Speaker 1: Failing well includes a healthy portion of risk taking in
Speaker 1: pursuit of things that you care about. Take more smart
Speaker 1: risks and be okay with the fact that they don't
Speaker 1: all pan out because they're risks, right, They're experiments. They're
Speaker 1: not supposed to all work. And in fact, if everything
Speaker 1: always works out as planned, you're not taking enough risks.
Speaker 2: Today. I'm so excited to welcome Amy Edmondson to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Amy is a professor of leadership and management at the
Speaker 2: Harvard Business School, and she is ranked number one this
Speaker 2: year on the Prestigious Thinkers fifty list. Amy is such
Speaker 2: a legend in my field. I first came across her
Speaker 2: work when she came up with her idea of psychological safety,
Speaker 2: which is a concept that has been really powerful in
Speaker 2: the workplace to empower people to speak their truth and
Speaker 2: to challenge structures and systems and powers that need to
Speaker 2: be challenged, and also just for people in the workplace
Speaker 2: to feel safe to work there and feel safe to
Speaker 2: express what they think is working and what they don't
Speaker 2: think is working. So her work has been so seminal
Speaker 2: in helping us understand the importance of psychological safety in
Speaker 2: the workplace. But today's episode really focused on her new book,
Speaker 2: which is the idea of failing well. And this is
Speaker 2: such an important idea, you know, the idea that we
Speaker 2: can take smart risks in our life, and that risk
Speaker 2: taking in pursuit of the things you care about should
Speaker 2: be encouraged. There's one idea that really stood out to
Speaker 2: me in this whole interview, and that choose to play
Speaker 2: a game where you fail more often than you succeed.
Speaker 2: If you just decide that that's the game you're going
Speaker 2: to play in life, then all these seeming failures that
Speaker 2: you accrue in your life are not something to shun
Speaker 2: or not something to be upset about. It looks like
Speaker 2: the thumbs up just automatically happened there. That's pretty cute.
Speaker 2: If you decide to play that game in life, all
Speaker 2: the sort of failures that come your way are things
Speaker 2: that are not things to fear. She makes a lot
Speaker 2: of really clever and nuanced distinctions between failures and errors,
Speaker 2: talks about three different archetypes, three different awareness zones. But
Speaker 2: the bottom line of this whole episode is that failure
Speaker 2: often brings us value. It brings us new perspectives, it
Speaker 2: brings us new knowledge, and we can have fun. You know,
Speaker 2: we can have fun from failure. I mean, failure isn't
Speaker 2: inherently fun, but we can try to make it fun.
Speaker 2: You know, it's part of life. At the very least,
Speaker 2: we can just accept that it's part of life. We
Speaker 2: can help people reframe failure as a part of learning
Speaker 2: and it does not have to be a source of shame.
Speaker 2: So I really think that this episode will give you
Speaker 2: all the practical tools that you'll need to fail well.
Speaker 2: Lots of implications here for society, education, the work place,
Speaker 2: for parents. So let's get into it already without further ado,
Speaker 2: I bring you Amy Edmundson. Amy Edmundson. So we did
Speaker 2: have it, Yeah, we did. Thank you for coming on
Speaker 2: the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: My pleasure and.
Speaker 2: Huge congratulations to you for topping the Thinkers fifty ranking.
Speaker 2: That is huge. Although I have a feeling it wasn't
Speaker 2: your first year that you toppt.
Speaker 1: That it was my second time, but I was stunned,
Speaker 1: flabbergasted even so, thank you.
Speaker 2: Well, it's quit quite an accomplishment, but it just reflects
Speaker 2: your incredible career that you've had so far. And this
Speaker 2: new book is really cool. I mean, I'm a longtime
Speaker 2: fan of your work on psychological safety, right, and this
Speaker 2: going into this territory Now, I'm wondering, I'm wondering when
Speaker 2: you started to get into this territory. You know, when
Speaker 2: did your research start to when did your attention start
Speaker 2: to go in that direction?
Speaker 1: But you know, it's really all of a piece. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's there's one big, integrated whole. And I
Speaker 1: can zoom in, you know, like a fractal on psychological safety.
Speaker 1: I can zoom in on failure, I can zoom in
Speaker 1: on teaming and collaboration. But my overarching desire has always
Speaker 1: been how to help people in organizations learn in a
Speaker 1: world that keeps changing. And because early on in my
Speaker 1: graduate career I sort of stumbled into the chance to
Speaker 1: study mistakes and failures in the healthcare setting, that's actually
Speaker 1: how I got to psychological safety rather than the other
Speaker 1: way around.
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting. Tell me a little bit more about
Speaker 2: your background then, Like what was your dissertation about.
Speaker 1: Well, my dissertation was called Psychological Safety and Learning in
Speaker 1: Work Teams, and actually it was a group in Organizational
Speaker 1: Influences on Learning in Work Teams, and psychological safety was
Speaker 1: sort of a centerpiece of it, and it came about
Speaker 1: quite by accident. I was part of a large study
Speaker 1: of medication errors. And the reason I was interested in
Speaker 1: that because I understood the basic idea that we have
Speaker 1: to learn from mistakes. Teams have to learn from mistakes,
Speaker 1: organizations have to learn from mistakes. So I was happy
Speaker 1: enough to join this project. And what happened was I
Speaker 1: discovered that there were and this wasn't what I set
Speaker 1: out to look to look at, but I discovered that
Speaker 1: there were remarkable differences across work teams in their willingness
Speaker 1: to talk about error, in their ability to speak up
Speaker 1: when they didn't know what to do or when they
Speaker 1: thought someone was doing something wrong. And this I later
Speaker 1: called psychological safety. And you know, I was interested in
Speaker 1: it primarily because it was a precondition for learning. If
Speaker 1: teams can't if you can't speak up about mistakes, you
Speaker 1: can't learn from them. If you can't speak up, uh,
Speaker 1: and and sort of ask for help from someone, you're
Speaker 1: not you're not learning. So so it was it was
Speaker 1: basically learning from the beginning. Yeah it's all connected, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all connected. And it was, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: the role of of of failures and mistakes was always
Speaker 1: just such a big part of it as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the new topic. It's the topic of
Speaker 2: this book and in your most recent book. And we'll
Speaker 2: definitely get there. Since I've never had you in my
Speaker 2: podcast before, I'd love to spend a couple of minutes
Speaker 2: just talking about psychological safety. Absolutely, I'd feel remiss if
Speaker 2: I didn't totally. So, how do you define psychological safety?
Speaker 2: Is it is? It is the primary component there being
Speaker 2: feeling safe to speak up in a in a corporation
Speaker 2: or a company kind of situation where you might feel
Speaker 2: a lot of pressure to stay silent or client.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's it's it's a belief that your context is
Speaker 1: safe for interpersonal risks, primarily the interpersonal risks of speaking
Speaker 1: up with an idea, a question, a concern, a mistake,
Speaker 1: a dissenting view, all of those sort of utterances that
Speaker 1: are interpersonally challenging. You know, it's never easy to say something,
Speaker 1: either at work or in other contexts in our lives
Speaker 1: that might lead someone else to not think well of you.
