6 leadership traps and how to avoid them

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

Creative planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, state strategy, investments all under one roof. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale.

Global hiring is such a headache when you're building fast, but companies like Eleven Labs are scaling effortlessly with deal. They quadrupled their workforce in twenty twenty five. Without hiring an HR team. Build your global team with deal. Visit deal.com slash MOS and start expanding your business today. That's D E L

dot com. Slash M O S. Hey, folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more.

Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too. Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscot com slash apply. Twenty six.

Hi, listeners. It's Reed. You're about to hear a special episode of Masters Scale called Six leadership traps and how to avoid them. When you were a kid, you may have played a game called The floor is lava.

It involves scattering cushions, books, and possibly your caregiver's prized possessions across the living room floor. then precariously hopping from one item to the other. Without touching the floor. Because The floor.

is lava. For entrepreneurial leaders, the situation is similar. Except it's not just a molten floor you need to worry about. Your path to scale is littered with all kinds of deadly traps. Many of these will be as easy to spot as a pool of bubbling magma.

But others will be far harder to detect. Like an invisible tripwire. that shoots a silent deadly. Poison Dart. Some of these traps will be slow working.

Others will be more like superheated magma. They will burn you up. Instantly. What unites them all is how they can spell doom.

For your business. Many leaders have only learned about these traps the hard way. By falling into them. In this episode. We'll share some of the learnings of the most successful scale leaders who have had to spot these traps.

and propel themselves beyond them. Some spoke to me. And some spoke to Bob Safian. on masses of scale rapid response. These are critical insights about some of the most deadly pitfalls business leaders at all stages of scale face.

These are the six leadership traps and how to avoid them. You gotta have incredible talent at every position. Huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Ten years later and be like, well, that's just how you do it. We haven't made it. Just how you do it.

This is masters of scale. I'm Reed Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. Partner Graylock. And your host.

And this is six leadership traps and how to avoid them. Trap one. Organizational jam. No one likes bureaucracy.

But every organization. has its own rules and culture. Ideally, these help us lean into our strengths and maximize our advantages. But things can get so jammed up with processes and rules that rigor mortis sets in and it gets difficult. To get anything meaningful done.

That's exactly. What Marissa Meyer discovered when she took over as CO of Yahoo. A zombie filled organization. That's stifled. It's employees' creativity.

But rather than just slash through the bureaucracy. Indiscriminately. From the top down. Marissa looked to the team itself. To dismantle what wasn't working.

Her solution. Was to foster culture in which every one. Felt empower to call out problems. And offer solutions. We created something called PBJ, Process Bureaucracies and Jams. So basically you could report process bureaucracy and jams that didn't make sense to you. We wanted to come up with something that was um kind of catchy and memorable and an acronym.

I mean, really process bureaucracy. What are we doing? I was like, Okay, we'll just do jams, yeah. Patricia did a company meeting every Friday. called FYI and Patricia would use the peanut butter jelly time song as like her intro music when she would come up and like talk about the different changes and things that we were gonna make as a result of P B and J that week. Under PBJ, anyone in the company could suggest a problem for the red tape machete to take on. As long as they also propose the solution for it.

But we basically came up with a really scalable wisdom of crowds like solution to point us where the problems were. And they were everything from like we had a doorway on a stairwell in Bangalore that would get locked. It would make everyone like walk all the way around the building to use the staircase on the other side. And there was like Can we just unlock the stairwell? Right? All of those types of things that just start making the company work better, but it also really empowered the people there. Just make them feel like You need to be part of the solution.

Notice how Marissa made employees part of the process. She could have cut through bureaucracy from a top down with edicts and pronouncements. but by engaging employees in the process. by making them her partner in routing out bureaucracy. They became part of the solution.

And here's An important thing to note. Marissa didn't simply stop at cutting through the processes and jams that had been holding Yahoo back. She used her red tape machete method to inspire and surface new ideas that had the potential to reinvigorate the business. So she issued something she called the Sallen.

Asking anyone Anywhere in the company. To propose new ideas to build the business. If you could come up with an idea that could make five million dollars a year extra. We had, you know, like a really amazing prize. I think it was like two hundred fifty thousand dollars per team or fifty thousand dollars per individual.

