Leadership Detectives
Leadership Detectives
Why Leaders Needs to Encourage Their Teams to Fail!
Welcome to Episode 9 of The Leadership Detectives.
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the concept of "failure".
"Failure" has become a dirty word in the world of leadership, and it has been subjected to a reframing of context.
Is it better to fail often? To aim high, even if you don't reach? And just because you fail, does that make you a failure?
Find Neil online at: https://neilthubron.com
Find Albert on LinkedIn at: www.linkedin.com/in/albert-e-joseph
Welcome to the leadership detectives with the doses of little food. This is the go-to case. You are the leadership today or an exploring leader. This book is a leader for you. Is it good for leaders to make the space and time for their teams to fail? What's the benefit to the business of making it okay to fail? In this podcast, Albert and I are going to explore this strange concept of encouraging and allowing failure within your teams. We hope you enjoy it. Let's jump straight in.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, hello everyone. Welcome back again. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. Welcome back to Leadership Detectives. Time for us to bring a new episode to you. Hope you've been joined some of the guests that we've been bringing to you. But today it's back to just Neil and myself. Neil, how are you?
SPEAKER_01:You good? I'm outstanding. Thanks, mate. I'm really good. Really, really good. Back from a week's holiday, which is something that I didn't thought I'd think I'd be saying after spending so much time, you know, in lockdown. So uh really pleased uh to be back. And this week's topic, so just really just to give people a picture of what we're gonna talk about today, it's a word I didn't even think existed in the English language, and then I realized how powerful it is as a word in the English language, especially when you're developing your teams, and that's failure. So we're gonna talk today about why it's really important for leaders to allow space for their teams and for them to fail. So that's what we're gonna talk about. So, Albert, what are your initial thoughts on the topic of failing?
SPEAKER_00:It's interesting when you said I didn't know it was a word that existed, right? Because lots of the things you and I are learning now, some of which are very new to us as ideas and concepts, and it's a recording we did not long ago. But for me, I'd agree with you as well, right? Coming through my leadership career, failure was a bad thing. It's things you didn't accept and you didn't want to happen, and you didn't want to be associated with. If you ask me today, I feel very different about it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh exactly. I was exactly the same. I was one of these people, I had to win at everything. Yep. And if I wasn't winning, it was failure. You know, it was uh it was a lot, and that wasn't acceptable. And it just meant I needed to go out and do it again. Um it wasn't it wasn't failure, it was the challenge was wrong. The challenge was wrong. Or something, yeah, something happened. You know, someone did something underhand that enabled it to them to win.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But what I was listening to, what got me onto this topic was I was listening this week to an audio book called The Buddha and the Badass, which is by Vishan Likiani. And I've uh I've gifted it to a lot of leaders. I'd highly recommend it to leaders, Buddha and the Badass. And in there he talks about enabling your teams to fail. And he gives a really good example of Larry Page at Google, and I've got a quote here from Larry Page. So Larry Page said, when you're setting goals, 50% of your goals should have a 50% rate of failure, which basically means that Google set goals that are where they're going to achieve 60 to 70% of them. That just seems a little bit into you know, I was listening to this thinking, and he gave examples of Google failures like Google Plus, Google Photos. These were all projects that failed, but then there were other projects like YouTube, etc., that that have gone on to be massive successes.
SPEAKER_00:So I don't know what what are you what do you think of that? I tell you the first place that my mind's at is I haven't I haven't looked it up, and I don't know if you have, but what's the definition of failure? Before we go further, what what what how do we want to define failure?
SPEAKER_01:And that's I guess there's an interesting question there in how does each individual define failure?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I'm sure I don't know what the dictionary says, but I'm guessing the dictionary will say something like not achieving something that you set out to do.
SPEAKER_00:So that's a good point because I think then, Neil, it comes back to if we accept the definition is failing to achieve what you set out to do, that's the piece we've got to think about what are you setting out to do? So if imagine if what you'd set out to do was to learn 50 ways not to do something, yeah, then you've achieved what you wanted to. Yeah, yeah, because you failed 50 times, right? So I think that's an important thing for people to think about. As a leader, when you're setting the challenges for your teams, think about how you've framed what you want them to achieve. Just don't frame it as a single metric that says you have to get to 50% profit, otherwise you've failed.
