Stop Dumping and Start Delengaging — A New Framework for Delegation, with Tess Fyalka

Why companies promote people then leave them to drown

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:31Bill Gallagher: Well, companies, your company, my company, every company develops, promotes people into leadership and then kind of lets them hang them out to dry. Tess Fyalka spent 25 years cleaning up that kind of mess in lots of companies to the best of her ability. We're going to talk about the things she noticed along the way and her book, Walking the Leadership Ledge. All that coming up in just a minute.

01:01Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast. Our show comes to you every week, about 700 now. I love doing it every week. Been doing it for ten years, and it's such a pleasure to talk. Not today. Today kind of sucks. Today, my voice is not working. I've got weird things in my glasses if you're watching the video. Everything's… but, you know, we carry on in spite of, like, whatever, and sometimes that's what it takes. So pardon the voice, like that. I got my new book coming out, and it should be available for preorder now. Busy Is Broken. It's all about the shift that you need to make, how to stop being the bottleneck in your business even after you've grown it, even after you've had people, and you're still the bottleneck. Maybe you have thousands of people. Sometimes that's a problem. Scalingcoach.com or busyisbroken.com to get on that preorder list for that. Busyisbroken.com. Alright. Tess Fyalka. Welcome to the show.

02:04Tess Fyalka: Hello, Bill. Thanks so much.

02:07Bill Gallagher: So Tess, founder of Angle Coaching & Communication. She does leadership coaching, development work, team coaching, corporate training. She spent 25 years doing this, and then she wrote this book, Walking the Leadership Ledge. Along the way though, she ghostwrote articles, papers, book chapters, things like that on leadership for lots of other people. We're going to start with all of that kind of stuff. So she's got a lot to share about it. Let's start there. You ghostwrote 2,000 articles and white papers on leadership for other people, right? What is it that you noticed that was missing that said, oh, I got to write a book about this? What was that?

02:44Tess Fyalka: Bill, I have to say that the ghostwriting and my work… I spent about 13 years working with a management consulting company, and it was in my work with them and the ghostwriting that I really fell in love with all things leadership and management. And I was moving into the corporate training space, and I kept noticing the same things over and over and over again with the folks that find themselves in leadership. They start a business or they go into a particular field because they love the field, and all of a sudden they find themselves having to lead people, and they're completely and totally ill-equipped to do that because, of course, it's a completely different set of skills, as you well know. And so in just watching the pain and the suffering of these new leaders, and you can be a new leader at any time in your career, and just really wanting to pull something together that gives the new leaders, air quotes here, sort of a handbook, a guide if you will, that they can go back to again and again depending on what challenge it is that they're facing.

Betsy the accountant and the promotion that broke her

04:05Bill Gallagher: Well, maybe you could tell us a story about this. Maybe there's a standout from the book or something like that about somebody who was awesome, got promoted, and set up for failure.

04:15Tess Fyalka: Oh, there are so many. Let's see. Where do I begin? Well, let me go back to… Give an example from when I was working with the management consulting company. And so they worked a lot with small businesses. And, you know, this was in a healthcare field. And so these practitioners go into… they establish a business in their healthcare field. And again, they find themselves in leadership. They went into healthcare because they love healthcare, not because they love managing people. And so all of a sudden, you know, the business is growing, and they're struggling to maintain their client base. They're struggling to keep people. The left hand and the right hand don't know what they're doing because they haven't established the management systems. And again, the person who went into this field, they love doing the work, but then they find themselves with their back against the wall. They're losing money hand over fist. And, you know, it oftentimes isn't until they get to a serious pain point and they're hemorrhaging money that they realize, wow, you know what? I really don't know what I'm doing, frankly. I don't know how to lead people. So there's that from sort of the small business side that is pretty ubiquitous, and that was really very much a common theme.