Speaker 1: We have a natural instinct to self protect and we
Speaker 1: don't want to look ignorant and competent and trusive or negative,
Speaker 1: so we will generally err on the side of let's
Speaker 1: wait and see, right if I think you're doing something
Speaker 1: wrong there, rather than quickly point that out as it
Speaker 1: would be sort of natural to do. In some sense,
Speaker 1: I don't want you to think less well of me,
Speaker 1: so I hold back. So psychological safety describes the rather
Speaker 1: unusual environment where you really do believe your voice is welcome.
Speaker 1: Not that it's easy or effortless to speak up with
Speaker 1: potentially contra virtual ideas or when you've made a mistake,
Speaker 1: but that you believe it's welcome, it's expected, it's what
Speaker 1: we do around here. So that's psychological safety. And primarily
Speaker 1: I've studied it in the work context, in the context
Speaker 1: of people who are interdependent in getting in getting work done.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And as much as I think that it's
Speaker 2: important to keep your politics out of the workplace, we're
Speaker 2: becoming a really really increasingly fractionated society. Really concerns me,
Speaker 2: you know, especially in America. And I don't know how
Speaker 2: familiar are with Jonathan Height's work on viewpoint diversity. I
Speaker 2: was wondering how you've linked maybe this idea of viewpoint
Speaker 2: diversity to psychological safety.
Speaker 1: It's very related, and I in fact I've done. I've
Speaker 1: done some work, not enough, but some work on and
Speaker 1: I teach. I teach this material often on how to
Speaker 1: ensure high quality decisions are made in complex, uncertain environments,
Speaker 1: which requires viewpoint diversity to have come into the conversation,
Speaker 1: and in part, when psychological safety isn't present, and a
Speaker 1: variety of other reasons, people will often you know, they
Speaker 1: want to be likable, they want to be friendly, what
Speaker 1: have you. They will they will hold back their their
Speaker 1: differing views. So viewpoint diversity is an absolutely essential element
Speaker 1: of high quality decisions under uncertainty, and yet a lack
Speaker 1: of psychological safety and also a desire to you know,
Speaker 1: be likable or look good in front of especially high
Speaker 1: status others will lead people to withhold their their opinions.
Speaker 1: So yes, right, there's there's there's there are real connections
Speaker 1: here between these different ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think, like on college campuses right now,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of Republicans feel don't feel psychological safety.
Speaker 2: You know, It's just depends on what the context as
Speaker 2: we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or let's I mean, let's it's it's I'm not
Speaker 1: sure anybody feels terribly psychologically safe. You know, from any
Speaker 1: any sort of political perspective, in terms of the stakes
Speaker 1: have gotten higher, right, the stakes for if you say
Speaker 1: something wrong, you're now subject to you know, cancel culture
Speaker 1: or or or worse. And and so I think there
Speaker 1: are we've created a very fraught interpersonal environment. This is tricky,
Speaker 1: right because I guess I started my research career and
Speaker 1: most of it is still this way looking at the
Speaker 1: work environment and really looking at the things we have
Speaker 1: to talk about so that we can get the work done,
Speaker 1: so that we can make if we're you know, an
Speaker 1: executive team, so that we can make good strategic decisions,
Speaker 1: if we're a new product development team, so that we
Speaker 1: can include the features that customers most want, and if
Speaker 1: we're taking care of patients, again speaking up quickly to
Speaker 1: make sure we don't give the wrong drug, the wrong dose, etc.
Speaker 1: So I've been I have been primarily interested in the
Speaker 1: work and what it takes, which I think is a
Speaker 1: lot to do work well, especially interdependent work. And you know,
Speaker 1: it seems odd in a way that people would hold
Speaker 1: back work relevant observations concerns, but they do. You know,
Speaker 1: even people have trained as engineers. I have plenty of
Speaker 1: evidence of this. Will we'll hold back. I think it's
Speaker 1: a different phenomenon also important, and I'd love to sort
Speaker 1: of think aloud with you on it, but that of
Speaker 1: people feeling that it's no longer safe to express their
Speaker 1: political views, and because I mean maybe on a college
Speaker 1: campus that sort of is the work, or if you're
Speaker 1: in a course of political science course, that is the work.
Speaker 1: So yes, absolutely, and you know, a thoughtful facilitation of
Speaker 1: a good conversation may help. There's so many ways we
Speaker 1: can go with this, because what's what's coming into my
Speaker 1: mind is this is not just or maybe not even
Speaker 1: primarily a psychological safety problem. It's primarily a quality of
Speaker 1: discourse problem. Most most people have not learned the skills
Speaker 1: to have productive conversations, conversations that Chris Arduus might think
Speaker 1: about as truly learning oriented where they where we are
Speaker 1: balancing advocacy and inquiry. That means statements and questions, where
Speaker 1: we are are using high quality advocacy and high quality
Speaker 1: in qui, which means we're not stuck at the top
Speaker 1: of a ladder of inference, debating or even offering our conclusions.
Speaker 1: You know, this guy's terrible, or you know whatever, right
Speaker 1: we're we're offering evidence and data, and we're walking through
Speaker 1: our reasoning to try to help people. Like, if I
Speaker 1: see something, you know, if I see something differently than you,
Speaker 1: My natural spontaneous response is to say I'm right and
Speaker 1: you're wrong. But a more thoughtful, learning oriented response is
Speaker 1: to say, I wonder why I think X, and you
Speaker 1: think why. I'd like to walk through my thinking with
Speaker 1: you and tell you some of the some of the evidence,
Speaker 1: some of the facts, some of the data that I
Speaker 1: tend to look at, and I know it's selected from
Speaker 1: a vast amount of data. I'm sure you're looking at
Speaker 1: some different ones and maybe some of the same. Like,
Speaker 1: let's walk through our thinking together and see if as
Speaker 1: a result we can both learn more. We don't do
Speaker 1: that very often. People haven't learned the skills to do that,
Speaker 1: and so they get stuck at the top of the
Speaker 1: letter of inference with their conclusions, saying it's not safe
Speaker 1: for me to express my conclusions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in that spirit, let's continue that conversation. Because
Speaker 2: I was trying to think of a specific examples to
Speaker 2: make this concrete. Yeah, it seems to me like a
Speaker 2: big problem is when the company has sacred certain sacred
Speaker 2: cows that can't be challenged. To me, that's what I'm
Speaker 2: thinking of. So I'm thinking of examples like DEI. DEI
Speaker 2: programs are sacred cows in some companies. Now it's taboo
Speaker 2: for someone in the company to say, actually, I don't
Speaker 2: think the way we're going about it is effective, you know,
Speaker 2: And so how do you hold a space for dissenting
Speaker 2: opinions when a certain sacred cow of the company in
Speaker 2: a certain way. I guess that's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so I think that's a great a
Speaker 1: great examples. So if you know, if I don't, if
Speaker 1: I worry, I mean, if I am under the belief
Speaker 1: that the way we're going about our DEI program isn't working,
Speaker 1: if it's a valid belief, it comes from somewhere. So
Speaker 1: I think I have a responsibility, maybe first alone and
Speaker 1: then together to think through why do I think that?