I thought we'd maybe get two dozen ideas, maybe green light like six of them, you know get twenty or thirty million dollars of extra revenue. Instead, we got I believe eight hundred and forty submissions of ideas from across the company. There were a lot of really amazing ideas in there, and I think in the end we greenlit almost 200 of them. We started seeing tens of millions of dollars of new revenue come through that. Marissa Solution. Was itself.

An organizational process. When thoughtfully designed. Process. can be an incredible benefit. Kathy Zoe.

C of Electric Vehicle Charging Station Maker. EVGO Spoke about this. with Bob Safian. On an episode of Rapid Response.

If you're a student of organizational behavior and institutions The middle managers have to be empower to say Yep, let's go. And that's a really unusual large organization that truly has that empowerment. Right. And again, I'm talking about the new tech companies too.

They are no different from the old guard. Like once a company becomes big, it's like ooh ooh. How much autonomy do I have in saying yes to something? all of the business books I've read over my whole career it's sort of like there are companies They hold up companies that allow that autonomy, but it's very, very difficult in practice to maintain the financial discipline and the rigor.

And allow total autonomy. Kathy has an example. of a big company that managed to strike that balance of rigor. And autonomy. In the nineteen nineties, Kathy worked with the US government's environmental protection agency, when she helped create Energy Star.

A program dedicated to reduce energy consumption and emissions. We were working really closely with Intel, and Intel was inventing a super energy efficient chip. You know, and they were really excited about it. In fact, in these early days, they etched an energy star logo onto that little tiny chip. And they were so much fun to work with. And they were already a pretty successful company. This is probably the late 80s. And I said, wow, you know, what is your guys' organizational structure? It's like, oh, we change it so frequently we never even write it down. And I remember that being so like, wow, I'm gonna aspire to do that to run a company that way. Well, now that I'm running a company and we're only three hundred people, there's no way we could function if we didn't have an organizational structure of some sort.

So it's just the practical reality of decision making is, you know, we want it to be faster, but we also want it to be disciplined. Kathy was shocked. And impressed. See that a huge company like Intel with a long history. Didn't

Have a static structure. Indeed. This was part of its secret. to avoiding the trap. Of getting organizationally jammed.

Note that Kathy's Not saying. Intel had no structure. As a leader. She knows that some structure is valuable.

But by keeping its structure moving and flexible. Intel avoided the trap of jamming up. I urge all leaders. To keep on reviewing. Modifying.

And even scrapping processes. Whatever stage of scale you're at. While also inventing New processes. That drive creativity.

Trap two Being a bullhorn All good leaders know the importance of communication. However

It can be hard to realize. How your attempts at communication are perceived. By different stakeholders. Employees at different levels of seniority. And across different company cultures.

In the worst cases, you may actually be causing problems. With your eagerness to communicate. People will feel ignored. Ideas.

will become extinguished. And you will know less and less. About the people around you. To avoid this trap. You need to listen more.

Get curious. And ask questions. Melody Hobson Learn this from a trusted mentor. Basketball player Turn Senator Bill Bradley.

Melody is the co COVID. of aerial investments. The first black owned asset management firm in the United States. And

The chair of the board. Starbucks. At a pivotal moment in Melody's career. He'll give her some hard But valuable advice.

I remember him looking at me one day and he's like, You know It's gonna be really interesting to see if you develop into a whole person. I'm like what? It's like He's like You know, everyone doesn't make it.

And I'm like, What do I need to do? He's like, We won't know. For a long time. Out of context. Rough advice.

But Bill was a long time mentor. Someone Melody trusted implicitly. Which is what made the next piece of advice even harder. And he's like, You're gonna have to really work hard not to be a ballhawk. 'Cause you know, you have a personality that when you walk into a room, you could suck the life out of it.

And I am sitting there and I'm telling myself in my head Don't cry. If you cry, he will never speak to you like this again. Just Be curious. He loves you. Keep going.

This is incredibly personal and specific advice Bill Bradley gave Melody. And she absolutely had the option of not taking it. But instead, she found it resonated with her. Even the most dedicated learners have blind spots. And it's important.