05:51Tess Fyalka: So then moving into, particularly as I moved into corporate training and leadership development, and I spent ten years in employee development working for a commercial construction company. And so in that situation, you know, you've got leaders on these jobs, and they're basically running small businesses. You know, they're running $140 million projects. And they have to lead people, they have to lead teams, they have to manage people, they have to bring people in. And what I would often see there is, especially on the front line, they're so used to doing the work themselves that trying to do work through others is a massive mindset shift for them. And so they burn out or they exhaust themselves, and they can't scale their capacity, obviously, because they don't know how to get work done through others because they're so used to doing it all. And, you know, they're so used to… they feel like they've got to have all the answers.

07:00Tess Fyalka: I work a lot with folks who are in sort of the messy middle. And so they're a fabulous individual contributor. And, you know, and then they get promoted into leadership or management. And, you know, because the organization sees them as a fabulous individual contributor, let's take Betsy, for example. Betsy works in accounting. And, I mean, you know, the joke in the office is that she's so good that she could write an Excel formula to do the dishes. And the company leadership is like, well, you know, if we move Betsy into the manager position, then everybody around her is going to be just as good. And then, you know, Betsy's thinking, well, you know, sure. You know, they just all have to do what I do, and, you know, it'll be just fine. You know, they do things the right way, the way that I do them. And then Betsy finds herself in this management position, and the wheels are falling off the bus because… and Betsy can't wrap her head around why. Well, you know, just do it this way. You know, just do what the job description says. You know, just do what I do. And again, she was a fabulous individual contributor, but she doesn't understand and hasn't been trained in the leadership competencies that she needs to be able to scale her capacity and to bring her team along with her.

08:31Bill Gallagher: So when you were effective, like, it's not when it didn't work, right, but when it worked with those folks, how did you do it? How did you get somebody to go from being a contributor like that to being a great team leader?

08:45Tess Fyalka: Yes. Well, first of all, there's the awareness. There's the awareness that, okay, let's take Betsy, for example. Betsy is realising that she cannot deliver strategically the way the organisation needs her to deliver strategically. She's burning out because she's trying to do it all, and she's falling into the trap of, well, I know I should be training my people, I should be developing them, but it's easier for me to do the work. And so she's falling into that trap and the other trap of, well, they're not going to do it as well as I do. So there's all this stuff going on with Betsy, and Betsy is coming to the conclusion that what she's doing, what got her here—in the immortal words of Marshall Goldsmith—is not going to get her there. And so Betsy can set her ego aside, and she can seek coaching, be open to coaching, be open to development. And then at that point, there are things, for example, like a 360, like a Leadership Circle 360, where Betsy actually can see how she's assessed on the core leadership competencies that directly correlate with organisational effectiveness and leadership effectiveness. And at that point, it's like there's a road map. Okay, so then maybe, Betsy was really good, again, getting the work done. She could get after it and get the work done, but she's struggling in terms of her connection with the team and her ability to create an environment where people want to come to work and they want to work with her. And she's struggling to build those relationships. So when it works well, we've got data that tells us where is Betsy really strong, and where does Betsy need some help in terms of the competencies that we're going to work on developing for Betsy? And Betsy is open to it. And as you well know, as a coach yourself, not everybody's coachable, and not everybody wants to learn. But if Betsy wants to learn and grow, then that is priority number one because all of these skills can be learned, and they can be developed. Some are going to be stronger than others, of course. But it's like anything else. If you want to grow and develop as a leader, you truly can.

Construction workers craving the leadership development no one offered

11:27Bill Gallagher: So I worked with a lot of construction and construction-adjacent companies over the years, and I find there's this sort of no BS, regular, I'm not any of that management stuff, like conceptual… Like, I just want doers who do their job. And that's actually really great, like people who don't have a lot of overhead. But that is a failure to understand and appreciate the psychology, the motivation. I find getting people in that world to try new approaches is definitely a challenge. And maybe all of them, but there is kind of a, like, we just build things, kind of a mindset. We don't want to take a look at the mirror. I don't need to do any woo stuff. I don't need any psychology.