Speaker 1: Like what what are my concerns? And then I need
Speaker 1: to express them in the following way. Right, I have
Speaker 1: some concerns about how we're going about this policy. I'd
Speaker 1: love to share them with you and and and hear
Speaker 1: your reactions, because I'd love to learn more from how
Speaker 1: you see it. Let's say if you see it, if
Speaker 1: you see it differently, so it's not coming and saying oh,
Speaker 1: I think this is you know, bunk, and it's not
Speaker 1: safe to say so, so I'm just going to shut
Speaker 1: up and write it out. That's neither a terribly learning
Speaker 1: oriented nor a terribly responsible stance. Now, what I'm asking
Speaker 1: us and people to do is really hard because it
Speaker 1: means we have to first have the discipline to pause
Speaker 1: and examine our own thinking, like, how did I get here?
Speaker 1: How did I get to the conclusion or maybe the
Speaker 1: tentative conclusion that this program is is failing us or
Speaker 1: is not a not serving a productive end. And I've
Speaker 1: got to have something that's leading me to think that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it could be I mean, it could
Speaker 1: let's let's think, let's think of possibilities. Or it could
Speaker 1: be that, you know, many of the people I know
Speaker 1: who are in my dominant group are are feeling, maybe
Speaker 1: rightly or wrongly, that they now are not welcome to
Speaker 1: apply for certain jobs because they're being reserved for for
Speaker 1: other people who are not in their group. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about that. Let's let's let's let's let's test it and
Speaker 1: explore what the if that's true, what are the implications
Speaker 1: of that, If that's not true, how do we help
Speaker 1: them understand that it's not true so that they put
Speaker 1: their hat in the ring. You know, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get concrete here, but I think we've gotten so good
Speaker 1: at jumping up to our conclusions and then sticking with
Speaker 1: them and believing they're either welcome or unwelcome, and then
Speaker 1: saying we're stuck. We're not stuck. We're you know, we're
Speaker 1: fallible human beings who need to be good learners.
Speaker 2: And that attitude that you just described as scene in
Speaker 2: every direction, which doesn't cause great progress of no on
Speaker 2: either side.
Speaker 1: No, it creates stagnation and stuckness.
Speaker 2: It's a really good point. So it seems like a
Speaker 2: lot of it has to do with the manner in
Speaker 2: which you voice your descent.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is really high quality research showing that diversity
Speaker 2: training programs backfire, and that's really problematic.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, absolutely, it's high quality. Thinking of Frank Dobbin
Speaker 1: and others, it's very high quality also very so very macro. Right,
Speaker 1: They're they're getting data, which is what you do if
Speaker 1: you're doing research. You want to make a thoughtful conclusion
Speaker 1: about a large number of entities. You need a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of data from many different organizations. So that
Speaker 1: kind of research gives us very robust conclusions about let's
Speaker 1: say that statement that these programs aren't working right, but
Speaker 1: they don't tell us very much about what's really going
Speaker 1: on with those programs and and how what's that? What's
Speaker 1: the quality of the programming and how well led are
Speaker 1: they and how have they been framed, and how have
Speaker 1: they been introduced? Have they been a checkbox activity or
Speaker 1: have they been you know, the result of really high
Speaker 1: quality dialogue.
Speaker 2: That is that is.
Speaker 1: Genuinely trying to do the hard work of making a
Speaker 1: more fair world. And I suspect, and you'd need some
Speaker 1: qualitative research to get at those details. And I suspect
Speaker 1: more often than not, the answer is that the programs
Speaker 1: are not high quality enough, not because those were not
Speaker 1: well intentioned, good people, but because this is very hard
Speaker 1: to do well. So my takeaway from that, I think
Speaker 1: really important research is we've got work to do in
Speaker 1: making the quality of our interventions actually serve our aims well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's an excellent point. And then there's
Speaker 2: also philosophical disagreements about whether or not ideological core blindness
Speaker 2: is a better approach, right than focusing everyone's attention on
Speaker 2: race differences in a workplace. And that's a separate issue,
Speaker 2: that's more philosophical, it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're right. I mean it comes back to
Speaker 1: philosophy or values. And I think reasonable people can disagree
Speaker 1: on what you prioritize and when, and and that I
Speaker 1: think is the kind of debates we should be having.
Speaker 1: And I would agree with your premise, I think your
Speaker 1: implicit premise, which is we're not having.
Speaker 2: Those not having honest discussions.
Speaker 1: Right, We're just sort of leaping over sometimes to kind
Speaker 1: of all or either and all or nothing and and
Speaker 1: and and it's not it's not working.
Speaker 2: It's not what we're whatever we're doing is not working
Speaker 2: right right, right, right right. So anyway, your work, we
Speaker 2: can put up all there, and we can go into
Speaker 2: your new work. But I did want to.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you raised it actually because I do
Speaker 1: think something needs to be written on this, because people
Speaker 1: have been kind of in the hallways and on the
Speaker 1: you know, in audiences, in the in the pit afterwards,
Speaker 1: people will come up and say, yeah, but it's not
Speaker 1: safe for.
Speaker 2: Me anymore, exactly right.
Speaker 1: And I empathize, and I never have quite enough time
Speaker 1: to say, let's really get into this, like let's see
Speaker 1: we might you know, what might be done. Can't do
Speaker 1: that in the thirty second sort of you know, meet
Speaker 1: and greet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that these these contexts of
Speaker 2: power can can change in a dime. You know. I
Speaker 2: don't think that there as static as possible where we
Speaker 2: say like, well, if you're this group, then you're victimized forever.
Speaker 2: If you're this group, you're never victimized. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think that depending is very contextual.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're all, you know, in some ways, we're
Speaker 1: all victims at the points, you know, and and and
Speaker 1: victims of doors, victors at others. But but what's never
Speaker 1: particularly useful for us, and this does take us into
Speaker 1: the failure topic. It's never a particularly healthy stance, the
Speaker 1: victim stance, even under those conditions when it is entirely true.
Speaker 1: Meaning man search for meaning, Victor Frankel, you know, at Auschwitz, right,
Speaker 1: there's no better you know, moment of truly being a
Speaker 1: victim of forces way outside your control, and his deep
Speaker 1: and brilliant recognition was there is a space between stimulus
Speaker 1: and response right, And in that space lies our freedom
Speaker 1: and our power right, and and that that they cannot
Speaker 1: take away from me, my ability to choose my response right,
Speaker 1: and to choose and to look around at the incredible
Speaker 1: courage and suffering and strength and magnificence of some of
Speaker 1: the people he was with and envision a better future
Speaker 1: for all of us. That was all he could do.