SPEAKER_01:Or set it as a as a as a stretch so that if you want 50%, you set the goal at 60%. Uh, you know, if you get near the goal, if you miss the goal, you know, you still have achieved what you needed to achieve for the business. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Or what you could do, Neil, is say, let's see what we can do to achieve anything above 45%. Now, if you don't if you don't get to 45%, is that failure? You'd have to set it at a level. But what I'm thinking is keep the challenge such that people want to keep striving, appreciate that they've done the best they can to get to a goal. And that goal doesn't have to be pure and absolute, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01:So I want to, I want to I want to dig into this concept of encouraging failure. And so because it's a bizarre thing to say that as a leader, you need to encourage your team to fail.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But I I get it, and uh I was listening to a podcast yesterday with Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, was being interviewed by Tony Robbins on one of his business seminars. And when she was a child, her father used to sit her brother and her down in the evening and say, What have you failed at today? And they and if they hadn't failed at anything, he said, Well, try harder tomorrow. And the concept was that if you weren't failing, you weren't stretching yourself, you weren't pushing yourself, uh, you weren't stepping outside your comfort zone. And then her father took it a step further and said, What did you learn from that failure that might be of value? And I thought, now what a great way of reframing stuff. So the whole concept of failure is to allow people to push themselves outside their comfort zone, but not feel like it's failure, feel like it's a learning opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that that quote or those words we've seen written many places, right? And and lots of people claim to have said it first, right? There is no such thing as failure, there's only learning experiences.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But I'm with you on that. I think every time a leader's talking about the word failure, come back to what Neil just said there. Link the word learning to the same thing, right? Failure is learning, failure is understanding something that didn't work with a view to deciding what could work in the future.
SPEAKER_01:And actually, if you put yourself in a sales environment, you know, so you know, my background in sales is have I lost deals? Have I failed to win deals? Yeah, loads of times. But in the best sales organizations use those as what do they call them? OLRs, opportunity learning reviews. Yeah. And that's not a witch hunt, which it can be used for in a lot of companies. So it's not a witch hunt, it is a learning review to enable you to learn how you could win a similar situation in the future.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I I'll tell you from a personal experience, right? I mean, I you you've done some physical challenges, Neil. I've done some physical challenges. One of them I did was kill a manjaro. Went up with a group of people and I got to summit. In the group of people that went up, not everybody summited. 17 people summited out of 24. Only 20 people went to the summit. Four of them didn't even get that far. Had I not got there, would I have seen that as failure? I could have pretended I wouldn't have done it. But just after that, we did another mountain called Tudkat, which is a mountain in the Atlas Mountains overlooking Marrakesh. And I didn't sum it. In fact, you know what I nearly just said? I failed to summit. Right? I nearly just said that, right? And that troubled me for a long time after that. Until I started reflecting on but what did I get from the experience? Did I get so you're saying I got nothing from that experience, right? It was a binary get to the top or don't get to the top. Yeah, exactly. And in my old personality, I would have believed that till you reflect on the things that I learned, and also to reflect on, and this is where we say with your teams, guys, spend the time working out. Why did you get the result you got different from the one you went out for? Because what did you learn from that? And what would you do differently next time that would give you maybe a better result?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, exactly. And actually, it's interesting when you think about what you've just described. I don't know, let's say your the height of the mountain was called 4,000 meters, something like 5,000 meters or something, and you got to 4,900 meters. Have you failed to, you know, you've just climbed 4,900 meters, which is probably more than 99.99% of the population have done or ever will do. So is that failure, or is that that's just okay, I didn't achieve the big goal I set myself, but I've achieved an amazing goal by getting there. And I've learned loads in the process and I met some amazing people.
SPEAKER_00:So the question is, what did we set as our goal? Right? Setting the right goal, framing it in the right way, makes not achieving what you wanted explicitly okay. I mean, Nil and I talked about this during prep, right? And I said somewhat cynically, be careful you don't then just give people the re the rationale and the reason not to always do their best. Not getting to the objectives you set out that was tough to get to your stretch objective. There may be reasons for that. You can review it, you can look at how you could do better, et cetera, et cetera. But somebody repeatedly doing that just because they're not trying their best is not acceptable. So, as a leader, you need to gauge that. You know your people, you know your teams, and you need to set goals that they're going to strive for and learn from, whatever the result, by the way. It's good what you said about opportunity learning review, Neil, because even if you won the deal, you should still be reviewing that, right? That's the challenge, right?