12:21Tess Fyalka: Just let me build something. Well, and I think, to a certain extent, that's the twentieth-century mindset of leadership. And it can work, right, in the short term. And in the short term, sure. You can use the hammer, and you can get your results. But the difference, it all comes out on the other side in terms of what's the bottom line showing, and how much time is being wasted on the revolving door. How much rework is being done because there hasn't been a conversation around what is the right way in terms of how are we going to deliver for the client that is consistent with our brand. And the other thing with this is that they're all human beings. And what I found very interesting is the sort of stereotype around, oh, well, construction workers, to your point, we're all just out here to build something. And as soon as they had the opportunity for leadership development, it was like, I've been waiting my whole life for this. I had a very different experience because they were so open to it. And it was like, I don't want to sound cheesy, but it was like for the first time they were being heard. It was like they want—because fundamentally, Bill, I mean, everybody wants to be treated like a human being. And I'm firmly of the mind that a good leader is certainly going to have high standards, and they're also going to treat you like a human being.

14:17Bill Gallagher: So you write about the big lie. Talk to us about that. Maybe share an example of that. That's a, I think it was useful to think of what is the big lie we tell ourselves.

The Big Lie leaders tell to avoid hard conversations

14:30Tess Fyalka: Yeah, so oftentimes what I will see when I work with leaders is that they won't have the difficult conversations. They won't set the expectations, and they'll make these assumptions around, well, they should just know what to do. For example, I talk about Joseph in the book. And so Joseph is really frustrated with his team because they're not delivering on customer service the way Joseph thinks they should be delivering on customer service. And so we're talking about this, and I'm asking him some questions. I go, tell me about how you, what are the standards that you set? And how do you set forth the expectations? And what does feedback look like for you? And so what I come to learn is that Joseph is like, oh, well, they should just know. Yeah, I don't want to be one of those leaders. As if setting forth expectations for your team members is going to be one of those leaders. And so when I refer to the big lie, it is this lie around if I tell them this hard thing, that that's going to hurt them and that's going to damage the relationship. Well, the lie is really it's not about them because you're not withholding this information because you're protecting them. Rather, you're withholding it because you're protecting yourself. And you're telling yourself a lie, the big lie, that, oh, well, I need to protect them. I don't want to hurt their feelings. But it really has nothing to do with them at all. You're trying to protect yourself from having the difficult conversation with them that is actually going to set them up more likely for success and reduce your level of frustration.

16:35Bill Gallagher: Yeah. I think I definitely noticed that. And I've caught myself in that before where I'm avoiding and putting off something, and I'm like, well, I don't know if they're ready for this or whatever. And truth is I just don't want to be uncomfortable and have it blow up in my face and have to deal with an awkward conversation. And I think that's, we see that again and again with people there. There's a delay. There's putting off. They beat around the bush. They talk about things, but they don't go right after the matter. And you could also be a jerk about it. You could be obnoxious, but…

17:11Bill Gallagher: Mostly we go out of our way not to do, because we don't want to be confrontational, because we don't have an argument, because like that, right?

17:18Tess Fyalka: Yes, yes. And we tell ourselves all kinds of simple stories around it. You know, and so we avoid the issue, and so it grows bigger in our own mind, and it becomes more difficult for us in our own mind because we're creating all of these different simple stories around what could go wrong and how might they react and what if they do this. And the longer we delay, the more painful and more difficult it becomes. And you know, I talk about the BRR. You know, the BRR. Okay, what's the behavior? Has this repeated? You know, is this a repeatable occurrence? And what's the risk? What's the risk if you don't have this conversation? What's the risk to your team? What's the risk to the client? What's the risk to the organization? And you know, oftentimes, you know, that risk of not addressing the issue is far, far greater than whatever the imaginary scenarios are that you're creating in your head. And as we also know, just from experience, you know, nine times out of ten, those imaginary scenarios don't play out. But we have created all of this stress and consternation for ourselves. And when we put it off, then it also, it can be something completely unrelated to the real issue that triggers us. And then we do behave badly because we haven't addressed it.

