Success and Failure: The Partnership that Fuels Growth

Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. I am so glad that you’re a part of today’s podcast. In fact, I, I think after John talks today, you’re going to be glad because here’s what I promise you. We’re going to add value to you and really challenge you to multiply value to others. And we’re going to do that by talking about the partnership between really between two, two paradoxes, Chris, between failure and success. And they sound so extreme, but I would love— we’ll get to John in just a moment, but is there a leader that you watch deal with failure and turned it into a growth opportunity that just kind of comes to mind when I mention that?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, there’s an individual and the principle that comes to mind of when I watched him do it, because we all fail, right? All the time. Was they didn’t fail less, but they were able to take what they failed or what failed and to process it faster. So it became instrumental in their growth plan. Like, it was part of how they grew.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. You know what’s funny is I give you a hard time as often as I can on this podcast. I give you a hard time, right? I really try to. Chris worked with John Maxwell before I did. I mean, you were here in 1997, ’98, ’98. I came in 2000. And Chris was the envy of me, of kind of the culture guy. In fact, what I’m super excited about is now you’re overseeing culture here at Maxwell Leadership.

Mark Cole:
Uh, but John likes to talk about a time that you failed. You left us and went to work in construction and then got right, found the Lord and came back, right?

Chris Goede:
Because of the complete financial breakdown of subprime lending back in the late 2000s. And it was my fault.

Mark Cole:
It was your fault. You were Jonah. You were Jonah and you got thrown overboard.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Mark Cole:
And we were overboard. That’s right. And so you came back And that’s kind of— but, but think about this, going back, we, we talk, we talked the other day about that infamous, uh, Indiana. Yeah, Indiana. And, um, boy, think about the opportunities and your growth since coming back. And that’s taking what John says is failure, you left and coming back and being successful. Isn’t it true? And this is what today’s podcast is all about. When you can understand the partnership between success and failure, you will do a much better job of your response to failure because you’ll see it as a stepping stone to greater success.

Mark Cole:
That’s what John’s talking about. We gotta get outta the way because I just wanna keep talking about this, but we’ll be back. So listen to John, we’re gonna throw it to him right now. He’s gonna talk about the partnership that fuels growth, which is success and failure. And then Chris and I will come back and break it down for you so that we can all grow together. If you would like the bonus resource,— if you would like some of the links that’ll be referenced throughout this, uh, podcast. If you’d like to go ahead and preorder John’s book on how to get a return on failure, you can get all of these things as well as the YouTube view link at MaxwellPodcast.com/Partnership. Click on that link and you’ll be able to get all these resources.

Mark Cole:
Okay. Grab a pen, grab a piece of paper, grab your bonus resource. Here’s John

John Maxwell:
Maxwell. Every success story has failure in it, but not every failure story has success in it. And, and what’s the difference? The difference is our perspective of, of failure. You see, how we view things determines how we do things. So if we view failure as a part of success, We’ll learn from it and we’ll embrace it and it will be our best friend. If we view failure as part of success. But if we view failure separated from success, going back to, it’s not part of success, it’s part of the problem, then we don’t learn from it because all we wanna do is avoid it. So when I put success and failure together, it’s kind of like, oh yeah, this is part of success.

John Maxwell:
This is, this is, you know, you know, failure 101, part of my success growth program that I have in my life. So when we keep failure and success together, it does a few things for us. It helps us, what? It helps us value failure. Wow, this is so true. When I keep them together, what— every time I fail, I say, well, you know, there was a lesson to be learned there. And when I have failure, it also, instead of discourages me to get out of the game because I put it with success, it encourages me to keep in the game. And it also, I think when we put success and failure together, there’s a sense of that it gives us humility and maturity. There’s, it’s almost like humility and maturity are a result of the fact that yes, I do well sometimes, and sometimes I have some major misses.

John Maxwell:
In my, in my life.

