Making the Most of Failure: Creating an Environment Where Employees Learn from Failure

0:10 - Hey, Kimberly. What's going on over there?

0:12 - Hey, Pepper.

0:13 - Hey, so. I want to get right into this one. I gotta tell you, I can't even believe we're already in May of this year. It's like, what is going on?

0:22 - It's crazy.

0:23 - Just and I know I say this every time, but I'm like, where does the year go?

0:28 - Is anybody else out there feeling it? Feeling the rush of this year just flying by?

0:33 - It just goes and goes and goes. And then the next thing you know, I'm going to be going. Can you believe it's already fall again anyways.

0:40 - But I'm okay with it. I'm ready for this year to go quickly.

0:44 - You are?

0:44 - In some aspects, okay. Yeah, in some aspects, I'm ready for it to go because there's something want to do in a few years. And I'm like, just hurry up and get here so I can go do that. But then this is a milestone birthday, and I'm not real excited about that one.

0:57 - Oh, this is going to be a good year for you. It's coming up, isn't it? It is. Oh, that's going to be fun.

1:02 - Yeah.

1:03 - Big celebration. Confetti cannons.

1:06 - Well, I think so, because I just feel stronger, healthier. I'm just, in a way, better place. And I'm like, bring it on because I feel like I'm 30, girl.

1:15 - You know what? There was somebody I was working with just recently who had a milestone birthday. And she said that to me, and I loved it. It was like, yes, that's where I want to be. She was turning 60 or she turned 60, and she told me she was like, I am going into my 60s. Better than how I went into my fifty s. And she's like, I'm not quite sure what it is. But she's like, I feel better. I'm stronger. I'm ready. And I'm like, I want to be there when I'm turning 60.

1:47 - Agreed. I would say this is better than my forty s or my 50s. It feels so good. Well, listen, I'm still in my 50s.

1:54 - You're still in your 50s?

1:55 - I'm not hitting that.

1:57 - I was starting to wonder.

1:58 - I was, like, hitting that middle one in the feel more confident. I'm like, I feel like I have my stuff together and things are just rolling in the right direction.

2:08 - Good for you, man. Yeah, I'm going to be right there with y'all. Right there with y'all, sliding into those milestones, feeling good and healthy. So I want to get right into it because again, I'm going to go back to it's already. May I'm? Feeling a little drag here. Kim. Feeling a little drag? You might not have a little drag, but I got a little drag for me. I'm like middle of the year. I'm like, come on, stick with those priorities. Stay focused. And I was reading in, you know, one of the things I'm a big scroller. I love it. I'm always interested in kind of like, what's the topic of conversation on there? And recently, I keep seeing these posts about failure and how failure those posts about they're just building blocks to success. And you have to have the right mindset that failure is a good thing. You can learn from it. My big question for you, when I was thinking about this, is it's very geared towards the person those posts are all about? Hey, look, you do you have a growth mindset? Are you willing to fail? Are you willing to learn from failure? My question is, is there, from your perspective, the role of a leader in that? Can a leader or does a leader help support an employee or a team member's acceptance of failure or working through failure? Just help me to understand when you hear me say those words, what comes to mind for you?

3:38 - I would say, does the leader have a role? The leader has a role. There are several roles. I think the first role you have is being able to allow your people to fail. Right. Is letting that happen and knowing why you let that happen, because there's a reason for it. There's a reason that you allow them the space to fail in certain areas. And then I think once the failure happens, the leader has a role to help that person work through it, get through it, understand it, dissect it, and learn from it. Because there are failures that people learn from, and there are failures that people don't learn from. And I think that if the employee is in a place that they're unable to see through it, to see the learning, it's the leader's job to help them through.

4:33 - OOH, I took notes on that. Kim well, three things that popped up.

4:38 - That's what two cups of coffee will do for you.

4:40 - So I heard. Yes, there are times when I allow my team to fail as a leader, I'm going to help them work through it. And then I heard some learn from it, some don't learn from it. I want to kind of dissect each one of those things. So allowing your team to fail, I think we've talked a little bit about this on developing your people, developing your team, and is this approach that you can use. So how do you create the environment so that people on your team can feel like, you know what? I might fail, but I know I'm not going to get the old kind of backhand afterwards.

5:15 - Yeah. And I think there is listen, it's not black and white. There's a little bit of gray in here. But I think that for me, as I'm hiring people in, we have an initial conversation about failure, and I kind of lay out some parameters. Like, here's the employee handbook. These things right here. Should you fail in these areas, I can't protect you as a leader. Right. These are the things that can get you fired.

5:43 - Right. Very clear, very clear and we'll screw around with these policies.