18:44Bill Gallagher: I feel like there's competing and opposite things at work all the time. As a leader in the organization, I want to be liked. As a human being, I want people to like me, right? And then sometimes I go around being a bully because I think, well, people aren't going to like me anyway, and I want to get the result, and so I'm going to push people around, and I'm going to act obnoxious because I don't really expect you to like me anyway. Or I pretend like I don't want you to like me, but then I'm looking for respect or some of that. Like, there's a whole sort of range of things that are going on at the same time in psychology of whether an early leader or a senior leader.

BRR framework for addressing behavior before it compounds

19:27Tess Fyalka: Yes. And you know, and I think that's such an important point. In terms of, I think that really speaks to especially earlier on, we're so wired to be motivated by what other people think or what we perceive is how other people expect us to behave. And you know, and that's very normal. That, you know, that's part of adult development, right? You know, in terms of, you know, you're looking around and you're going, how do I fit in here? And you know, what am I seeing in terms of the examples around me, and how do I model that? So it's very much a reactive approach to leadership. And so for a developing leader, one of the most important things is to identify, you know, what do you value? You know, what really is at your core in terms of what's most important to you? And that requires a conversation around, you know, getting to the heart of, you know, what are you afraid of? What are you most proud of? What are the things that are most important to you in your life? And peeling back the layers so that so that the leader can see, what are my core values, and how am I showing up in accordance with those core values? Or have I shoved those to the side, and I'm operating in a way that is incongruent with my core values? And so but, you know, that, that, that's part of that leadership development journey when they can get to the point where they stop. They can begin to move beyond the everybody else is writing your story. Everybody else is dictating how you're going to be as a leader. Or you, you, you are allowing your perceptions around what you think others expect of you to dictate how you behave. Moving to what we refer to as the self-authoring part of leadership. Yeah. Where, where you're saying, okay, who am I going to be as a leader, and how am I going to show up that is consistent with my values?

Wanting to be liked versus pushing people around

21:43Bill Gallagher: So as you're speaking, what occurs for me now is the focus on the result, like the job that I have to do, is clear, and I have a connection to it as an identity. But in all these things, it does seem like an awful lot of concern, attention on myself as the leader. Like, these people, they're worried about what am I going to do and how's it going to go and that kind of thing. And pretend sometimes to be concerned for the other person, but not like curious around, I don't hear like, what's going on with this person on my team? Why are they on my team? What do they want? What's important to them? What are they struggling with? None of, I don't hear any of that so far in that conversation.

22:24Tess Fyalka: Yes. And the leadership is an inside-out job. So you have to know yourself first. And what are, how do you react in situations that, that, it where it doesn't serve the larger purpose? It doesn't serve necessarily who, who you are, choosing, who you want to be as the best version of yourself, to use that commonly used term. And so, so being, getting to know what are, what are the things that, that allow me to be the best version of myself, be the best leader I can be, and what are the things that trip me up. So, so you have to know yourself first. And then, then you can make the decision. You can choose intentionally, how am I going to be the best leader for my team, and what does that look like? And then we can start talking about how are you developing your team members? How are you being a coach for your team members where you are, you are, you are now leaning into a value perhaps, let's say a value of courage. And you are, you have the courage now to let go of some things that have been on your plate, that have been, you know, that you've loved to do, that are very important to you, and you were really good at them. But you know that to scale the capacity of your, your department, your team, your organization, you've got to let go of some things. And so now you can be looking at, alright, who on, who, how can I begin to develop others who are part of my team, and I can let go of these things that I've been attached to? Because it's in service to developing the people around me, to helping them become the next best version of themselves.