SPEAKER_01:When we win, we party, when we lose, we ponder. Yeah. And actually, you can learn more from your losses than you ever will from your successes. It was interesting. So, so, but how do you get this concept into people's minds, right? That or how do leaders enable people to see it's okay to fail? I was doing a speech at the clothing manufacturer, high tech, to all their whole business at one point. And there was a lady in the audience, I was talking about big goals and achieving big goals, and she put her hand up and said, What happens if I set a big goal and I don't get there? I'll feel like a failure. And I thought that's really interesting concept. It's took me a while to kind of get that into my head. What does that mean? And then I said, So let's say you're earning£20,000 a year and you set yourself a goal of earning£40,000 a year, and you earn 38,000. Have you failed to achieve your goal? Have you failed? Well, actually, no, you haven't failed, you've just managed to almost double your salary, and you might not have got to the£40,000, but you've still earned 18,000 more than you did previously. So I think it's how do you get this mindset? How do you enable people? So they don't feel like they're going to get beaten up if they fail, and they don't feel like a failure if they fail. Yeah. So what can leaders do to create that environment?
SPEAKER_00:I think there's at least a couple of things in here. One of them is it's about the words you use when you set challenges and when you review the outcome, it's about the words you use with them, about what did we learn, you know, how could you do different better next time, et cetera, et cetera. That's one thing. The other thing, I was saying, it's about your example, it's about how you behave, right? Because if you say all those wonderful words, but when things don't go the way that you wanted, maybe for a personal challenge of yours, that you talk about it differently, then you're not walking the talk, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so if you're playing it safe and not stepping outside your comfort zone and not allowing yourself to fail, then you're not setting an example. That's a really interesting point. Why is it good to fail? Why is it good to fail? Okay, so if because if you don't fail, then you probably haven't set big enough goals. Right. You know, Vision in his book says if Mind Valley, which is his business, achieves 80% of their goals, he knows they haven't set big enough goals. So that's a great mindset.
SPEAKER_00:That's a great mindset, and that's something we really got to take on board here, guys, right? And we've said the word failure in here so many times, but I guess it's worth saying it lots of times so that it doesn't feel like it's a bad thing, right? No, it's not. If you've not failed enough, as Neil has said, you haven't pushed the boundaries far enough. You haven't gone for aggressive and ambitious goals, right? We can all set goals that we can all achieve. Now, is that more satisfying then to achieve mediocre goals every day, but to be able to put a nice minor trophy on your desk to say, look at what we got. I won, but I won half of what I could have done.
SPEAKER_01:So when I talk about big goals in my my big goal seminar, there's a there's a chemical reaction in the body when we had set and achieved goals. They they did a study, a university in the UK did a study on it that when you set uh lots of small goals and you achieve them, you get a level of dopamine and uh serotonin, you know, the happy drugs and stuff kick in and you feel good about it. When you set big goals that have to stretch you, you get a massive high when you achieve them. Yeah, you get a massive high when you you know when you go on that journey. So there is a chemical balance as well, or a physical thing that happens when we uh set and achieve goals. But it's interesting what you say about boundaries, right? So there was a conference you and I were at when we were working for Big Blue, and the the managing director for Europe, I can't remember his name, can't remember who it was, was and it was a leadership conference for senior leaders across uh it was the UK, I think it was, and there was this European leader, American guy come in to speak to us. He was, and I remember this clearly, and I I mention it a lot. He said, He was standing at the front on this on the stage, and he said, Can I just ask all those leaders who've been reprimanded for stepping outside their boundaries of what they're allowed to do? Please stand up. And of course, no one stood up. He said, So you've all failed. You've all failed to push the boundaries of what you and he said, I give you permission now. I give you permission to fail by stepping outside outside what you think are the limits of what you're able to do. Because basically, you know, none of you know where your limits are. Now that's good leadership. Uh imagine if a leader stood up in front of a group in front and said, I want you to set goals so big that you're gonna you're gonna fail 40% of those goals, but the 60% you hit are gonna make you feel fantastic and grow the business.
SPEAKER_00:I remember that confrontation, Nil. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, and and you're right. Look, guys, you've got to put some some framing around this, right? If you're running a project that has customer milestones in it, there's penalties for hitting those milestones, and there's consequences for failing them. Think about that. What when what we're not saying is every goal you've got, don't worry about failing it. Because some of it you can't, right? What we're talking about here is developing your team, growing your team, stretching your team. So you've got to put it into context. And I guess we've got to agree that we've got the right intelligence in the audience we have, that you can differentiate.
SPEAKER_01:See, I I'm gonna challenge that. I'll tell you, I'm uh the reason I'm gonna challenge that is because I think you could imagine you've got put penalties in a contract. I don't have to imagine, I have. They're failure penalties, right? Yeah. What about if you excelled? If your goal was to excel what you can deliver to the customer, if your goal was, you know, what I want you to do is the customer's expecting you to deliver this in a month. I want you to set a goal of delivering it in a week. And you know, that's your goal. That's your okay, you might miss it. And you might miss 10 of them. But if you hit one of them, you're gonna have an incredibly happy customer. So long as you don't go so low as, you know, hit the penalty level, but set those audacious goals that might, I mean, obviously, if it's gonna cost you a huge amount of money to do it in a week, there's you've got to think that one through.