5:47 - Yes. And I'm not trying to create fear, but I'm trying to create some boundaries for failure expectations. Yes. Let's kind of create the box and paint the picture of what failure could look like. These over here, these are the things that are going to get you in hot water. And you can't do them more than once, right? Once and then twice is kind of like another one out the door. But this area over here, this is where you're allowed to make a few mistakes. They just can't be repeatable. We have to learn from them. And so that's kind of what this looks like. And so I think setting the tone, setting the parameters is important. Then I think a lot of the learning comes when the failures do happen or the mistakes happen. It's like, are you the leader? Is going to rub their nose in it? Are you going to leader say, listen, these things happen? Right. And when you understand how it happened, right. As long as it's not malicious and you can determine that typically pretty quick with a few questions. As long as it's not malicious. It is how you allow them to think about it on their own, how you help them work through it and how long do you let them waller in it and do you keep bringing it back? Well, there was that time you have.

7:04 - To allow years ago.

7:07 - I remember when there's those couples that fight like that, right. And they bring all everything back in and like, didn't we get past that?

7:16 - It's like you never apologize.

7:19 - You have to get past it. You as the leader have to get past it. And you have to help them get past it so we can focus on the future, not the past.

7:26 - Oh my gosh. So many good things in that. Kimberly good grief. Where do I begin? Number one. Yes. Focus on the future. Good leaders are focusing on the future. They're not digging up the past. They're like, where are we going? They are not looking in that rear view. They are looking through the front windshield. And they are like, let's go team. This is where we're at. I love, love that.

7:51 - And how are we going to do it differently so we don't get back in this failure box?

7:55 - Yes, but I got to go back. I was like, man, I mean, really? I think I could talk about this for a good 2 hours with you today. We're not we're extra shot. We're quick, we're quick. But I found it interesting to hear you say you kind of set them up at the very beginning. It's like, hey, look, you're coming on board. This is how our team operates. These are the black and white. Very clear. These are the kind of middle ground. Don't do too many of those. And then over here, these are the ones that we're going to work with, and we have this environment where you know what failure is. Okay. We expect it. We expect that you're going to have some o's. We're going to try and help you understand the o's, understand what you can do differently and how we can move forward for the future. And, oh, by the way, as a leader, I'm not going to keep bringing it up. I'm not going to keep rubbing I think you're right. Right. I'm not going to keep rubbing your nose in it. And every time I look over at you, you're like, okay, what are you thinking about me? Are you thinking about what I did last month?

8:54 - Yeah. And I think that they can feel that in your attitude. Like, let's just say they're in the doghouse. They failed. Right. And if you keep that side eye on them, avoiding them as you go to the bathroom or shaking your head as they're walking by, like, There she goes. That is going to create an environment of fear or I can't say depression, but then they feel like, oh, she's still mad at me, she's upset with me. No, I think you've got to be able to let that go so that they can see, like, I've moved on, because as soon as I move on, they can move on. Right. If you don't allow them to move on, I think that's a tough place for them, man.

9:36 - And it creates disengagement. It creates, like, I don't want to go and be in the environment where I'm constantly reminded that I am a screw up or I screwed up. Nobody comes to work to screw up. I think we've talked about that in the past, right. I don't believe that people come to work to screw up. I think people come to do their best, and they want to thrive. They want to do well. So I think that's an important thought as leaders, right? How do we drag it on, or how do we move on? And quickly, we just got to move on and go on to the next thing. Again, staying focused on what's going and coming ahead, what's our future? Where are we going? So I love this to you. You're going to start out with a person coming on board and laying out, hey, look, this is our environment. We like to fail. We like to give you that opportunity, and there's nothing to be worried about. That right. We're going to help pick you up, dust you off, teach you, and then we're going to go on to the next thing.

10:38 - Yeah. And I think in that middle of that, I think if you're able to share a story about, here's an example of when I failed. It was a great learning. Here's what I learned from it. That's what it looks like. I think that would be helpful.

10:49 - So you moved on to the leader, will help them work it through, and you just kind of foreshadowed that here with a story. So as a leader, I'm going to give you a story about what I did, somebody else did. However you're going to do that, what else do you do? What are your tips to help somebody work through failure? And I would even ask you the question, you're in the moment and you're deciding this person may fail. I think that's really the question I have here, is do you think about, you know, what this person might fail if they go do this specific thing? Do you tell them about it? How do you set them up so that they don't fail? Maybe they still do. How do you think about failure? Is it post? Is it pre in the moment? What does that look like for you?