Leadership is an inside-out job

24:23Bill Gallagher: Your book and your focus is on people moving into, like, new leaders, becoming leaders for the first time, and I think that the personal work that and the development and the things going on there, like, they're probably always there. I think about things that I struggled with in the beginning, you know, at like twenty, in early opportunities to lead something or a team. And then, and I think today, and some of them are like fundamental character things that I struggle with, right, and that I'm always sort of managing. And then I think about the like wide-eyed thing, like okay, have a brand new leader, right? And and I'm curious, I know why I've got them there because I think there's some capacity, because I think that maybe they're ready to step up, because I think they're not just, they're not just a technician. There's some, there's some potential, right? And so if I'm the CEO or an executive and I'm going to elevate

25:25Bill Gallagher: Someone for the first time, but I'm really curious, okay, what actually does this make a difference? Like, do they see themselves in this? Do they want to grow and develop? Do they see it as a pathway for more money? Like, what is the reason that they would want to do it? And what do they think they're good at? Like, I have what I think you're good at, right, but do they see the same thing? And I think there's sometimes a mismatch that they don't recognise some of the strengths that they have, and they overvalue others. Like, well, I'm really good at estimating. Yeah, this job isn't about the estimating now. I need you to lead the estimating team. So you could teach people technically that, but even that, like, you know, and so I'm really interested in people's self-awareness for their motivation and their more like clear-eyed assessment of their skills or lack of skills. Right? Everybody, like, new, you think about new leaders and the youngest people and ourselves and our youngest selves, like, we think we're going to be great at everything and we want to be awesome. But over time we realised, oh, I'm kind of good over here and I'm not so good there, and I lean to these things and not those things. That, like, clear-eyed acceptance of, yeah, you know, after some years of experience in different companies and that kind of thing and being 61, I know that there's stuff I'm terrible at and it doesn't bother me that much. I'm like, because I'm good at enough other things. Like, oh, yeah, you should put me in charge of the operations of your business unless you just need it redesigned. But, like, to day-to-day, that's not for me. I'm not sure our new leaders have that grace with themselves, the self-awareness and the, like, okayness, you know, to…

27:29Tess Fyalka: Absolutely. I mean, and I think you hit on it very well, just in terms of that. Recognising that it is a journey. I mean, it is a process, and they're not going to have it overnight. It's going to take a long time because it does take a long time for all of us, and it's not a five-step plan. It's, I like to describe it, it's like a mosaic. You know, and at certain times in your leadership development, you know, the certain colours of the mosaic maybe much stronger and much brighter. But it doesn't mean that only that part of the picture is all that there is. Yet there's more. And I think for any of us who are further along in our career, you know, certainly, yeah, I look back, you know, and just cringe at my early days in leadership because I didn't know what I was doing. And there, and I didn't have, you know, the opportunity for coaching and mentoring that I think, you know, today, we know so much more about how to develop our team members that it's heartbreaking almost that, you know, companies will put folks into a leadership or management position and not help them to step into that position to be much more effective for themselves and the organisation.

29:05Bill Gallagher: So, anyway, I'm rambling now. But maybe there's a story or two you could share with us about two things that I think people struggle with in different ends. The first one is delegating. Effective delegation, delegating well, remembering to delegate, being willing to delegate, trusting people. And then the other side of it, micromanaging. You've delegated but now you're up in their business anyway. I see those as recurring things. I write about them a lot in my own book and share some stories of leaders who tanked their companies and what happened when they couldn't micromanage and when they failed to delegate. I wonder what you see with the early-stage leaders.