SPEAKER_00:So no, but no, but so so no, your challenge is fair, Neil. I think what we're saying here then is the difference between contractual goals and how you drive your team. We're talking about leadership here, right? This is about how you behave with your team, right? Your language, your behavior, and your encouragement. And never forget what we've been saying about leadership, right? One of the biggest things for a leader is about developing new leaders. So you've got to teach them behaviors that you want to see them go on to go on an exhibit and to to espouse, right? So that's quite important to think about here.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm I guess a thought going through my head is from a practical point of view, it might it'd be okay for me or you as a first, second line, third line manager to say to our teams, look, it I want you to fail. I want you to, you know, stretch your boundaries, set yourself big goals, I want you to fail some of those goals. But then how do you face that upwards? And I guess, yeah, how would how would you make sure you can protect yourself and your team from any kickback that might happen for failing?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I guess we've got a couple of options, haven't you? Because one of them is it depends whether the leadership above you also buys in to what is a very sensible way to develop your team. Now, if they don't, and you don't think you could change that, how you drive your team, what goals you set with your team, don't have to be that public, do they? If the if what if what your boss is saying to you is you have to deliver 100 and you set a challenge to your team to deliver 120, and they deliver 120, you're an absolute hero, and so are they. But if they only fall short and they deliver only 100, everything's great. So this is about running your team. This is not about playing the corporate game. This is about running your team, driving them, and creating an environment of failure is okay, learning is important.
SPEAKER_01:And actually, that's a that's a really good point, actually. So so the your if your boss is playing safe by setting mediocre goals, which is typically, you know, last year plus five percent or last year plus one percent, whatever it might be, yeah, and you set big audacious goals for your team, and some of them achieve and some of them fail, great. You know, that's the long as overall you're yeah, okay. No, I get that. So that maybe that's you're right. So that's but it's it's it's making it safe in that environment to push the boundaries and fail. And actually, I probably if I'm just thinking this through as a talk, is I'd rather reward you for having a go than for not starting. Yeah, I think that's probably something to think about.
SPEAKER_00:As we as we go to wrap up, guys, here one of the things we I think it's really important you take away from here is what Neil said earlier on. Failure and learning together is the important objective here. It's about learning from the experience, about learning from the challenge, right? Hitting the goal, that's important, right? But it's what did you learn from it? Did it make you stronger, smarter, better, a better team, a more capable team? Yeah, that that's what this is about. So think about what are you trying to achieve when you set out on these journeys, right? And it's not it's not just about hitting the pure metric, it's not just about that pure metric.
SPEAKER_01:No, it yeah, and uh it create that environment where it's okay to fail. And look, there's a mantra in Silicon Valley, which I've written down, which you may well have heard. The mantra in any Silicon Valley startup is fail fast, learn fast. And so that's a uh probably a good thought to leave you with as we wrap up.
SPEAKER_00:Do you want to say some closing words? Yeah, no, look, really good topic. Hope it was useful for you guys, but but keep that in mind and think about how you can use it. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for keeping up the uh the contact with us, the comments coming through, the subscriptions. By the way, the downloads that we're seeing on the podcast is increasing all the time. So that's fantastic. I'm guessing you're telling your friends, right? Because we're we're reaching more people, which is fantastic. But please do, please share whatever you see as we've posted this, please share this out with your friends. Actually, reshare it directly. If you're on LinkedIn, reshare it directly. Don't just like it on its own. Send it out as a share. We'll make a comment and that will distribute it out to your team. But great to have you here. Neil, I'll leave you to close it down.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so the uh final thing I'll say is please remember that the offer of the gift from us to all of you is a you know free coaching session for any leaders out there or potential leaders that would like it. Please get in touch through our website or leave us a uh a direct message on LinkedIn. But no, thanks, Albert. Great to speak to you. Difficult topic, talk about for someone who never recognised the word failure for many, many years, and now I see the value of it. Um have a great week and we'll catch up soon.
SPEAKER_00:Cheers, guys, take care. Speak to you soon. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Detectives with Neil Thabron and Albert Joseph. Please remember to subscribe, give us your comments and your feedback. Please also visit leadershipdetectives.com for all the episodes and more resources and support.