11:44 - I think it could be both. And I think it depends. Right. Depends on what we're working on, who the customer is, what's the spotlight, how high level of this. Because when you're working on something that has a high profile, high spotlight on it, the impact of the failure can look big. It can not only affect that person, but can affect the whole department. Right. And everybody sees it and everybody's talking about it. So I think it depends on what it is we're working on and what kind of failure we're talking about. What's the impact of those failures. I guess I would say if the impact is a little bit lower, then yeah, to me, if it's a high impact, there should be the pre conversations right. To help keep us out of the ditch. And this came up the other day. I had a conversation with someone on our team, and I was not going to tell them what they needed to do and not do. I gave them some. Here are some things to consider. Here are some things to think about here's. Even where if I was approaching it, it would be it looks something like this, but this is your decision, and you have to make your right decision for whatever you want to do. There are times when I'm like, you need to do this and not that. Right. There are those times. But for this, I'm like, let it go. Let them go. Make their own successes or failures so that they can learn from that. And I think I would say to me, it was a little bit high profile, and I gave just a little more insight, bigger picture. It was a longer conversation for this one, but if it's smaller, I'm probably going to give a little less insight, help them ask themselves some questions. I think the questions are the best thing to think through. What if, what if this, what if that. So that's kind of the way I do it.

13:33 - Oh, gosh, yes. And I hear two things in your statement. Number one, I'm going to really help them understand how I'm thinking about things. Right. I'm going to give them some of my experience, my background, my perspective on the scenario. The other thing that I heard, and I don't know that you intentionally were thinking this, but the other thing I heard was, you know what, as a leader, they might go do it better than the way I thought it should be done.

14:00 - Absolutely.

14:00 - And I love that. That's a level of humility. Right? There is not this. There is one way, my way. I know this is what you should go do. There is a very clear I don't know, go give it a shot. Let's just see what happens. I'm going to give you some insight, but get after it. Go do it. Let's see what the outcome is.

14:20 - Yeah, because I think you have to take into account relationships where they are in their relationship with the person that they're dealing with or whatever. This is the conversation I've had many times with, I think everyone on my team. Just because I would do it differently doesn't mean it's better, right. We're going to do things differently and we're going to get to the same end zone different ways. But just because we do it differently doesn't mean mine is better or yours is better. It's just different.

14:46 - So you're setting up this we're talking about the specific scenario that recently happened. You're setting up this person, kind of giving them some insight. They're going to go off and do it and they're going to make a decision on what they're going to do. Right. They come back and let's just say it was a failure, right. Something didn't happen the way it was intended to. And again, there's safe, right? It is low visibility, low impact to the organization. You're just going to go have a meeting with somebody. Let's just say it's that. But the meeting doesn't go well. Now what happens? We're just kind of walking through the three things you set us up at the beginning. First one is you're kind of creating the environment to allow your people to fail, your team to fail. The second one is the leader helps set them up. And then this third thing, we're moving into this third thing. And you said sometimes you're going to have people who will learn from it, sometimes you won't. So let's go back and replay it. This person comes back and goes meltdown. Bad thing just didn't happen the way that we would have expected it to. What happens? What do you do?

15:54 - Again, I'm like we don't have a lot of failures in our teams, right. But I think I've had the opportunity for this, I would say in the last year in both a good way and a not good way. And so I think the one thing is you just talk through, so what happened? How did we get here? And if we had this opportunity in the future, how would we do it differently? What was your part? Right? What was their part, because there may not have been just one failure. There may have been failures from two. Or three people, right? And so what was your part? And helping them talk through that and ask themselves those questions, I think is really important, so that you're helping them through those questions in the beginning, right? They may be their early career, but as you spend a lot of time with them over the years, they should be asking themselves those questions. And so I think for the very first instance, I'm helping work somebody through those questions. But you don't see the ownership, right? That you see the pointing of the fingers this way, that way. Look at this person. Look at that person. They did this and they did that. And that's a tough place, because until there is ownership of here's what I did wrong, or here's what my part was in my decision, my decision you're never going to be able to work through. How would we do it differently? Because they were like, it's not me, it's everybody else. But then I had another opportunity where it was a minor, small right? Something that just didn't I wouldn't call it a failure, but something that didn't go well as it could have. And I saw this person. We talked through it, right? What was the impact of all those, what happened? And it was about a day later. And so it's like, here's what I heard, here's what I saw. They had their perspective. I had my perspective. And then, like, a day later, they came back, and they're like, listen, I've thought about it, and I've thought about how I could do it differently, and here's what that would look like. And I was like, tears in the eyeballs.

18:00 - Because it's working.

18:01 - Yes, it's working.