Delegation and the micromanagement trap

29:44Tess Fyalka: Yes. That's probably, I would say that delegating is one of the biggest hurdles. And the other huge hurdle is acknowledging that using the words 'I don't know'. But, again, you know, delegation is, that requires that they let go of something that they were really, really good at and what got them noticed. And so it's part of their identity. It's part of what made them really good. And so that recognition, you know, as I talked about Betsy earlier, and the holding on to things, and the, if you can just look at, if the new leader can identify just three things that they can pull off of their plate that will help develop another member of their team, and it doesn't, it's not like you have to let go of everything. You're not going to hand over your whole job to them. But, yeah, identifying what might be even just one thing. You know, the, if it's preparing the monthly report, and so Betsy's going to have Sam prepare the monthly report. And then also articulating what does success look like. Because for a new leader, you know, Betsy may hand off the monthly report to Sam thinking, well, Sam's going to do it the way I always do it. And then Sam delivers it, but Sam and Betsy didn't have a conversation around what good looks like, what success looks like. And so Betsy gets it, and she's like, well, this isn't what I wanted. And so she's going to swoop in then and just take it back over oftentimes. And, you know, to your point in terms of the micromanaging, thinking about what do I need from Sam that is going to ensure that I, as I'm developing this skill of delegating, that I'm not out here worrying about how this is being done, that Sam is checking in regularly. But we've had that conversation upfront around what's in the monthly report. Here are some examples of a monthly report. Here's where you can gather the data, and let's figure out a cadence that makes sense for us where we can check in on what's going on. I can answer questions, give you some feedback, and you get a sense of, okay, you're on the right track.

32:24Bill Gallagher: Yeah. It's such a balance for people to do and such a struggle. I think I'm not a micromanager, and then every now and then I realise I am, you know, that kind of thing that we see again and again. Or I had a CEO say to me, I know I'm a micromanager, and then go ahead and keep micromanaging. I'm like, you just said that you're that, then then stop doing it. Like, it's not like confessing to a thing isn't like permission to then keep doing it. I know I'm terrible at running people over in the street, but I'm just going to run you over this one more time.

33:04Tess Fyalka: Right. Yeah. So if you lay down, it'll hurt less. Exactly. Well, and yeah, and I think you speak to a really important point in terms of they're so attached to that, and it's so much a part of their identity that oftentimes it isn't until, and you mentioned it earlier, they run the company into the ground where they truly have come face to face with the detrimental impact of their behaviour and that impact on the organisation. And it's tragic. That, and so that, you know, that leader who is self-aware and can look in the mirror and recognise, yes, that micromanagement was what the organisation needed, perhaps, to a certain extent at this stage in its development. But now the organisation is to another place. And if I don't empower my team members, if I don't enable them to deliver and, leader, what happens if you get hit by a bus or you're…

34:14Tess Fyalka: Somehow debilitated? The organization then, and everyone, is dependent on you if you're the micromanager. And it creates an environment of learned helplessness. It's everybody's looking to the leader because, well, Bill's gonna tell me what to do, so I don't have to think. I can check out.

34:35Bill Gallagher: I had a coach and mentor. He's still a dear friend. He's been on the show a few times. Dean Jones of the Gallup organization, years ago. And Dean said, a really, really, really effective leader finds the right person, and then in the right way says to them, I think you're really good at this, and I think this is an interesting thing. It looks like an interesting opportunity for you. And then that person sees themself in that opportunity. They take that opportunity on. They take on the whole thing. They manage all of it. They run with it, and they forget that you're the one that suggested it. They take it on so completely that they just get lost in the thing. They forget that you're the one that set them up. And I've done it a couple times that I'm really aware of in a significant way. And as I think about it now, in both of those cases that come to mind right now, I had zero attachment. Like, if it came off, it came off. It wasn't gonna cost me a company or anything like that. I wanted it to happen and I thought it was interesting, and I sorta threw it out there to a person, and then it gained a life of its own, and I love that. But it's really hard to accomplish that with that looseness of like letting them fully go and not watching them closely. In one case, I had this idea for a thing. It became an ongoing thing. It became a very big event. This guy was trying to grow in this organization. I'm like, you care about this, you want this, this is happening in the world right now, you should do that. And then it led to a thing that became his whole second part of his whole career. And he didn't remember any of that. In fact, even when the first event happened, he didn't remember that I'm the one who brought it up and threw it out. He's passed away now, but it became a big part of his life and I know that. And I'm not gonna name him, so you won't know who it was and all that, but I kinda like that it's anonymous, that it's like out there. And I wish I could do that all the time everywhere. Right? Like with our companies where I care, where I'm invested in the result, where I don't want it to fail. That's the hardest part, to let it go and then let it become. But every time I do and I look out, I'm like, I definitely, as I get older, I more chill out and I'm like, oh, look what you guys did. That's so cool. Tell me about how did you do that and what happened here. And I'm proud of them. I feel like over time, my job is to sort of throw opportunities at them and then give them whatever support they need and then just be proud of them.