Speaker 1: But he did that, right, And that's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: an extreme case, But it's an extreme case that illustrates
Speaker 1: that the opposite I guess, you know. But the when
Speaker 1: when we instead decide or don't decide, but get stuck
Speaker 1: in the victim mindset, we really lose our our power
Speaker 1: and our opportunity to create something better.
Speaker 2: Really speaking my language here in this new book, you
Speaker 2: talk about failing well, Well, did Victor francl fail well
Speaker 2: in a way?
Speaker 1: Well? He succeeded brilliantly. Yeah, I mean he was. He
Speaker 1: was let's say, I don't think I would argue that
Speaker 1: he failed. Uh, he was in a deeply and profoundly
Speaker 1: large failure systemstemic failure. You know that that had many,
Speaker 1: many opportunities to have redirected it. You know, years and
Speaker 1: years earlier, but not not opportunities that Victor Frankel himself
Speaker 1: was in charge of. But he was an unwitting participant
Speaker 1: in this massive societal failure and made better psychological choices
Speaker 1: than most. And so in that sense, he was navigating failure.
Speaker 2: Well, I love that he was navigating a system of failure. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, I was trying to think of a meta's
Speaker 2: kind of view of what does failure mean? Yeah, what
Speaker 2: does even? What? What if you just don't interpret anything
Speaker 2: as failure? Like what if you just refuse to even
Speaker 2: have that vocabulary? And so everything that there's a feels
Speaker 2: like a setback is actually sure growth spotder for growth.
Speaker 1: You know that it's true. It's you know, nature includes failure.
Speaker 1: We all, you know, death is failure when we I mean,
Speaker 1: we have it's part. In other words, I'm agreeing with
Speaker 1: you that the word may be problematic, right, because the
Speaker 1: the word means an undesired outcome. We wanted something else,
Speaker 1: we got this. So it's you know, the project was
Speaker 1: supposed to succeed, but it failed, and and and yet
Speaker 1: that's our narrow, you know, human perspective. I wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted that project to succeed. But but you know,
Speaker 1: the universe didn't want it to succeed, so therefore it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it depends on perspective, right, it's the
Speaker 1: from the perspective of universe, maybe that's not a failure.
Speaker 1: But that's that's well beyond my pay grade.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Well that's fair enough. Well we can let's
Speaker 2: stick with the way you frame it in your book.
Speaker 2: There you say there are many reasons why we hate failure.
Speaker 2: One aversion. You know, we have this emotional, visceral response.
Speaker 2: Probably evolution designed us that way from confusion. When we
Speaker 2: don't have a healthy relationship with our failure, I can
Speaker 2: confuse us in fear, which is the obviously the social stigma.
Speaker 2: Have you found in your research that one of those
Speaker 2: three seems to be most prominent among humans?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think I have a biased perspective
Speaker 1: because I've been most interested in the interpersonal realm. So
Speaker 1: in a way, those are those three, those three sort
Speaker 1: of factors that lead us to have an unhealthy relationship,
Speaker 1: you know, the aversion, confusion, and fear. Aversion is kind
Speaker 1: of a spontaneous emotional response, and confusion is cognitive. You know,
Speaker 1: we are we don't always do a good job between sorting,
Speaker 1: you know, distinguishing between like lovely discoveries and new territory
Speaker 1: and you know, you know, stupid mistakes that we make.
Speaker 1: So but the but the third one is the one
Speaker 1: that I'm I think because of my lens, because of
Speaker 1: my long standing interests, because I look at organizations and teams,
Speaker 1: which is the the the interpersonal domain is the one
Speaker 1: I'm most interested in and often the one that seems
Speaker 1: most challenging to fix. And and that is the you
Speaker 1: know that that very real worry about what other people
Speaker 1: think of me. And I want to look good, not bad.
Speaker 1: I want to look like a success, not a failure,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I do everything I can to
Speaker 1: kind of avoid the looking bad.
Speaker 2: My friend Michael Gervai just wrote a book. He coined
Speaker 2: this term called FOPO Fear of People's Opinions.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it just came out, so it's fresh in
Speaker 2: my mind and I'm going to be having him on
Speaker 2: my podcast soon. It's a really cool book. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: can see it relating to this very much, I guess,
Speaker 2: you know, so much of it does come down to
Speaker 2: the framing though, you know, like that you're a failure.
Speaker 2: You know, so many people I think, deep down, maybe
Speaker 2: based in childhood trauma or whatever, whatever past experiences one
Speaker 2: has had, we think we are like our existence is
Speaker 2: a failure, and so we do all these You see
Speaker 2: this a lot in hyper over competitive, hyper achievement cultures. Actually,
Speaker 2: just go to the gym and you'll see, yeah, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean we we work over compensation.
Speaker 1: We're over compensation. You know, we're working so very hard,
Speaker 1: you know, to be a success in the minds of others.
Speaker 1: And maybe we should start with, you know, just being
Speaker 1: this first, being being okay with who we are, you know,
Speaker 1: being being okay. But but I think we shouldn't just
Speaker 1: be complacent, like we should be okay with who we are,
Speaker 1: because you know, we do our best to make a
Speaker 1: positive difference in the lives of either the people in
Speaker 1: our family or or more more broadly, we're fighting a
Speaker 1: good fight and and we're doing our best, and we're
Speaker 1: not always succeeding, of course, but we can we can
Speaker 1: feel good about it.
Speaker 2: So well, how can how can people overcome this?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: You know, how can they fail? Well?
Speaker 1: Well, failing, Well, here's how I think about it. It's
Speaker 1: it's let's let me start with the good kind of failure,
Speaker 1: the the the kind that scientists do for a living,
Speaker 1: and those are I call them intelligent failures. And I
Speaker 1: would say failing well means having more intelligent failures in
Speaker 1: your life. And intelligent failures are still undesired results of
Speaker 1: thoughtful experiments in or thoughtful forays into into new territory.
Speaker 1: So to be intelligent, it has to be in pursuit
Speaker 1: of a goal in territory where you can't just you
Speaker 1: can't avoid it by doing your homework. You do your
Speaker 1: homework to have a thoughtful hypothesis or a good reason
Speaker 1: to believe that what you're about to do might work.
Speaker 1: And then you you want to keep it as small
Speaker 1: as possible. And so that's that describes anything from trying
Speaker 1: to make a new friend, you know, going on a
Speaker 1: blind date, to a project at work, to a scientific experiment.
Speaker 1: You know, it covers a lot of territory. But we
Speaker 1: may be a better way to put this psychologically is
Speaker 1: take more risks, right, take but take more smart risks.
Speaker 1: You know, don't run out into traffic in search of
Speaker 1: a lost ball. Take more smart risks and be okay
Speaker 1: with the fact that they don't all pan out because
Speaker 1: they're risks, right, they're experiments, they're not supposed to all work.
Speaker 1: And in fact, if everything always works out as planned,
Speaker 1: you're not taking enough risks. You're not stretching, you're not growing.
