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Do you or someone fall into the A-player trap? And no, I don’t mean getting stuck in Minecraft or some other video game.
I’m talking about the A student who becomes the A-player at work, and then suddenly finds their old ways and decision making approaches don’t work as well as they used to.
Yeah, that A-player trap. The one that causes smart people to make bad decisions. And let’s face it, we all know some people who do that.
So if you can relate, you’re going to love today’s guest, Rusty Gaillard, who has some great tips and strategies for how to get out of that bind.
What You’ll Discover About the A-Player Trap:
* How to know whether you’re stuck in the A-player trap
* Why defining what success means to you is the key to escaping the A-player trap
* How maintaining the status quo can serve as an A-player trap
* The importance of continuous learning
* And MUCH MORE
Guest: Rusty Gaillard
As a transformational coach and motivational speaker, Rusty Gaillard of Silicon Valley Dreambuilders, helps men and women experience more freedom in their lives.
Rusty left a 13+ year career at Apple in 2019 to focus full-time on helping others transform their life to one they love. Rusty’s passion for this work comes from his personal experience of transformation, including life changes he chose, and those he didn’t. Starting with a voluntary demotion in 2010 to spend more time with his young son, a multi-year divorce, and launching a new career in 2018, he has learned that how we react to life’s events matters more than the event itself. He believes that each of us is far more powerful than any circumstances we find ourselves in. By connecting with our gifts and strengths, we can grow in any experience and find abundance and freedom.
Rusty has been a student of self-improvement and transformation for over 10 years and was formally certified by the Life Mastery Institute™ in 2018. He believes that when each person lives their best life, the world is a better place.
An inspirational speaker, trainer, and coach, Rusty offers presentations and workshops to audiences of any size, as well as in-depth coaching in both small groups and one-on-one to help people create a life they love.
Related Resources:
If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Leadership and Management episodes.
Contact Rusty and connect with him on LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Check out his book: Breaking the Code
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How to Avoid A-Player Trap Pitfalls with Rusty Gaillard
Do you or someone fall into the A-player trap? And no, I don’t mean getting stuck in Minecraft or some other video game. I’m talking about the A student who becomes the A-player at work, and then suddenly finds their old ways and decision-making approaches don’t work as well as they used to.
Yeah, that A-player trap. The one that causes smart people to make bad decisions. And let’s face it, we all know some people who do that.
So, if you can relate, you’re going to love my next guest who has some tips and strategies for how to get out of that bind. Stay tuned.
This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner. Helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now. The weekly podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line.
I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I’ve got a fascinating guest for you today. He’s Rusty Gaillard. Rusty is the author of the book, Breaking the Code. A former worldwide Director of Finance at Apple and a Stanford MBA, who’s worked with lots of high performing leaders stuck in the A trap.
Today, as an executive coach, he helps them step out of that trap and accelerate their performance by showing them how to make better decisions. Now, that sounds pretty good to me, so let’s get started and learn more about that.
Available at fine brick-and-mortar and online booksellers
Thanks, Hanna. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Tell me more about this A-player trap.
I think you did a wonderful job in the introduction, let me just say. But, fundamentally, what this is, is the people who have worked hard in their life to get ahead, right?
And these, as you described, the people who are the A students in school, they went into their first job, and they did everything that was expected of them.
They worked hard, they delivered high quality work, and they start to build a reputation and a self-image of, “This is who I am. I’m a hard worker. I deliver top notch work. I excel in the kind of work and deliverables that I produce.”
And those people, unfortunately, start to build a pattern and a habit around a certain way of approaching their work. And that habit works very well and serves them very well for a long time in their career.
But, at some point, you reach a plateau where it’s not about delivering high quality work that somebody else asks of you. It’s about setting direction and being willing to tolerate risk, and those are skills and abilities that people like that.
That’s interesting. How does somebody know whether they’re in the A-player trap?
By looking around and noticing I’m not getting the kind of results that I have gotten in the past or I’m not advancing and progressing in the way that I would like to. And those are always clues because your results always are an indication of your efforts.
And if your efforts are not aligned and you’re in that A-player trap, your results are going to show it. And so, when you’re noticing a slowdown in your results, that’s the biggest indicator that, “I wonder if there’s something that I need to be doing differently?”
Well, if results are slowing down, isn’t it just easy to blame the people who you’re counting on for results that they’re not doing their jobs?
Of course. It’s easy to blame the people that you’re counting on. It’s easy to blame your boss, the environment, the economy, all of those things are great and easy scapegoats. But the reality is always in any environment and in any situation, some people are successful, and some are not.