Finding the right person and letting them forget you started it

37:19Tess Fyalka: Yeah. Well, and you speak to a really important point there in terms of the attachment. And especially for where you are in your career, you can sort of let that butterfly spread its wings and go and create magic out there. And you're in a different place now. For that newer leader, that's a lot harder to do. And for them to wrap their head around, I am going to be even more successful as a leader when I create an environment where the people around me, they can step into what they're really capable of. And I have created that. I've created the culture and the dynamic and the opportunity where they can step into the next level. And then my capacity as a leader increases because now what we can do in terms of what the organization needs strategically, then that has increased. But it's not easy. If it were easy, there wouldn't be 50,000 books on this.

38:34Bill Gallagher: Well, yeah, do we need another? So let's talk about that before we run out of time here. Walking the Leadership Ledge is the book. What's the ledge? What does walking it mean? Why'd you title it that? Tell us about the whole approach there.

Walking the ledge between who you were and who you're becoming

38:50Tess Fyalka: Yeah. So Walking the Leadership Ledge, that's the liminal space. And so when you are stepping into a new leadership role, be it into your first step into leadership or into a new organization, or you're moving from middle management into the C-suite, you are standing at the edge. And the things that served you really well and the things that made you successful are frankly behind you. And you've gotta step off a ledge, and you don't know if that drop is gonna be 10 inches or 10,000 feet. And there are gonna be days when it's 10,000 feet and things go horribly wrong. And so it's the liminal space. It's the transition between the person, the individual, the leader that you are today, and the person, the individual, and the leader that you are becoming going forward.

39:47Bill Gallagher: Yeah. I think about developing new people. And look, you can't grow your business significantly if you don't develop new leaders. So the audience here are primarily more senior leaders in companies of different sizes. And you, to grow your company, need to develop new leaders. So a book like this, a topic like this about having and inviting people into that uncomfortable space, to the unknown, to step into something, seeing them bigger, seeing the potential in them, and inviting them to step up to it is really the opportunity of something cool here. Thank you for sharing that with us. Let's do the, we'll put it on the screen. We'll put it in the show notes. walkingtheleadershipledge.com and Angle Coaching are your links and websites. We'll put that on the screen. We'll put it in the show notes as well for people to go find out more about it. Thank you so much for coming out and talking with us today.

40:42Tess Fyalka: My pleasure, Bill. Thank you so much.

40:44Bill Gallagher: If you wanna know more about our stuff, our monthly workshops on growing your business and all that CEO stuff, go to scalingcoach.com. My book is coming out now. It's available for preorder as this show releases initially, and maybe it's even available now on Amazon if you hear this later, but busyisbroken.com, and you can sign up for the preorder. There'll be some cool special things like that. Publishes in September. And thanks to Wanda for getting our show produced and scheduled and things like that every week, and to my friend and mentor Verne Harnish who created the whole Scaling Up mess that is at the core of our work. It's not a mess. It's a good thing. It helps everything we do. Thank you all for watching, for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep scaling.

41:37Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken. Do Less. Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.