.

Bill Flynn spent three decades inside scaling companies as a VP of Sales, CMO and general manager, with two IPOs and seven acquisitions along the way. He's published in Harvard Business Review, is a member of Marshall Goldsmith's 100 Coaches, and is the author of Further, Faster. The Hero Trap is out now from Berrett-Koehler.

In This Episode

• The day email stopped working, and why it made him a coach
• Set the destination, then make the team build the map
• "I hated it, but I'm so glad you made me do it"
• Controller, Builder, Architect
• David: what happens when a leader reverts under pressure
• Sarah: from turning down coaching to letting her team decide
• Why you can't copy Toyota and become Toyota
• The "you're a B player" conversation that changed his career
• Alan Mulally, kindness and firmness
• Why you don't drop the daily huddle just because people grumble

Guest Links

• Catalyst Growth Advisors: catalystgrowthadvisors.com

Host Links

• Scaling Coach: scalingcoach.com
• Busy Is Broken: busyisbroken.com
• CEO Behavior Study: scalingcoach.com/study

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