Chris Goede:
When you

John Maxwell:
lose, don’t lose the lesson. And so many times when people lose, they lose the lesson. And the reason they lose the lesson is they separate success and failure. And because of that, they have to live in the failure line, and they say, “Wow, I’ve gotta get away from this as much as possible.” If they kept them together, they would just say, well, you know, Some, some days I win and some days I learn. Tremendous advice. Let me, let me give you another piece of advice that I think would be helpful to you. And that one is that decision-making is overrated and decision-managing is underrated. And the reason I say that is because honestly, uh, everybody I know has made bad decisions.

John Maxwell:
When people say, well, make sure you make a good decision, I say, well, no, I know a lot of people who’ve been very successful And they’ve made some real bad decisions. You see, okay, it’s— we wanna make good decisions. I don’t wanna kinda just sweep that under the rug, but let me just say this. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is not that successful people make good decisions and unsuccessful people make bad decisions. The difference is that successful people their response to their bad decisions are different than unsuccessful people. You see, successful people, when they make a bad decision, they don’t, uh, deny responsibility for it. They don’t, uh, run from the, the scene of the accident. They basically say, okay, I, I messed up here.

John Maxwell:
Now, now what do I learn? Versus the person who hates failure, They basically, their whole thing is, you know, I’ve gotta leave as quickly as you can. I’ve gotta, I gotta leave the scene of the accident. It’s been my conclusion in this area of decision that again, decision-making is overrated, but here’s the big miss I think, and that is decision managing is underrated. I mean, okay, if I make a decision to marry my spouse, That’s a decision, but managing that decision is going to determine the success of that marriage. And that’s true in every relationship, that’s true in, you know, decisions we make in the business world. You know, it’s not that I haven’t made some bad decisions, but I’ve been able to very quickly learn from those bad decisions, change those decisions. When I wrote my book, “Make Today Count,” I basically— the thesis of that book is that good people, successful people, they, they make good decisions. But what makes the good decisions great decisions is that they manage those good decisions well.

John Maxwell:
So a good decision becomes a great decision when you manage it, just like a good decision becomes a bad decision if you don’t manage it. And so in the book on, on Make Today Count, I, I wrote “Just for Today,” and I began to talk about what I call the daily disciplines of decision-making and management. And just for today, I will choose and display the right attitudes. And just for today, I will determine and act upon important priorities. And just for today, I will know and follow healthy guidelines. And just for today, I will communicate with and care for my family. And just for today, I will practice— and develop good thinking. And just for today, I will make and keep proper commitments.

John Maxwell:
And just for today, I will earn and properly manage finances. And just for today, I will deepen and live out my faith. And just for today, I will initiate and invest in solid relationships. And just for today, I will plan for and model generosity. And just for today, I will seek and experience improvements in my life. And then I put at the end, I will act on these decisions and I’ll practice these disciplines. And then one day, one day, you see, if I manage those decisions well, here’s, here’s the compounding that I wanna talk to you about. One day I will see the compounding results of each day lived well.

John Maxwell:
And that’s the key right there. You see, if I manage those decisions daily, one day, all of that management compounds and it begins to show up.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back. Um, I mentioned before John talked, and now you really want it because these one-liners that John gave today, Chris, you and I just were like, ah, but, um, these one-liners are really written out in practical response on how to get a return on failure. And I mentioned in the pre— conversation before, John, John’s new book, How to Get a Return on Failure. I really want to challenge you to get that, and I want to challenge you to get it, and I want to challenge you to give it. There’s somebody that if we can change the trajectory of their thinking early in their career to understand that failure is a friend, not a foe, right? Then you will send them light years ahead of the journey you and I took in leadership because we beat ourselves up. You’re a competitor. I’m a competitor.

Mark Cole:
I hate failing.. But it was a long time later that I realized, whoa, failure is actually a friend. And so I want you to do that. In fact, I got to give a shout out to Amy Burkett. She’s one of our 61,000 certified coaches. And Amy, this is the reason I thank her. She wrote a book called The Dirty Little F Word. I know where some of y’all thought right there.

