S02E11 The Failure Is An Option Episode

The Leader Learner Podcast

Check-In Question

• Have you given yourself a life mission?

Big Ideas:

• How different industries look at failure and learning
• Not being criminalized for making mistakes
• Can we really trust people? (ie, Body Cams)
• When to be treated as a criminal for a mistake that kills someone and when not to
• The situations that draw us into making life/death decisions
• Does black-boxing situations help us be objective?
• Hold people accountable without blame.
• Is blame the opposite of accountability?
• Blame has a sense of judgment and can be poisonous to culture
• Cultural differences in using blame
• Blame puts us on a pedestal and the other below us
• Blame leads to defensiveness
• Cognitive dissonance - when what we believe goes against the reality of a situation
• The smarter we are or the higher up in the organization, the more likely we are to fabricate evidence
• People not letting go of the idea of being wrong
• Fundamental Attribution Error - responsibility being context specific, or a character trait
• Difference between responsibility and accountability
• Historically, we would ostracize people from the tribe to keep it secure
• Emotional engagement in our own opinions - echo chambers
• Sense of worthiness entrenched into our relationship with being wrong
• "The paradox of success is based on failure."
• Persistence past failure
• If success is based on failure, keep failing again and again
• Blame and guilt assigned to others stops people
• Do we know what failure looks like?
• What are we looking at as our metrics of success or failure?
• How do leaders know if they are being successful or not?
• Subjectivity of success/failure
• When managers don't understand us - asking managers what they need
• Expect managers to have the conversation with us, though we can start the conversation. What do you need? How can I help you?
• Doing your job the way you think you should be doing it, versus how your manager thinks you should be doing it
• "Those who are the most successful are the most vulnerable."
• Personal vulnerability versus product vulnerability
• Failure is opportunity to learn
• Self-handicapping - when you purposely create an alternative explanation for a possible failure (self-sabotage)
• Using constraints to create creativity
• If willing to accept mistakes more quickly, can be more successful
• Growth and fixed mindset
• Not getting evidence to go against labels of self

Resources:

• Start your Why, Find our Why, and Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
• Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed
• No Rules Rules by Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings
• Mindset by Carol Dweck

More yummy content on leaderlearner.fm