To keep advisors around you. who aren't afraid to point them out. I tried to think after that conversation of how I could make sure I was never a ballhawk. I mean that day. I remember flying back to Chicago and saying, like, how could I make sure that's not me?

And one of the things I do as a result of that, and I am maniacal about it. Whenever I meet anyone, all the way down to an assistant who comes and picks me up in the lobby, I just start asking people questions about themselves. And that way turn the conversation on them. And I learn a lot. The trap Melody fell into. was thinking that because she talked a lot, she was a good communicator.

And it took a trusted mentor. that our approach could actually be detrimental. If you're questioning your leadership communication. Think.

Who could you call? What one person would be honest with you about how you communicate. At a minimum. You need to have a regular gut check.

To make sure your channels of communication. Or truly. Two way. when it comes to avoiding the trap of being a bullhorn. You don't always need a revelation that flips your perspective.

In fact, it's better. to take them more. Iterative. Approach. This is why you always need to be looking out for signs that you're falling into a miscommunication.

Mismatch. For an example. We're gonna hear from Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO. Speaking in twenty twenty two at the Masters of Scale Summit. Our annual live event.

This story takes place before Eric's time at Google. as he joined software company Novelle. A long time ago I I was recruited to be CEO of Novell. And Novelle was headquartered in Utah. culturally extremely different from

where we are today. I mean trust me, very different. And I you know, I was sort of naive but well meaning. So I show up and I sort of meet everybody and I ask for advice and everyone's very generous. Bill Gates said spend eighty percent of your time on eighty percent of your revenue. Good advice. Jim Barksdale said, if it's a snake, kill it. He had a whole bunch of Texas sayings that were very funny. And what I did is I took a notebook and I wrote everything down, and I found myself on one of these United Flights and coached next to somebody who wanted to give me lots of advice. I had five hours of note pages. People were really helpful.

So here I am and I start meeting people and so forth, all sorts of problems in the company. And the company at the time had a little shuttle, you know, knee to knee seats going from Utah to San Jose, and I find myself 'cause I said I can't quite figure out who the really smart people are. I'm I'm just gonna

casually saying this because I'm an elitist, right? And the and and my friend says Find one and they'll know the others. Okay. Good advice. So I'm sitting there and this guy's a little bit of a Right. He's like brilliant. And I go, Stop.

Okay. Give me the list of the ten smartest people in the company. Okay. Yeah, when write down. And I put it in my little briefcase, go to the meeting and I give it to my assistant.

А сей, а ван All of these people. come to my office each for half an hour and I just want to listen to them. Okay, so a week later I'm in my office in Utah. And the first gentleman comes in.

And he's White. As a sheet. Mm. I've never seen someone so upset. I thought well maybe this is like Utah culture. You know, they're just like it's like not a normal place, right?

And we're ch and he's nervous. He's like really nervous. It's one of the smartest people. And I said well. Okay, I'm sorry to ask you, but why are you so Upset.

You're firing me. And I go. What? In Novelle, the way you're fired is it's a thirty minute appointment with no agenda.

And I realized that I had notified the top ten smartest people in the company. Right. So so What the

So so and I have a hundred examples of Eric's stupidity of that nature. But here's what I learned. What I learned is that Culture does trump everything else. Excuse the pun. And um the the Trump part, not the culture part.

The the you think you understand how people work and you don't. And you have to take the time to listen. So at that point I decided I would go get Utah training, and this is code for Mormon. And so I would sit down and I would listen and I would learn and so forth and actually work with them. And that produced a good outcome. Note how at the start of the story

Eric was being the opposite of a bullhorn. He was taking. An extreme listening approach. There was no danger of him sucking the air out of the room. By overcommunicating.

But sometimes Being an extreme listener. can be just as stifling to your team. Recall what Eric said. I want

All of these people. come to my office each for half an hour and I just want to listen to them. That last part of the message. I just want to listen to them. Didn't make it through.

To each of those employees. That Combined with a culture at Novelle. We're out of the blue, one-to-ones. tended to mean bad things.

Cause confusion. Fear. And a communication breakdown. So be clear. In your communication.