18:02 - The process of rolling through this is how it would look different. Yes. You're like, they got the process.

18:09 - Yes. And I think all you're really trying to do, if you boil it down, is what happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? What's the impact of that? What's my role in it, and what would I do differently?

18:21 - That's so quick, very quick, running through it. What happened? What's my role? How could I have done it different? Next time.

18:28 - Okay, but wait. I have some questions for you, Missy. So here's the thing, is we've worked together a long time, and what I do now, the majority of that are things that I've learned from you. I can't say that ten years ago, I'd be asking people or helping people work through it. I'd be like, well, that sucks.

18:49 - You just screwed that up. Why'd you do that?

18:54 - But I'm still learning, and I'm okay with the fact that I'm still learning and growing as a leader. And so is there anything that you would do differently to set your teams up or your people up? And is there anything you do differently when the failure happens or anything you consider when the failure happens?

19:10 - That's a good question. Right. And I'm listening to you as we're having this conversation. My first gut response to that is your comment about when I'm hiring people, these are kind of the black and whites don't do. These are a little bit of the gray and these are the, hey, look, this is really where we can have some failure. I don't do that. And I think that's a really interesting way to think about who are you bringing onto your teams. I think that's wise. I think that's very smart and just, hey, look, this is how we operate. For me, it for sure is more of an assumption of people that they want to learn from their actions. And so I would say your recommendation of setting people up at the beginning is like, spot on. And my thought of assumption is probably not the best assuming things about people. We all know where assuming gets us. So I love number one. I think that is like a really great recommendation on number two. Right. I've kind of written them down here. So that's where I'm going to number two. Number two would be that whole component of the leader is helping the person, kind of setting the person up. I don't think I do anything different. I think there's three things that I think about just very quickly. Number one, I think same thing you did. Visibility. Right. What is the visibility of this thing that they're going to go do, this action, this task? What is it and what is the scope of it? How high up in the organization is it going to impact? So that's number one that goes through my mind is visibility. The second thing that goes through my mind is criticality. Like, how critical is this? Is there a short deadline? Is there some sort of push on this that will create some inherent pressure on the team or this person? And to me, more pressure means potentially more failure. So I really do think about criticality. Visibility, criticality. Once I have those two things kind of in my head, I'm looking at this person, I'm going to absolutely think about skill, their level, their knowledge, how long have they been with the organization, just their experience in doing this thing. If it's holding a meeting or facilitating a discussion or if it's whatever it is. Right. Whatever the Widget is, the task is so visibility, criticality, experience of the person. Once I get through all of that, then I create boundaries for that person. Kind of bumpers, here's what you're going to go do. And I really start walking them through. What do you hope to accomplish with this? What would be the best outcome with you going to do this? In my mind, what I would say is I start to create the vision for them.

22:14 - What do you want it to be?

22:15 - What do you want it to be. And again, I go back to your point earlier about we're not looking in the rear view, we're looking through the front windshield. Yes. Right. As leaders, I think we're trying to help our teams think about the future. And so that's really what I'm trying to do. And if I'm hearing in their conversation, they're unclear. Right. They don't know what the outcome is. Okay. That tells me, okay, we got to step back a little bit, but I really want them to think about, okay, this is the outcome I'm looking for. Everybody's going to raise up the sign. It's all going to be tens. I did an amazing job. However they define it, that should help them when they're doing that task along the way to kind of level set, am I getting to where I wanted to get to? So I think the boundaries are important, and I think that that's the piece, in my opinion, where I see leaders, they kind of forget that component. They're not necessarily helping the person think through what do I want to happen and then what could happen?

23:20 - Sometimes they're just thinking about it as a task.

23:22 - Exactly.

23:22 - They're here and now. And you're like, there's a future ramification, positive or negative with that.

23:26 - That's right. And typically when I think about Feather, you said this earlier, and I didn't want to spend too much time on it just for the sake of our episode time, but you said this comment of what is the impact to the broader team? And I think oftentimes when people are going out and doing things, they forget that it's not just about me as the employee, as the team member, as the leader. It's about the broader team. So if leaders can help all of the team members understand, hey, look how you're performing, what you're going and doing, yes, that impacts you, but it also has broader ramifications. I think that's like cherry on the top. So going to this third thing, we have this whole piece of employees who are willing to learn from their mistakes and employees who are not 100% agree with you. You know instantly when somebody is unwilling, unable to learn from their mistake, the number one thing I see, people hide it. They don't come out and tell you, and you have to find out some other way.

24:29 - You always find out.