And what’s the difference?
It’s not the environment, because if you’re in the exact same environment, you have some who are making progress and some who are not. It’s got to be in the actions you’re taking in the way you’re approaching the problem. And so, it’s easier to blame other factors, outside factors or the situation.
But if you really want to make a difference, you’ve got to look in yourself and you have to say, “What can I do differently?”
Now, is this A-player trap, something that happens at a particular stage in someone’s career, or could it happen to entrepreneurs in a startup?
It can happen to entrepreneurs in a startup, for sure. More often, where I see this taking place, is people who are working in a corporation, mid-level.
Early in your career, you’re not likely to fall into the A trap because this approach of working hard, delivering high quality work, doing what’s asked of you, that’s what’s expected, and that’s the path to success early in your career.
It’s as you’re starting to become a leader and as you’re moving up in the leadership ranks where you have to be the ones setting the direction. You have to be the one holding others accountable. And it’s not about you and the work that you’re delivering.
It’s not about what you’re delivering, it’s about how you’re enabling others to deliver, and it’s that transition where a lot of people get stuck, and they fall into this A-player trap of just doing the work themselves.
Well, why do you think they get stuck in this trap?
So, you mentioned that my book in the introduction is called Breaking the Code, and the reason the book is named that, is it’s basically drawing the analogy to, I’m going to say, your phone or a computer, or any kind of technology, that’s been programed to do a certain thing.
You may not be very comfortable with the idea that you have been programed to do a certain thing, but it’s basically that the accumulation of your habits and patterns and what has worked for you in the past, and when you do something that works, you tend to repeat it. We all do. We all go back to what we know that’s reliable.
And if this pattern has worked, it’s almost like you’ve been programed to follow the same steps. To work hard, to deliver high quality work, to get everything done, to aim for perfection. And it’s those patterns and those habits that stop serving you.
And so it’s the programing. It’s the fact that this has worked so well in the past, and yet now, it’s not working as much anymore, but you can program. And so you have to break the code, you’ve got to break the program, and you’ve got to step outside of that pattern, and that’s really challenging.
Well, that makes a lot of sense, Rusty. But for people that have been successful, it’s hard to know where in this pattern of things that they’ve been doing. They need some help, and they need tweaking. So, when you coach people out of the A-player trap, where do you begin?
It’s a great question. The first place I always begin with anybody is to ask them what does success look like for you? And a lot of people give a very simple answer, “Well, I want to get promoted.” or “I want to grow the revenue of my company.” or that kind of thing. But I always ask them to go a little bit deeper.
It’s like, “Okay. Well, why is that important to you? And if you get promoted, what’s it going to look like? How is your life going to look different? How are you going to feel differently? What are you going to do differently in your day to day once you get that promotion?”
And it’s important to start to unpack that and really get into the details of a rich picture of what is success? Because, for all of us, success is not just the what we’re doing? It’s not just the result, it’s not just the promotion, for example. It’s also the experience of what it is like to be that person.
Okay, so if you get promoted, what are you going to do differently? How is your day look different? How are you going to feel as you’re interacting with people? Are you going to feel differently than the way you feel now?
And you have to uncover those things and explore them because those become the seeds of actions you can take that help to move you forward in that direction.
Could you give me an example?
Absolutely. So, one example is it’s just I’ll take an example of a client that I’m working with right now who are conversations started off around promotion. And we explored what does it look like to be promoted and what are you going to do differently and all of that.
And what he had been doing so far was delivering really excellent results in his work. But, through the conversation, some of the things that came out was, he was not keeping his boss as well-informed about his strategy and his direction as he could have been.
He wasn’t keeping his peers as well-informed as he could have been. He wasn’t building the kind of cross-functional partnerships and relationships across the organization that enable him to adjust to strategies that enable other people to know what he’s doing and get visibility into his results.
He wasn’t building that kind of teamwork that is required for somebody to move forward, because what is a leader? A leader is somebody who influences others to take action. And if all this person was doing was delivering really great quality on his work, how was that influencing other people?
He needed to be out there building their relationships and starting to establish his credibility so he could influence people. But that was a mindset shift for him because his focus had always been just on the work.
So that’s a real transition into leadership issue.
It is, and that’s really where a lot of people fall into the A trap, is in this transition to leadership. A lot of very smart people saying, “I want to progress. I want to be a leader.” But the way they’re going about it isn’t getting them there.