Speaker 1: So failing well includes a healthy portion of risk taking
Speaker 1: in pursuit of things that you care about. It also
Speaker 1: includes best practices to avoid preventable what i'll call basic failures,
Speaker 1: as well as to try to get out ahead of
Speaker 1: and prevent and mitigate complex failures.
Speaker 2: Wow, so you have three archetypes you just described the failure.
Speaker 2: It's basic, complex, and intelligent. Right where do you come
Speaker 2: you come up with that? When do you come up
Speaker 2: with this stuff?
Speaker 1: You know? I came up with it years ago, actually,
Speaker 1: well about a decade ago, more a little more than
Speaker 1: a decade ago. I was asked to do a talk
Speaker 1: I was at. Teresa Moveley asked me to come do
Speaker 1: a talk in her creativity conference.
Speaker 2: I love her and I do too.
Speaker 1: She's such a gem. And so I thought, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about failure because I was really interested.
Speaker 1: I've always been interested in innovation. That was also interested
Speaker 1: in you know, medication errors and organizational learning. So I thought,
Speaker 1: I'll give a talk about failure. Then I thought, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, you know, like I have to figure out
Speaker 1: what I want to say. So I went through all
Speaker 1: the case studies, all the research that I'd done, and said,
Speaker 1: you know, can I categorize this in some way? And
Speaker 1: I did, and then I wrote this Harvard Business Review
Speaker 1: article about it. But it really was, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a conceptual categorization that was I would say, from
Speaker 1: qualitative research, like making that different category. I'm also married
Speaker 1: to a scientist, so that helps, right, I think about
Speaker 1: you know, I asked him what percent of failures in
Speaker 1: your lab? He's a stem cell scientist, you know, end
Speaker 1: in failure. And he thought about it, you know, quite seriously,
Speaker 1: and he said, I think about seventy percent. Seventy percent
Speaker 1: of the experiments that the young scientists in his lab
Speaker 1: were running would not pan out, would end in failure.
Speaker 1: And you know, I started to think about it, So
Speaker 1: how do you get out of bed in the morning?
Speaker 1: And the answer is, of course, the thirty percent are
Speaker 1: pretty exciting, and many of them lead to great publications
Speaker 1: or occasionally to actual therapies to to cure diseases. So
Speaker 1: it's you get out of bed in the morning despite
Speaker 1: those bad odds because A the upside is really worth it,
Speaker 1: and B you train yourself to understand that that's the
Speaker 1: game you've chosen to play, because you're in new territory. Literally,
Speaker 1: you have chosen to play a game where more often
Speaker 1: than not you'll fail. Right, you'll fail more often than
Speaker 1: you'll succeed. And and so you think differently. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I think all of us need to
Speaker 1: or could sort of get from the scientists in our
Speaker 1: lives is to think more like them, you know, and
Speaker 1: less like nineteenth century industrialists who believe you can just
Speaker 1: sort of say here's the target, then hit it, or
Speaker 1: you know, here's our ten year plan and then we'll
Speaker 1: meet it. It's like, no, we don't live in that
Speaker 1: world anymore.
Speaker 2: That's a really good point. Yeah, I fear sometimes I
Speaker 2: need to think less like a scientist just to communicate
Speaker 2: with other humans.
Speaker 1: Well there's that, but whatever, do you know? Think about possibilities,
Speaker 1: think about where you might be wrong, Think of your
Speaker 1: actions more as hypotheses than as guaranteed plans. You know
Speaker 1: that there will always work.
Speaker 2: I knew what you meant, Amy, I was making a
Speaker 2: joke and it was a good one, you know the supermarket.
Speaker 2: You know, like, statistically this product is not going to
Speaker 2: do well for my cholesterol. People like, we don't care
Speaker 2: about that. But anyway, okay, what is the difference between mistakes, errors,
Speaker 2: and failures.
Speaker 1: Well, I treat mistakes and errors as synonymous. One is
Speaker 1: more academic sounding than the other. But mistakes are deviations
Speaker 1: from known practices, procedures, or policies. There is established knowledge
Speaker 1: in place to get the results you want to get,
Speaker 1: and you deviate from it by mistake, you know, without
Speaker 1: without intention, and that's a mistake. Failures can be caused
Speaker 1: by mistakes, but they can also be simply a hypothesis
Speaker 1: that was wrong, it didn't pan out. So failure is
Speaker 1: a larger term, it covers more territory. It's any it's
Speaker 1: any undesired outcome, whereas a mistake is a particular kind
Speaker 1: of undesired outcome. And of course some mistakes you make
Speaker 1: a mistake, but it's like minuscule and it doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually affect anything, so it's it's technically a mistake,
Speaker 1: but there was no real consequence of it. So so
Speaker 1: no failure.
Speaker 2: Who invented the concept of failure, isn't that interesting? Questions? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: if you go back in human history, was it school
Speaker 2: systems with tests, like you failed the test? Like, I
Speaker 2: wonder if that's Yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Can't have failure without some you know, without some definition
Speaker 3: of success, right, Yeah, Yeah, so probably it probably came
Speaker 3: out in pretty early language, even before school systems. But
Speaker 3: as you you know, let's say you're you know, you're
Speaker 3: trying to find a mate and the one that you
Speaker 3: have your eye on goes off with someone else, Right,
Speaker 3: you'd probably feel that as a failure and you'd pivot
Speaker 3: and you'd try something else.
Speaker 1: But you probably I bet we had that that conception
Speaker 1: of you know, disappointing outcome pretty early.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Probably, But I'm wondering when language arose. When when
Speaker 2: did the word what's the root of failure? Yeah, what's
Speaker 2: the what's the Latin etymology of it?
Speaker 1: It's a great question.
Speaker 2: Let me just google that, real Q.
Speaker 1: Maybe it has something to do with faith or working,
Speaker 1: like there's.
Speaker 2: So the Latin translation translation of the word failure is defectus,
Speaker 2: which comes from the verb defic catory defective deficiency, Aha,
Speaker 2: deficiency deficiency.
Speaker 1: We've come up short again, you know. And even scientists
Speaker 1: who have a good hypothesis and tested the lab and
Speaker 1: they're wrong, they do feel they came up short, you know,
Speaker 1: they they don't love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so that's the French. It came from a
Speaker 2: French notion of lacking.
Speaker 1: Oh dear right, but good to know I should have
Speaker 1: done that myself. Of course.
Speaker 2: Well I'm a nerd, you know, so well, speaking of
Speaker 2: me being a nerd, your book really tickled my desire,
Speaker 2: my fancy for systematizing. You also have three awareness zones.
Speaker 2: I love it because you just have all these like,
Speaker 2: here are three archetypes, here are three.
Speaker 1: Just assert them, right, I know, I love that stuff.
Speaker 2: So hey, your three awareness zones, self, situation, and systems.