About Communication. Don't be a bullhorn. Whether it's one that stifles with noise. Or

With silence. And constantly. Seek our advice. So you can keep your lines of communication. Clear.

Trap three. Loaded meetings. This is one of the more obvious traps. Meetings that eat up the day.

And lead precious little time. For actually running your business. No doubt. Some meetings are essential. But it is easy.

To fall into the trap. Of holding meetings that take up too much time. And have few results. This is a dangerous trap. Because time.

Is our most precious resource. So how do we make meetings more worthwhile? And effective. Shishir Marotra. is the co founder and CEO of Coda.

A document collaboration platform. That brings data and teams together. Shishir. Has come up with a number of creative ways to keep meetings on point.

inside of every meeting is done in a coda doc, but there's a section of every coda doc that's usually two part. One is A QA section. Where Everybody adds questions and then they upvote each other's questions.

is another part that is what we call sentiment tracker. where everybody has uh space where they add, say we're trying to decide, should we launch this feature? It says everybody puts in one to five stars, I think we should or we shouldn't, I don't know comment. The key is it's hidden from everybody else. In this meeting, everybody does that process, then we unhide it, and we see, here's what everybody thinks. We remove a lot of groupthink out of that process. And then we go through the questions in order. If you think back to the incentives of most teams and meetings is loudest voice wins

In this way you give a chance for everybody's voice to be heard. It forces you to talk about the things that are most important. It also gives you a sense of accomplishment. You leave this meeting and you say, We didn't answer every question, but we answer every question that had at least three up votes. You're actually

really pulling the room for the good ideas, making sure the important subjects you get the wisdom of the team going. And that participation actually is to some degree encouraged in the right way. versus the oh I just feel vaguely disconnected and I don't know how to get my voice in here. I don't know if it's welcome. You change all that with the work process and with the tool. That's right. At the start of every meeting. They open that document and start filling it out.

Everyone knows what to do. But most importantly Everyone knows what they get out of this ritual. Rather than drudgery of the PowerPoint presentation. This ritual brings excitement.

And results. Shashir and his team. Hacked. The standard approach to meetings. And it was in a way that aligned with their culture.

You need to find unique shortcuts to get your meetings working for you. This might mean using tools you've never thought of. These could be a new tech platform, like Coda. That surfaces ideas and talking points in a new way. Or

A humble hacky sack. That participants toss between each other. Who has the floor? Finding new approaches is especially important.

for remote meetings. Which, thanks to the Covid pandemic. Went from novelty. A necessity. For many companies.

When Priya Parker A facilitator. Strategic advisor. and author of The Art of Gathering. How we meet and why it matters. Join Bob Safian on Rapid Response. She discussed how individuals can ensure virtual meetings play.

to the strengths of the system. And avoid the pitfall. Why are we meeting it all? The facilitator Ray Ringle has this wonderful chart. What she put forward was a two by two, where People benefit from being in person when the content

Is complex. And when it's emotionally complex. If you're like reading off numbers or if you're sharing data, unless it's very confidential, you could probably just do that virtually. highly sensitive, complex, conflict filled conversations, you benefit from being in person. If you get to the point where you say, Okay.

We're gonna have some people be in person, we're gonna have the reality, some people will be online. Then to say have a host, have a team leader, whatever you want to call it. be kind of holding each room. Separate hosts. Separate hosts who are coordinating kind of co hosts. So there's someone paying attention to the zoom.

And there's someone paying attention to the room. Orienting it, starting the meeting, connecting the group to each other. Even how you start a meeting, the first five percent of how you start a gathering. Creates All sorts of norms and expectations and a pathway dependency on how people behave for the rest of the meeting. Doing things like

Starting the meeting With a question to have people pop into the chat, all of a sudden you see a hundred answers in there. And it's like I didn't realize Bob was in Detroit. Oh, I didn't realize Priya was in Brooklyn. Oh wow, they're back in the office. There's so much context that just allows people to feel a sense of psychological togetherness, even if they're on Zoom. And similarly, the people in the room are that you're doing some kind of check in. First board meeting in eight quarters.