And that’s where the challenge comes in, and that’s where you have to actually start to make different decisions about how are you spending your time, what are you focused on? And when you make those different decisions, that enables you to make the transition to leadership.
Well, that makes a lot of sense. But I think we’ve all known leaders, people who are in those positions, who make some bad decisions. And is it because they haven’t completed the transition into leadership, as you’ve described it?
Or, is there something else that happens once somebody reaches that level that still keeps them in a different aspect of the A-player trap?
Yeah. Certainly, one of the elements of the trap is about doing what other people expect you to do, or doing what you think other people expect you to do. Which, you know, is – we all come by honestly because when we go to school, we’re all trying to please the teacher because pleasing the teacher, doing what the teacher wants you to do is what gets you a good grade.
So we were all taught that in school. When leaders carry that into their leadership style and their decision-making style, that cannot serve them very well. So, one of the ways to make better decisions; I’ve got three little tools and they start with F, but one of them is to imagine that it’s a solo decision.
So, it’s just you and you didn’t have to worry about what other people think, what they’re going to say about it, how it’s going to impact other people. If you just get to your core and you say, “What do I believe is the right path forward for us?” And if you can get to that kind of clarity, most people know that. Most people know exactly.
I didn’t have to worry about what people would think and all of the other noise that surround many decisions. If I can just boil it down to that simple solo decision, what would I do? And that can be a really powerful way to get clear on what you believe is the right path. And I think if more leaders did that, you would have fewer of these bad decisions.
Well, that’s interesting because isn’t it kind of the best path for me versus best path for the organization? Sometimes people are more focused on their own self interest.
Well, and certainly. Yes, that’s – absolutely, and you’re right about that. And what I’ve meant by that is not just what’s best for me, but what do I believe is the best decision given the entire suite of stakeholders in this scenario, but not trying to manage egos and politics? And what are other people going to think? Because that’s where everybody gets stuck.
I have an example of a client who was trying to decide whether he should grant an exception to a vacation policy for one of his employees, and this was a brand new policy had just been put into place. And, within the first week, here comes an exception. And how do we handle this exception?
And so there’s a lot of complication in that scenario. “Well, it’s a brand new policy. What are the people going to think who developed this policy? And am I setting a bad precedent?” and so on. And so you can get caught up in all of these different factors. And if you can simplify it down to just, “Hey, what do you believe is the right decision in this situation?
Is it to grant the exception or is it not to grant the exception?” And if you don’t have to worry about all the ramifications, and what are people going to think, and what is my boss going to say about it, and all of that? This person was able to get to a pretty clear answer and go off and implement it.
But it took stripping away all of the extraneous noise that complicate the situation. But it’s not just his best interest. It’s also considering the company and the greater interest of the cause.
As it should be. That’s very helpful. That’s helpful, Rusty. I mean, besides the fear of, “I might displease somebody or step on somebodies toes.” When you’re coaching people about the A-player trap, what other types of fears do you encounter from them?
Well, certainly the biggest fear is the fear of failure, the fear of instability, the fear of rocking the boat too much. We, as humans, are all biased towards safety. If you go way back in evolution, that was to stay alive. But today, most of the risks we face are not existential risks. They’re not life and death.
They are reputational risk or security risk or financial risk, and that can be a real barrier for people. So, be willing to take the action that will move you forward, will move the organization forward, even when there’s a certain amount of risk associated with it. That is a real challenge.
And fundamentally, people tend to make a decision assuming that the status quo does not have a lot of risk. And that is one of the important things we work on with my clients, is to say, “Look, there is an equal risk in maintaining the status quo, and most people undervalue that risk. They don’t assess that risk appropriately.
And you really need to look at what is the risk of not doing anything compared to what is the risk of taking the action that I believe is the right action that’s going to move us forward towards the bigger picture of long term success?” And it takes some real courage to make that assessment and to look equally at the risk of inaction and the risk of action.
That’s so true, because doing nothing could be that deer in the headlights and then boom, something bad happens. So, you’re right. Doing nothing doesn’t always work.
Yes. I mean, you know, the classic example of that area, one of the examples is Kodak. And for those of you who remember, the Kodak Company was one of the largest companies in the country and dominated the film industry and has virtually disappeared out of industry because they did not make any change.
They stuck with the status quo. They said, “We’re going to keep producing film.” When the industry was moving to digital.
Yeah. That sure didn’t serve them very well, did it? [Laughter]
[Laughter] No.
Absolutely not.
And who wants – and you don’t want to be Kodak, right?
No.
That’s the thing to look at, is what is the risk of not doing anything?
Right.