Speaker 2: You know, we kind of talked a little bit about systems,
Speaker 2: but yeah, could you could you kind of tell me
Speaker 2: walk me through the different series three.
Speaker 1: You know, this is actually something that often had had
Speaker 1: come up often in my classes and in my own
Speaker 1: analyzes of cases of sort of complex cases, and I
Speaker 1: noticed it as a pattern a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, I was teaching a case and a student
Speaker 1: said something that was in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: But basically sort of used that as a framework in
Speaker 1: her comment to describe something in her analysis had gone
Speaker 1: wrong in this situation, this wrecking mission that leaders who
Speaker 1: are more self aware, more situationally aware, and more systemic
Speaker 1: thinkers could be more effective in you know, in navigating
Speaker 1: uncertainty and complexity. So it really is. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say this is some kind of I think the
Speaker 1: failure archetypes are. I think the three types of failure
Speaker 1: is a pretty robust classification system. I'm personally at the
Speaker 1: moment enamored with this idea that there's something fundamental about self,
Speaker 1: situation and system awareness, especially in navigating uncertainty. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm missing some other element that we that we could
Speaker 1: talk about, But I could draw a straight line from
Speaker 1: each of these competencies to various failure stories, both the
Speaker 1: good kind and the bad kind, And so I thought
Speaker 1: it might be a helpful way to, you know, help
Speaker 1: help people become more comfortable with uncertainty and fallibility.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be nice?
Speaker 1: Yeah, wouldn't Yeah, I'm trying. I'm still working on that myself.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I can. I can resonate. I can resonate,
Speaker 2: and I really do link that I really do see
Speaker 2: clearly now this connection with psychological safety that I didn't
Speaker 2: see as clearly before. So this has been really elucidating
Speaker 2: this conversation.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Relating to our earlier talk about de I you distinguished
Speaker 2: between privileged failure and the kind of failure pressure that
Speaker 2: minority groups face. Can you kind of walk me through
Speaker 2: that distinction?
Speaker 1: Sure? I did some thinking about the unequal playing field, right,
Speaker 1: the unlevel playing field for failing, let's say in an
Speaker 1: entrepreneurship environment or a in a company setting a project
Speaker 1: that you're that you're leading. And I began to realize,
Speaker 1: and I'm not the first person to realize this, that
Speaker 1: if you are a member of the dominant group in
Speaker 1: that organization, you're less likely personally to worry and collectively
Speaker 1: to be seen as a representative of a group, so
Speaker 1: that your failure is less likely to be seen as
Speaker 1: reflecting badly on the group that you are part of.
Speaker 1: And so if you are a member of an underrepresented
Speaker 1: minority and you're put in charge of some project and
Speaker 1: you fail, you will be anxious, and probably rightly so
Speaker 1: that people will then say, Okay, we'll never do one
Speaker 1: of those You know, we're never going to put some
Speaker 1: one of that kind of person again in a role
Speaker 1: like that, because look, she failed, and so you know,
Speaker 1: the aspiration would be a level playing field where we
Speaker 1: just don't think that way anymore. That anyone who has
Speaker 1: a success us or a failure is, you know, is
Speaker 1: simply a case study from which we can learn about
Speaker 1: better and worse things to do in a particular situation,
Speaker 1: not a representative of some identity group doing things that
Speaker 1: we either can or can't learn from in that situation.
Speaker 2: Well, well I need to process that.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Sorry, I know I'm a little abstract, but it's
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's just if you imagine an organization
Speaker 4: where we're putting someone in charge of let's say, a
Speaker 4: major country division, who is we've never had maybe an
Speaker 4: African American woman leading such a thing before, and something
Speaker 4: goes badly wrong, what's the first thing people are going to.
Speaker 2: Think, Well, they you know, like they got it because
Speaker 2: of their skin color.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they got it because of that, And look, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't try that again. That was a mistake. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's going to be all about their category.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be about what we learned from that,
Speaker 1: and you know, we know no one or maybe we
Speaker 1: do it the other way. It's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a white male, and you know, project
Speaker 1: goes wrong. Nobody would ever think, let's not because he
Speaker 1: was picked because he was a white male, and let's
Speaker 1: never let's never do that again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people don't think that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, that just wouldn't that just wouldn't make
Speaker 1: any sense, I mean statistically speaking, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just thinking of because I feel
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of like insiduous, like micro questions
Speaker 2: against white males these days.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 2: No, No, I mean I I think I see it sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's.
Speaker 1: Sort of there, you know, wouldn't it be interesting if
Speaker 1: we could be David Thomas he used to use the
Speaker 1: the term and I guess others have used it as well.
Speaker 1: Unearned privilege, and an unearned privilege of course, refers to
Speaker 1: to white men. And I would love to be at
Speaker 1: the at a at a place where that isn't it's
Speaker 1: not an insult, right like we we should we should
Speaker 1: be able to enjoy the advantages we have. And everyone,
Speaker 1: not everyone, but many people have different kinds of advantages
Speaker 1: and people are you know, more attractive, and some people
Speaker 1: are taller and in a sense, you know, height is
Speaker 1: one of those fantastic things where you know.
Speaker 2: The same with physical attractiveness.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they're wildly overrepresented in in you know, not
Speaker 1: jobs like actors and actresses where that makes sense, but
Speaker 1: jobs like CEOs where it makes no sense.
Speaker 2: Well, the halo effect is a real thing.
Speaker 1: Right, the halo effect is a real thing. And so
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of this phenomenon en of you get
Speaker 1: certain privileges or advantages that you didn't strictly speaking earn,
Speaker 1: you know, by just working harder at your calculus than
Speaker 1: anybody else. And but why does that have to be
Speaker 1: an insult? Like you're, yeah, you're lucky. We all got
Speaker 1: some luck, and we could celebrate it and be okay
Speaker 1: with it and not think you're dissing me when when
Speaker 1: you have such a phrase.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the unearned privilege there is is just whatever
Speaker 2: privileges are confined to having white skin? Is that the idea?
Speaker 2: Because I think it can be an insult to treat
Speaker 2: the totality of a human based on the color of.
Speaker 1: There's absolutely absolutely, I'm just trying to think this through
Speaker 1: we're not an insult but a gross minimization of who
Speaker 1: they are exactly.
Speaker 2: I don't like seeing that in any direction. I certainly don't.
Speaker 2: I hate racism, but I also hate when we reduce
Speaker 2: anyone to their skin color. So, but you could see
Speaker 2: a situation where a white man, for instance, has earned
Speaker 2: They've worked extremely hard, and many of them, and there
Speaker 2: can be an element where they you know, they recognize
Speaker 2: whatever privileges they've had that have contributed. But when you
Speaker 2: were do when you dismiss their achievement one hundred percent
Speaker 2: right based on the color of their skin. Because I
Speaker 2: do see that sometimes, I do think that's an insult.