How have you all been? The question then becomes do the people in the Zoom Need to hear the people in the room. And vice versa, and it's a design question. The answer is it depends on your purpose. For a board meeting say, you may determine like, hey, it's important that

All of these board members connect with each other. So that the communication across them becomes comfortable. If it's a Zoom meeting with three thousand people, maybe that Priority is not Core to the purpose in the same way. It depends on what the purpose and the need is of the group.

Different town halls. had really different needs. At different moments in time. Right? And sometimes it was people are completely burnt out and exhausted and just needed a moment to refresh and reconnect with why they're there. Sometimes trust is super low, and we need to take time to slow it down and reconnect to our purpose and how we actually make decisions around here.

One of the deep skills of virtual meeting in this era is creating a sense of psychological togetherness when we can't be physically together. Key To both Shishirs and Pre-approaches is identify and adhering to the purpose of your meetings. Part. Of identifying purpose.

Especially if you're scaling a new company. is intentionally. Designing your own work process. You have to design. Your own work goals.

Culture. and tool set. Likes and share. With Koda. That might mean reinventing a routine.

With your own tools and methods. Or like Priya. You can take a look. And assumptions. Underlying.

How and why you meet. But whatever you do. Don't hold too many meetings about deciding your new approach.

When you build substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious. Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building. Creative planning where wealth works together.

Lear more at creative plating dot com slash masters of scale. The Wired Newsroom is known for award winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wireds Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable?

How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies.

Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi. And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives.

Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. We're back with six leadership traps and how to avoid them. If you're enjoying this episode. Share it with friends by clicking the share button in your podcast app. And to hear my complete conversations with iconic founders like these, become a Masters of Scale member at masterscale.comslash membership.

Trap four. Valuing speed. Bove everything. It might be surprising.

To hear the author of the book titled Split scaling. To say that valuing speed above all else is a trap. But I would counter. That blitz scaling isn't simply

About prioritizing speed. At all costs. And I'm definitely not saying that speed isn't Super important. We just need to be clear.

On the difference between incisive speed. that boost you ahead of your competitors and thoughtl speed. Which jeopardize precision, focus. Slow you down in the long run.

And with Jisky. The co-founder and CEO of the personal genomics company Twenty Threeand Me. Had to rethink how she thought about speed. When she received news that threatened her company. In two thousand thirteen, the FDA sent a cease and desist letter to twenty three and me.

And Like all the previous run ins. With the FDA. So when we got it, my first reaction was like, Oh, it's not a big deal.

You know, this is manageable, like no one panic. It's fine. However This time. It was a big deal. The FDA claimed that because twenty threeandme was offering medical advice, there was a healthcare product.

It was a clash. That had been brewing. Since twenty three and me. had launched. But by Monday morning when the FDA published it

And press came out and some of that original team from you know FA advisors had called and they're like, th this is no joke. It was the first time in my experience where the problem was not solvable. I really had to shift mentality. At first

And took the classic approach. of any entrepreneur. She tried to find the smart workaround that that would let her get back to scaling as quickly as possible. I was like, I don't know what the solution is.

I called around, spent weeks in my pajama like just like calling. People and getting advice. My first instinct was I represent the consumer and the consumer has a First Amendment argument here. It's their information and they're just interpreting their information. But then Anne had a revelation sparked by an encounter with one of the very regulators she was preparing to do battle with. I had one very wise regulator who

Asked me, she's like, Well what do you want to do? Do you want to sell this company in two years? And if you want to do that. This is your strategy. But if you really want to change health care.

You just sit down and you work with the FDA and you do the hard work. And it's gonna take you Years. And you gotta be ready. At the end of those years, you will have really changed. society. but you gotta know that you're committed to doing that.

And I said, I was like, you know, I'm like thirty, whatever, like not going anywhere. Like what else do I have to do? I'm committed. Note how Anne realized she had to shift her founder's mindset. that valued speed above all else.

She wasn't wrong to value speed. She needed to recognize that a different approach. One that seemed More painstaking and slow. Was actually faster.

In the long run. By engaging. with the FDA. She opened up an exciting new sector. and placed her company.

at its forefront. Mael Gavier The CEO at Pre Seed Investors Tech Starz. Knows just how tempting. The speed trap is.