John Maxwell:
Okay.

Mark Cole:
I know, I see your thinking, but really it’s a book about failure. Wow. She did an interview with me about 5 years ago and she asked me my response on failure. And in that, I told her, I said, oftentimes we want to get a return on investment. We want to get a return on time. We want to get a return on relationship, but very little— very few of us think about getting a return on failure. It was an incredible interview to where she pulled something out of me that I had subconsciously heard John reference before, but we had never said that. I went and told John about that.

Mark Cole:
He liked the idea so much of getting a return on failure, he wrote a book about it. Didn’t give me credit. It’s not going to give me royalty, but today we’re talking about a concept. Amy Burkett, shout out to you, podcast listener. Uh, it’s the dirty little F word that got John writing a book on how to get a return on failure. Chris, I’m super excited about today. We’ve talked a little bit about this lesson, but, uh, man, this is a

Chris Goede:
good lesson for leaders. I think, um, I come to this lesson just extremely grateful that we have the privilege of, of being in the environment of which we are, right? I love your challenge. Give one away of that book because so many people that are outside our bubble, it will paralyze them. Failure paralyzes them. And so I have to sometimes go, of course they run— but I’m like, oh, well, we’ve been here a long time, and it’s been part of our culture. It’s been part of our language. And so I think what we want to do today is really pull out some practical things that you have learned throughout the years and that has increased your leadership because you look at the two as one and the same. John talks about all the time, it’s not the experience that matters, it’s when you reflect on the experience.

Chris Goede:
So I want to start with his don’t lose the lesson. I love the one-liner, don’t lose the lesson. And that’s the core of who he is. So I want you to take us down a road of— I’m thinking about you as a CEO, as a leader. Many examples, all of you that have influence is going to relate to where you’re at. Let’s say maybe the strategy wasn’t right, maybe the event failed, maybe we hired the wrong person, we had to let them go. What’s the process? Walk us through how you don’t lose this lesson. What is the— because you got to have a little bit of a— at least I do— a little bit of a system and a process.

Chris Goede:
Because when you get jolted and you fail at something, you got to have that. And I know that you have one. Let’s unpack a little bit. What’s your internal process when that happens so that you get the most out

Mark Cole:
of that return on failure. I’m— there’s going to be two times that I reference something you just said. You said that we are in an environment that really helps us partner these together. And we are. I mean, John has always led— my first book when I started here in 20— in the year 2000 was Failing Forward. That was the, that was the most recent book John had released when I, when I started here. Loved it. I had been through a lot of failure and it reshaped my mind instantly.

Mark Cole:
This environment has helped me tremendously, but I still struggle to this question that you just gave. I agree. I struggle as a leader. We’re going to talk about that in a minute. I struggle as an individual applying this right here. Why? First, know thyself, right? We, we’re going to talk really applicable, uh, and give some real good meat to applying what John just shared with us. First thing, you have got to understand your perspective on winning and losing, your perspective on success and failure, your perspective on self-condemnation or self-exaltation, right? How you exalt yourself or how you condemn yourself. Right.

Mark Cole:
And Chris, I grew up in a very self-condemning environment. My religion, my home environment was all tough on ourselves. Now it wasn’t a— it wasn’t a— abusive. It wasn’t anything like that. But we learned as coals to be hard on ourself. You never had to correct me growing up. I had already done it. Thank you very much.

Mark Cole:
Got very few, um, corrections from my parents because I’d already corrected myself. I know how to correct myself. John Maxwell says his greatest concern for my leadership to this day My greatest concern of my leadership is how hard I am on myself. He said, if I could do anything for you, Mark, it would be free you up from being how hard on yourself. Now, I used all of that example, podcast family, listeners, viewers, to know yourself. Do you let yourself off the hook a little too much? Do you have a tendency to be flagmatic with yourself, to kind of be okay? You don’t have that internal drive and you, you are awakened by the critique of others because you can’t believe they found something to critique. I’m not condemning you with that. There’s a lot of us that are like that.