Speaker 1: It is, it is, and it would be fun to
Speaker 1: again to engage engage those moments and engage those situations
Speaker 1: with a truly learning oriented perspective and the skills to
Speaker 1: kind of dig into it. Wow, I mean, imagine a
Speaker 1: world where we had more mutual understanding and more it's
Speaker 1: just sort of appreciation for what each each one of
Speaker 1: us brings to a situation, our strengths and our weaknesses,
Speaker 1: and kind of could could embrace each other for who
Speaker 1: we are, some of the things we've worked really hard on.
Speaker 1: Others we've kind of skated along. It's okay, right, The
Speaker 1: whole totality of me, of who I am, could be
Speaker 1: seen by you and vice versa, and that's unusual.
Speaker 2: It's very unusual. Is that? Is that what you think
Speaker 2: would help create a healthy failing well culture?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yes, In fact, I would describe, you know, a
Speaker 1: healthy failure cultures as one in which we are okay
Speaker 1: with the fact that we're each fallible human beings, and
Speaker 1: we're willing then to take risks, both in the business
Speaker 1: sense and in the interpersonal sense, in pursuit of of
Speaker 1: learning and progress and and and towards the goal of
Speaker 1: creating a you know, a healthy and sustainable world for
Speaker 1: all of us.
Speaker 2: I'm very much on board with that, you know, your
Speaker 2: Your bottom line here seems to be that failing isn't fun.
Speaker 2: It doesn't always feel comfortable, never fun, but like it
Speaker 2: feels great. But that's okay. Now, everything easy to feel
Speaker 2: part of life. I think we live in this culture
Speaker 2: where everything you know, they're on my Instagram feed. I
Speaker 2: have one advertise me after another trying to make me
Speaker 2: feel great. It's just like we're obsessed with feeling great,
Speaker 2: you know, but there are so many things we can
Speaker 2: learn from uncomfortable and even awkward moments. I mean, my
Speaker 2: day are awkward interactions with humans. But that's not bad
Speaker 2: right now, No.
Speaker 1: It's not bad. It's part of life, Like failure is
Speaker 1: not fun, but it's part of life, and it often
Speaker 1: even brings value to us, you know, new knowledge, new perspectives,
Speaker 1: right that make us enriched as as people, and you know,
Speaker 1: in psychological safety describes an environment where you are okay,
Speaker 1: feeling uncomfortable because you know you're not going to die,
Speaker 1: just feeling uncomfortable or you know, having an awkward conversation
Speaker 1: or asking for help. But sometimes it feels like that.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it feels like that. Yeah, So I do like
Speaker 2: this idea of intelligent failures, yeah, and how they can
Speaker 2: bring discovery. You talk about four essential tools for failing well,
Speaker 2: persistence as one persistence and you just think it's not
Speaker 2: from stubborn its So what's the difference between the two.
Speaker 1: Well, the difference is one of perspective. What I I'm
Speaker 1: often intrigued by these these words that are kind of
Speaker 1: strengths and positives that also have you know, a flip
Speaker 1: side where it's really could potentially be describing the same behavior,
Speaker 1: but seen through a critical rather than a praiseworthy lens.
Speaker 1: And so you know, your persistence, which is admirable, might
Speaker 1: be seen by me as stubbornness. By the way, my
Speaker 1: persistence is never stubbornness, you know, for me and so.
Speaker 1: And the only reason I bring bring that up is
Speaker 1: that I want to be clear that while persistence is
Speaker 1: of value and it's necessary, right, none of us ever
Speaker 1: accomplished anything in our lives without a little bit of
Speaker 1: persistence and hard work and grit and you know, picking
Speaker 1: ourselves back up. Let's just go back to the proverbial bicycle, right.
Speaker 1: No child ever learned how to ride a bicycle the
Speaker 1: minute they got on, just off they went, right, there
Speaker 1: was persistence involved because it was hard. And yet I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make the point there in the book
Speaker 1: when talking about these things, that there's always judgment, right,
Speaker 1: there's always discernment, because there are times in life where
Speaker 1: we have to sort of step back and say, hmm,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I'm persisting too long in a failing
Speaker 1: course of action and the world is trying to tell
Speaker 1: me something and it's time to sort of shift and
Speaker 1: try something else. And how do you know how do
Speaker 1: you make the distinction between healthy, admirable persistence and unhealthy,
Speaker 1: problematic stubbornness. And there's no easy answer, but one suggestion
Speaker 1: would be get some other voices in, you know, make
Speaker 1: sure to get feedback from others. You know, I'm going
Speaker 1: to keep pushing this boulder up the hill. What do
Speaker 1: you think am I throwing good money after bad here? Right?
Speaker 1: Get get some other perspectives and and dig, dig in,
Speaker 1: and dig down to try to understand what the argument
Speaker 1: is to keep going, and what the argument is too
Speaker 1: it's time to stop. And a kind of rule of
Speaker 1: thumb in that one is, you know, persist if you
Speaker 1: have good reason to believe that there's just a there's
Speaker 1: a hurdle or two here that once we overcome it,
Speaker 1: then we will. The rest is sort of clear sailing.
Speaker 1: There's a there's genuine evidence that there's a market for this, right,
Speaker 1: if we can only find someone to manufacture it, there
Speaker 1: will be a market. I have data to show that
Speaker 1: there are customers out there ready and willing to buy
Speaker 1: this if only we can make it. But if conversely,
Speaker 1: you know, you got some idea and you can't even
Speaker 1: get anyone to say, yeah, love that idea. I would
Speaker 1: buy it if it exists. Did and you know, no
Speaker 1: one but no one thinks it's a good idea except
Speaker 1: you and maybe your mother. Then you know the persistence
Speaker 1: is probably not will.
Speaker 2: So to summarize, no one to grit and no one
Speaker 2: to quit, Yes, exactly, Yeah, yeah, I love it. You
Speaker 2: have four here. Your second is reflection. I think that's
Speaker 2: a self explanatory.
Speaker 1: Self explanatory, but make it a habit, right, That's not
Speaker 1: something we naturally do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's not something that is predominant, even though
Speaker 2: it's self explanatory. Accountability So you know, can you have
Speaker 2: accountability partners for failing?
Speaker 1: Well? Sure so. So accountability is a word, at least
Speaker 1: in the sort of corporate space that has come to
Speaker 1: mean punishment, And I think that's problematic. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's got to be accountability, right and
Speaker 1: and and but the real root of it is about taking,
Speaker 1: you know, being able to provide the account you know
Speaker 1: what happened, like to really truly understand what happened and
Speaker 1: own and acknowledge your contribution to the failure or to
Speaker 1: the to the disappointment.
Speaker 2: No one's willing to do that these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are the things that you did that contributed?
Speaker 1: What are the things maybe by omission, you failed to
Speaker 1: do that could have helped? Right, But that is again,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing we don't do because we
Speaker 1: think will look bad, and in truth, you look good,
Speaker 1: you know, when you have the courage and the confidence
Speaker 1: to say, huh, here's the way I came up short.
Speaker 1: Here are the things that I did or didn't do
Speaker 1: the contributor to this outcome. You actually look like someone
Speaker 1: who's pretty wise and pretty capable to have figured that out.