On rapid response, she spoke with Bob Safian. On how easy it is for early stage entrepreneurs to fall into this trap. The first thing I push back on with the young entrepreneurs is The idea that you are going to be successful almost overnight. And one of the key question I asked them

Are you ready to spend the next Ten years of your life going through a roller coaster of emotions. Бізю сомаш і на проблем. Any of the entrepreneurs says to me Ten years? No, I think I can do it in five.

I usually tell them that they are probably in the wrong job because it will take them. About ten years. And that's all If they're successful, less than one percent of startups which get funded at the pre seed level will Actually be successful.

It's also important. To avoid the trap. Thinking speed. Is the exclusive domain. of early stage startups.

I also push back on people who say, Oh You cannot be innovative, you can't be an entrepreneur if you work in a big company. There are absolutely large companies where it is totally impossible because you have to follow the rules and all the approval processes. But there are absolutely companies where you can come up with a new idea, run it, own the PL, go to the board and get the next stage of funding.

Placing speed above all else. Can capsize a business of any size. You don't avoid that trap by slowing down. You avoid it by taking clear sight of your objectives. And considering all routes.

Even those It initially seemed slower. As these may be faster. In the long run.

Trap five, striving too hard to be authentic. Think about how you speak and act with your closest friends and compare this to how you speak and act. Around your grandparents. I'd be surprised if you told me there's no difference at all. But you are still being authentic in both situations.

And you do it without even thinking about it. An excellent example. Of how this can be a trap for even the most experienced leaders comes from Dark Kososhae, the CO Uber. Again speaking at our inaugural. Sold out event.

Masters of Scale Summit. Here. He's talking about advice. He took. When he first came in at Uber.

The advice Authentically with his team. But instead It made him seem

Inauthentic. I'll give a little bit of an uh an anti lesson call, which is You can it it goes to all the advice that you took. All the advice, but ultimately Don't try to be someone else.

Be authentic to yourself. I still remember I I read uh I think it was like Forbes article about this manager who Uh walk the halls. You know, he managed by walking the halls and that's how he found out what was really going on at the company.

Oh my god, I'm gonna walk the halls. So I started and pretty structured. I I started Booking kind of walk the hall time. And I started walking the halls and

It was so awkward. Like it was you know, I'd be like, what are you doing? You know, like I'm working, like get out of here. Or like go into, you know, a conference room and Dead silence, you know. How's it going, everyone? So I just started hating walking the halls. I'm my sister. She like saw how much I hated, so she she took lee. She's like, Dar it's time to walk the halls, you know? And so eventually like I said, listen, it it profoundly didn't work for me. Now I'm sure, you know, I would say walk the halls is good advice.

But I do think it goes to what you started with, which is Ultimately, whatever you do, whatever advice you choose to take, whatever fits in with you. You've got to be authentic. And Only if you're authentic can you then effect authentic change with an organization.

Here. Dar was attempting to build a connection with his employees by walking the halls. But instead of thinking. How would I? Dara, connect with my employees.

He tried something that other leaders Not him would do. And because it was inauthentic, it didn't work. So before you implement a new method or routine with your team. Think how you as a leader

would achieve that goal. Not someone else. Tony Fidel is the founder of Future Shape and Nest. and the co-creator of the iPod. An iPhone.

Tony has a clear example of authenticity. That comes from his early professional days working at the legendary company, General Magic, in the early 1990s. Why, why, why? Why are you making what you're making? Not why is the company gonna be what the company's doing. What does that product mean? Why do they need it? What pain are you solving? Too many times.

Engineers. And designers Especially early in their career. are trying to make something to impress the person next to them. So like I want impress them with something that's gonna like be new for them.

That's the wrong way to think. Don't try to geek out and impress the other geeks. Give superpowers to everyday people. That you would love to have just so they go, wow, look at what I can do. Now starting going, what's the right device? Who's the audience? What are we making and why are we making this? So I m started penning up a specification

For what a mobile professional device was. Those Geeks at General Magic. We're trying too hard to show off their geek cred.

It was a constant game of one upsmanship. And it played at the expense of their product. And ultimately. their company. Despite being a young upstart engineer.