So back to the A trap; you can keep doing things the way you’re doing them. Well, gosh, I can’t take my eye off the work quality because, if I take my eye off the quality of the work, then my work quality will suffer. I won’t get good reviews, I’ll perform badly. And ultimately that could lead to the end of my career and the end of my job.
Well, certainly, there is a risk of continuing to keep your focus just on the work, which is you’re not doing these other things, like I talked about relationship building, setting direction, having conversations with people about build that kind of teamwork so that you can influence them and become established as a leader.
And if you’re not doing those things, because you’re so focused on the work, there’s a risk associated with that. The risk is that you will continue to stay stuck in the job that you’re in. But unless you recognize that risk and evaluate that against the risk of change, then you’ll continue to do the same thing. And that’s exactly what the A trap is.
Bingo. Now, when you’re talking to clients about their decision making, or I’d like to come back to what you said earlier about what success means to them. Is there a common thread about success and what it looks like to most people that you’re working with?
Well, I’ll tell you that the people that I most enjoy working with are the ones who want success in the broadest sense of the word. And that means they want to continue to have career and professional success, and they want to enjoy their life. They don’t want to sacrifice everything else in the service of successful career.
And one of the things that I talk to my clients about is this idea of success without sacrifice. Because I really believe that that is the way to do it. If you’re sacrificing something to the extent that it’s painful, that’s not real success. Real success is when all aspects of your life are moving forward in a way that feels right and balanced to you.
And so that’s why I always like to talk to my clients about what does success look like? Because the answer is not work harder, put more time and energy in, because most of my clients are already putting a tremendous amount of time and energy into their work.
And in fact, sometimes taking a step back from that allows them a different perspective, and allows them a little bit more energy, and allows them to make better decisions because they’ve got a little bit more capacity to see things differently, to have a different perspective, and then the courage to take and implement a different kind of decision.
That’s kind of like when entrepreneurs are so busy working in the business, they don’t work on it, to step back to see the bigger picture because they’re so busy focusing on some little micro issue, which is important and needs attention. But when that’s all you do, you lose sight of the bigger picture.
Absolutely. One of the people I’ve worked with commented on that exactly. He happens to be a really interesting person. He tracked his hours, his work hours, and he’s been doing this for almost a decade. But he said since he launched this company as a co-founder and he’s the CEO of this company, and he was regularly working 60 to 70 hours a week.
And he found that when he dialed that down to 50, he was delivering better quality work because of exactly what you said. He could see around corners. He could see issues that people were or were not addressing. He could guide the team and mentor them. He could empower them differently.
It’s not necessarily causal, but the fact that he was working less allowed him to have more energy and more perspective and work on the business rather than work in the business. And that dynamic is true for everyone, whether you’re a business owner or an executive in a larger corporation.
Yeah, absolutely. Because you can focus more instead of having your focus spread over umpteen things, which is just crazy. What’s the most important thing you want people to know about the A-player trap?
The most important thing I want people to know is that your patterns that have worked so well for you up until this point, may be the exact thing that is holding you back. One of the examples I like to give is Jeff Bezos. And you may or may not like Amazon and the company he’s built.
However, if you think about him as a person and as a leader, he started a company which was tiny, right? From zero. And he built it into one of the largest companies in the world. And you think about how he as a leader must have grown and change because most people can’t make that transition.
All of the stories are the CEOs who are replaced at some point in that journey because they are no longer capable of growing and managing a company that continues to grow in scale. But Jeff Bezos was able to do that. That’s the opposite of A trap. The A trap is when you get stuck saying, I’m going to keep doing the same things I’ve been doing.
And as the pressure rises and as the tension gets higher and you get more and more stressed, you fall back on your old ways of doing things. You’re always of decision making, working harder, trying harder, aiming for perfection, rolling up your sleeves and doing the work.
And if you’re doing those things, you’re in the A-player trap because you’re going back to the same way you’ve done things. So it’s a willingness to step out of that, break the code and understand and think about what do I need to be doing differently in order to get to the next level?
Terrific. It’s all about, like you said, breaking that code. Having a growth mindset that there’s ways to learn to do new things or do old things in a better way.
So, Rusty, this is really been great. I appreciate your time and the way you’re helping people out of the A-player trap, because I think everybody benefits. They individually, their friends, their family and the organizations that they work for, or are building.
So, if you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Rusty Gaillard, his work, and his book, Breaking the Code, that information, as well as a transcript of this interview, can be found in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.
Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next Thursday with another episode of Business Confidential Now.
So, until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.
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