Speaker 1: And you're now equipped to go forward and do that.
Speaker 2: I know you weren't talking to me, but thank you. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I love that you have such a nice way of
Speaker 2: framing things. It's so polite, well uh and and and
Speaker 2: mature and respectful.
Speaker 1: You know, it's well, framing is a Framing is a skill.
Speaker 1: I think, Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: cognitive skill and it's and it's a it's a skill
Speaker 1: that can really help us cope with the challenges that
Speaker 1: lie ahead.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but I mean behind. I'm saying you have
Speaker 2: that skill, Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: I guess I've worked I've worked at it, but you know,
Speaker 1: I don't always have it in the exact moments when
Speaker 1: I need it.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just there are so many cultures where
Speaker 2: cultures that are so antithetical to that spirit. I mean,
Speaker 2: did you see the Wolf of Wall Street? Can you
Speaker 2: imagine like saying to them you should reframe, you know,
Speaker 2: because there are cultures that are so like testosterone and enhanced,
Speaker 2: you know, where it's like winning competition with do this.
Speaker 2: I mean for them, they would they would listen to
Speaker 2: this and and roll their eyes.
Speaker 1: Right, But those kinds of cultures often look really good
Speaker 1: in the in the short term or for some period
Speaker 1: of time, and then they crash and burn, they collapse
Speaker 1: under their own weight because nature doesn't really work that way.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, I agree, that's a good point. Sometimes
Speaker 2: you have to find out the hard way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, time, timeframe is everything, right, yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. And then the last one is sincere apologies.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a good tool for that takes a humbleness, right,
Speaker 2: that takes it.
Speaker 1: Yes, it does.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of this is taking the ego
Speaker 2: out of the equation. You know, that's thread running.
Speaker 1: Through all of these Yeah, because and the ego is
Speaker 1: really a source of unhappiness that we mistake as a
Speaker 1: source of happiness. I mean, you know, we puff ourselves
Speaker 1: up thinking that will make us feel better. It just
Speaker 1: makes us lonely really, But so sincere apology, it was
Speaker 1: really fun actually for this book to go to the
Speaker 1: there's actual research on apologies, you know, it's very thoughtful.
Speaker 1: And they use the term that the purpose of an
Speaker 1: apology is to is to repair the rupture in the relationship.
Speaker 1: And if I do something wrong, I have, in either
Speaker 1: a small or a large way, created a little rupture
Speaker 1: in the relationship. And if I can be courageous enough
Speaker 1: and you know, ego free enough to apologize, I'm helping
Speaker 1: repair that rupture. And a high quality apology they they
Speaker 1: show is one in which you, you know, you do
Speaker 1: take some responsibility for your part in what happened, You
Speaker 1: acknowledge the harm, you offer if possible, to make amends,
Speaker 1: which could even just be a promise to do to
Speaker 1: do better next time or not do that again. And
Speaker 1: that takes courage, it takes honesty, and it's very hard
Speaker 1: to do unless you genuinely do put the relationship ahead
Speaker 1: of ego, you know, unless the unless the really if
Speaker 1: the relationship doesn't mean anything to you. You'll resist the
Speaker 1: apology indefinitely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's such a good point, and you
Speaker 2: have to remind yourself of that when you're in the
Speaker 2: grips of veg.
Speaker 1: It's so hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, i'd be remiss. You know, we're ending
Speaker 2: this this interview, and I want to be respectful of
Speaker 2: your time. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you
Speaker 2: about this fascinating link you talk about in your book
Speaker 2: between social media and perfectionism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's I mean, I think that's it's intuitive.
Speaker 1: I think most people or many people are increasingly thinking
Speaker 1: about this, this this challenge and the mental health implications
Speaker 1: of it. But social media, you know, by definition, is
Speaker 1: you choose what you're posting, and you you try to
Speaker 1: post things that make you look good, not bad. So
Speaker 1: maybe you post just the best pictures we can easily,
Speaker 1: you know, toss in the trash the pictures that aren't
Speaker 1: so good. You highlight your success is not your failures.
Speaker 1: So that's natural, that makes sense. I mean, who would
Speaker 1: want to go and stand on a mountaintop and yell
Speaker 1: out about their failures? But it leaves us with an
Speaker 1: artificially curated data set. It is not representative of people's
Speaker 1: full and complicated lives, but is only the you know,
Speaker 1: the happy front, and then ours feel our lives feel
Speaker 1: sad and inadequate by comparison. So the whole phenomenon of
Speaker 1: social comparison, which we've been doing since the dawn of time,
Speaker 1: is now distorted by social media. You know. We used
Speaker 1: to sort of look to our right, look to our left,
Speaker 1: and and some of that comparison was healthy because it
Speaker 1: would say, oh, I guess I'd better sit up straight,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and some of it made us
Speaker 1: feel bad because someone looks like they're happier than you are,
Speaker 1: what have you. But now it's a distorted, biased data
Speaker 1: set against which many people, especially teenagers and more vulnerable
Speaker 1: young people are are sort of stuck with this biased
Speaker 1: data set, and and it can cause great harm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really can. I was I was thinking though,
Speaker 2: there are instances where I think people on social media
Speaker 2: are rewarded socially by signaling their victimhood or signaling their vulnerability.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, that's true, right, And everybody kind of swarms
Speaker 1: in to say, oh, oh, we.
Speaker 2: Have getting attention, getting attention, you know. Now everyone and
Speaker 2: their mother has has discovered trauma, you know, and in
Speaker 2: their life, and and everything on social media is about like,
Speaker 2: you know, look at me, I've had trauma. You know.
Speaker 1: It's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: haven't done much thinking about that, but that's actually a
Speaker 1: very real point and very real trend. I wonder, I mean,
Speaker 1: what the implications are of getting your positive you know,
Speaker 1: the attention that you crave, the caring that you crave
Speaker 1: for your for being weak or traumatized or vulnerable. Is
Speaker 1: that is that is that as nourishing as you imagine,
Speaker 1: it will be very long run interesting, it's food for
Speaker 1: it thought. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So to conclude, you know, really really important work
Speaker 2: you're doing here that has implications for society, as implications
Speaker 2: for the workplace, for education, and I even love how
Speaker 2: you talk about implications for parents. But but the thread
Speaker 2: running through all of that is that as managers, as parents,
Speaker 2: as leaders, we can help people reframe their failure as
Speaker 2: something that is part of learning and it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be a source of shame. Is that a fair?
Speaker 2: So right? So beautifully okay, thank you Amy, so wonderful
Speaker 2: and I'm honored to have you finally on my podcast,
Speaker 2: and congratulations and all your very well deserved, earned, earned, earned,
Speaker 2: earned successes. What's the opposite of us?
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I don't care if you're white, I don't care if
Speaker 2: you're whatever you are. You earned it. No, I'm really
Speaker 2: proud of you. Thank you, really proud of you. Thank you.