Keen to make his way in the world of tech, Tony didn't let himself get sucked into this game. Tony saw straight through it. And clearly saw the fatal damage it was doing. Instead. Tony did what was authentic.

To him. And that was use the skills. To make a great product. That consumers loved. Which of course he did to spectacular effect with the iPhone.

If you try to be authentic. by blindly adopt methods that work for other people. you'll come across as inauthentic. So avoid this trap. By adapting advice so it fits your personality and your goals.

Trap six. Outstanding. You're welcome. There comes a time.

When every leader needs to consider passing the baton. Sometimes The reason is as simple as age. Sometimes it's because your current tour of duty It's coming to its natural end.

Or maybe You've realized you're not the right person. Through its next stage. There could be any

Of many different reasons to move on from your leadership role. Above all. You need to accept. That the succession of leadership is a key part of being a great leader. And most leaders tend to fall into the trap.

Of not thinking about succession. At all. It's hard to spot this trap because leaders can become hyper focused on being the main hero. The main innovator. The soul captain.

They begin to think the position is just about them. However, as a leader, You need to realize that leadership is not just about you. Leadership. Is about the eye.

And The Wii And when you can adopt that truth, you start to realize that you need to act on it. Even If you're not ready to step down yet.

You'll need to start communicating clearly. About looking for the right person for the company. And not just the right person for the role. Start talking to your board. or your mentors, or your network.

I had to do this when I stepped away from LinkedIn. And work with Jeff Wiener. To be my successor is CO. And his over ten years a COVID. Jeff Crew LinkedIn's users from thirty three million to more than half a billion.

He grew revenue. to more than six billion. And ultimately Stuarted LinkedIn into its acquisition by Microsoft. When it was agreed that Jeff would take over a CO. We had to work together.

I had to find a way to put my ego aside. My ego is still present. But it wasn't active. I needed to have compassion. Начфоз.

But also compassion. For the whole company. and what it meant to put Jeff in the leadership role. Let's listen. To a piece of Jeff's episode.

before I started. I called him and I said, how would you like this to work? What decisions would you like me to make? What do you want to make? And he said, that's easy, it's your ball, you run with it. You get the whole organization to adjust to J. being a CO that it's really important when bringing somebody in from the outside to make sure that everyone understands that that person will be responsible for the decisions.

He planned about six to eight weeks of time outside of the office over the course of my first ten weeks at LinkedIn. I was accepting Any speaking engagement. It's the only time in my life the Weavers Society of Canada. Asked me to speak. I would go speak to the Weaver Society of Canada.

Mm-hmm. I would get back. I would say is it solved or not? People had to reestablish connective tissue with the new guy. More than half the time the person would get impatient. Go solve it with Jeff and other people and say, we got it solved. That didn't allow any exceptions.

Jeff's the CO, you gotta work for Jeff. I don't think th I can overstate the importance of how this was set up. But it required that rewiring. Without a foundation like that where you have clarity in terms of leadership and who's responsible for what. It's gonna be really challenging to scale. With the clarity of knowing that he would be setting the rhythm. Jeff set out to start his own drum beat.

At LinkedIn. Note. For a founder. Setting that drum beat is often instinctive. You get to set the beat.

Right from the outset. You have no legacy to overcome or accommodate. But if you're joining a company at a later stage, it's a lot more complicated. No matter how inspiring your own drum beat is. It takes time.

to sync up with the beat that was in place when you arrived. In this case from the co founder. to the next leader. You have to make a clear and thought out transition. The next CEO.

And you. as the co founder and former leader. Have to make room. To walk away. A note of caution.

There's a trap. Within a trap. That even the best leaders fall into. Picking the wrong successors. You need to be careful and open minded to figure out the best way to select your successor well.

It's not enough. To be willing. To move on. And if you've swung the bat. and miss badly on the succession already.

That's okay. It's probably not too late. You can come back. And learn how to build.

The point is Don't outstay your welcome. You always want to be considering. Who is the best leader for your organization for the next phase? Maybe that's you.

But if only because of time There will always come a moment in your company's journey. When the best person needs to step in to lead. And it won't be you.