24:30 - I always find out. The leader always finds out. Absolutely. The leader is always going to hear it in one way or another. And that's the one piece for me, it's like that is a clue of the team members openness to failure, truly openness to, look, I screwed up. Here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'm doing. I love that whole piece that you said. You kind of have your tear in your eye. I'm right there with you. But when you're seeing your team members not being forthright, there's some level of omission. That's a warning sign to say, okay, we are not accepting what happened, and it's unlikely we're going to learn from it. It's going to happen again. Yeah.

25:16 - And then my question is always, like, why? What are you afraid of? Right. Because I've probably never hammered you before on failure, so why would you do this?

25:26 - I don't even think it's an issue of I'm afraid to get hammered. Honestly, I don't. I think people want things to be, like, smooth right.

25:38 - Or they just want to look like I'm perfect.

25:39 - Everything's great.

25:40 - I think that is a hard place to be.

25:42 - Yeah.

25:42 - I'm perfect. And I think that right there. Oh, my goodness. Another bigger conversation. But it's like, when you have so many rules, regulations, policies, and procedures, there's a time and a place for all those. We need those for certain specific tasks and things that we do. But when you keep everything so tight that you can't allow your people to think you really create a problem. Everything. Has to be perfect. Well, you're setting the tone. Everything has to be perfect.

26:13 - And the other piece of that yes, I hear that. I think the other thing I would add there is it's micromanagement. Right. And the big impact to me of micromanagement is, yes, your people are unhappy. Yes. They feel stifled. Yes. They feel handcuffed, and all of those things, they are ultimately not learning. They're not growing. They're not thinking on their own. Yes, you're right. Whole nother conversation. And that's where, to me, I think the leader has got to be comfortable not having control.

26:46 - Yes.

26:47 - And that's a hard place to be. Yeah.

26:50 - Because you don't because when your team fails, it reflects on you. And then when you are in a place where I have to be perfect and I don't want anybody to see any of that, you're removing the learning opportunity, the development opportunity, and the decision making.

27:07 - Yes.

27:08 - Right. The decision making to me is kind of where it's at, because let's just say we have three steps. Step one, step two, step three. And we always do it this way, step one, step two, step three. But if you don't allow some thinking, like, step one didn't go quite right, well, then we're like, well, here's step two. Well, you have to adjust because step one didn't go well, step two might have to look a little bit different.

27:28 - Yes.

27:28 - And if you can't help them have some decision making ability and they're like, well, this was step two, then we're in the ditch.

27:35 - We're in trouble. So this whole piece of creating that opportunity for people to learn from failure, I think we're both aligned here. The leader has absolutely an impact and involvement in helping their teams with this environment. Right. I love what you said earlier. It's like you can't hold it over their head. You can't bring up old news. You got to stay focused on the future. But creating the opportunity for failure in my. Mind is one of the best ways for people to learn, because it's inaction, right. It's application. They kind of do and they see the outcome and you can dissect that, right. You can look a little bit into it and go, all right, what are we going to do different next time? What did we learn and what are we going to do different for the next go around that we have at this?

28:29 - Yeah, absolutely agree. Because if you're creating that other environment, it can create like, a fear based environment. So now their decision making is based on fear. Like, what would they do? Or how am I going to stay out of the ditch versus what's the right thing to do? Focused on the business and the task versus the fear.

28:49 - That's exactly it. You are really trying to build that decision making skill set in what's right for the business, what's right for the mission, what's right for the strategy. It's not about what's right for me. It's not about what's right for the team. It's not about what's easy. It's about what is right for the business and really trying to remind them that this is where we're going now. We're on a tangent here.

29:15 - Can't help it.

29:16 - Sorry. Can't help it. That's why I said such a big topic. I think I could sit and talk about this one for a while. So as a wrap up, we talked about a couple of really three key things that I wrote down. Number one, it's how do you set up your team when you're bringing them on? You're hiring a new person. How do you create that environment and the expectation that, hey, look, we like to learn from failure here. This is what it will look like. These are the black and whites, these are the grays, and these are really the places that you might stumble a little bit and I'm going to help you through that. The second thing I heard you say was, yes, 100% leaders have a role in helping our teams work through failure, setting them up, getting them prepared, and really getting ready for whatever they're going to go execute. And then on the back end, having a conversation about it. The third thing that I heard is you got to pay attention as a leader, who on your team is really willing to learn from the failure and who is the ones that are pointing fingers or maybe not sharing the failure that occurred.

30:25 - Excellent. Listen, if you thought this was a good episode on failure, allowing your team to fail, if you have a colleague that might need to hear this conversation, share this podcast with them. And if you thought it was really, really good, go ahead and give us five stars on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to this podcast. Then don't forget to come back again for an extra shot of leadership.