And remember. Stepping down. From your current leadership role. Whether it's CEO. President

Or executive chair. Doesn't mean that's the same. that you're abandoning your company. There are always ways to stay involved. Or stay in touch.

Restaurant tour. and Shake Shack founder. Danny Meyer. Did this when he handed off the CO title of Union Square Hospitality. to Chip Wade.

Danny Talked about this move. With Bob Safian. On rapid response. Now you recently announced that your

Stepping into an executive Chairman role at Union Square Hospitality, handing off the CEO title. To Chip Wade. I know that succession had been planned and been discussed before the pandemic But I I wonder how the stress of the last couple years

may have impacted The timing It was exhausting, and and yet this industry's always been exhausting. My license to grow as a leader has always been the degree to which I can Delegate things that I used to do to people who could do those things as well or better than I can, and then increasingly do fewer things.

But Make sure that those things are things that uniquely Coincide with my gifts. For the last five to ten years. I've been conscious about saying wouldn't it be great?

to have a CEO in the company So that Rather than my being responsible for the day to day operations, spending more of my time outside of The business. Getting ideas.

bringing back the creativity so that our restaurants can continue to innovate and improve. Having had a amazing leader Chip Wade, who's been the president and Chief operating officer of our company for the last three plus years. It became evident to me that he was the guy.

You know, there's not even a crack of space between the two of us in terms of how we Approach Workplace culture? Hospitality. He happens to be way more experienced and gifted than I am at running large organizations.

He also acknowledges that I should still continue to focus on. Who are the chefs gonna be? What's the wine gonna be? How do we represent ourselves?

to the public in terms of everything from graphics to design. So We flirted with a whole lot of different Titles for me and finally I I don't need a title at this point.

I'm happy to just say Danny Meyer, but My official title is Founder. That's the great thing about founders of title You can never get fired from that one. And executive chairman.

I had a journalist recently say so. Does this mean you're stepping down? Or Stepping aside. And I said, Actually I'm stepping up because what I wanna do

Is to get higher up into the trees so I can see a lot more of what's going on. And use thirty seven years of of experience to Hopefully make some more strategic observations.

That thirty seven year long perspective. is something that can't be replicated. In a new leader. And this is why. Even when you step down.

you should consider making your unique perspective available to your successor. Whether formally as a board member. Or informally. As a friend. And if you were a new leader

Stepping up into the captain's chair. I urge you. To foster an ongoing relationship. With your predecessor. Don't fall into the trap.

Of casting that invaluable advice aside. I hope this episode. Has highlighted some of the leadership traps that are scattered across your entrepreneurial journey to scale. Remember, many leaders have found themselves in these traps. For some.

The traps have been fatal. Others have managed to sidestep them. Others. Have used them as springboards into the next stage of growth.

But whatever the outcome. These traps are learning opportunities. For more lessons on leadership advice, you can hear a wide range of full-length interviews with the world's greatest scale leaders and specific courses on our Masters of Scale app. Visit massascale dot com slash membership to download it right now. I'm Reid Hoffman.

Thank you for listening. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely for From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. Master the Scale is a Wait What original.

Our executive producers are June Cohen, Darren Trift. And Jordan McLeod. Our head of content and production is Lori Hoffman. Our producers are Adam's Q's Catherine Clark Ray. Alex Morris, Tucker Legerski, and Chris Gautier.

Our editor at large is Bob Safian. Our music director is Ryan Holliday. Original music and sound design by Eduardo Rivera. Audio editing by Keith J. Nelson. Stephen Davies.

Andrew Knoll and Brad Warrell. Mixing and Mastering by Brian Pugh and Aaron Bastanelli. Speaks. Criche. Alisa Schreiber.

How are your finger? Say it is happy ever. Greg Beato. Adam Heiner Alfonso Bravo.

Callin Howard. Willem Crohls Tim Cronin. Kelsey Capitano. Samuel Putta.

And a Pizzano. Sarah Tarter. Le Metas. Charlie Menesses. Chineme Azequana.

Emily McManus. Hali Bondi. And Sierra Black. Become a member of Masters of Scale to get access to a year's worth of courses and content on the Masters of Scale Courses app. Find out more at masterscale.com slash membership.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.