Mark Cole:
We just are loving life and along for the ride, and somebody has to wake us up. That’s not true with me. There’s others of you that really related with me when I say, man, I am my own worst critic. Yeah, because a lot of us are like that. You’ve got to know yourself. Mm-hmm. For me to take failure— Chris, now let’s get practical. Know yourself, one.

Mark Cole:
For me to beget— to learn to embrace failure, I had to remove it from being a personal indictment on my capacity, ability, or privilege to lead. I’ve got to know myself. I cannot go hard on myself in failure. I’ve got to go, hey, everybody fails. I’ve got to become flagmatic about failure. Your self-talk. My self-talk. Yeah.

Mark Cole:
Otherwise, I will lose the lesson because of the condemnation. I will lose the opportunity to learn because of a lid I put on myself. You deserve that failure, right?

Chris Goede:
You dummy. You— there you go again.

Mark Cole:
There you go again. All that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
So the first thing in know yourself, second thing is, is know what you need in moments of failure. You know what I need in moments of failure? Feeling pretty good about myself. Hey, at least I tried, right? At least I— so my self-talk in moments of known failure is very positive.

Chris Goede:
Intentionally up— didn’t do the same thing,

Mark Cole:
didn’t do the same thing. Let me tell you what was different. I find— that’s the third thing. Find something that is growth from the previous moment that you either failed or had a different failure.

Chris Goede:
Find something— progress.

Mark Cole:
You know what mine lately is? Hey, not so hard on myself. Hey, failure is not so bad after all. It’s not so bad because I’m not

Chris Goede:
killing myself with my self-talk.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. The fourth thing is— John has said it— get a lesson. When you fail, while you’re down, pick something up.

Chris Goede:
So when you do that— oh, I got a lot of thoughts here. Let me start with that. When you learn that lesson, how quickly do you in your system want to share that lesson? It’s like, hey, everybody, I know I failed. Let’s just— let’s put that out there. But let me tell you what I learned from it. How quickly do you go about doing that? And, and who do you do that with? How do you get that out?

Mark Cole:
So there’s two answers. There’s old Mark, 5, 10 years ago. I didn’t tell anybody. I figured out the lesson and then told them in hindsight the lesson, not even admitting the failure. It was too painful for me. Now, immediately. And let me tell you why immediately. When I decided I was gonna run a marathon, you know what I— you know what caused me to run my first marathon? I told everybody about it.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. I’m an accountable person, man. If I put my word out there, I’m going after it.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
So now, as soon as I recognize it’s a failure, even before I know the lesson, I’ll go, hey guys, I failed. You know why? Because I want them to know I know it, and I’m not so mad at myself about it. Yeah. It is an accountability factor to be able to say, hey, I can talk about failure quicker and not relate it to my value or my ability to lead.

Chris Goede:
Okay, so let me go a little bit deeper on this right here, because I think in addition to that, and when you do that, you have surrounded yourself— I call it a container or an environment of people that you know are not going to tie that failure to your identity and that they want to learn with you through it. We had yesterday an incredible certified team member of ours, Edwin, who listens all the time. You know who you are listening. We started talking about what makes high performers break. And we dug into this and we started talking about leaders, right, that have the ability to coach and to pull out their high performance— their high performers outside of just motivating them more. It’s much deeper than that. So we started thinking about it. And when you just talked about self-talk and you’re talking about what you tell yourself, I was like, man, as a leader, if I see somebody’s numbers changing, behaviors changing, accounts changing, I immediately try to go figure out what’s the environment behind that.

Chris Goede:
But when it comes to myself, you’re smiling. Those that aren’t on YouTube and you need to get on YouTube and watch this, he’s like, I got you. Yeah, I’m sitting here thinking about— I’m like, yeah, that self-talk is like, I got to work harder. I messed up or whatever. And what I love about what you’re talking about and this process that you’ve given us, the, the 4 steps— got to know yourself, right? Then what do I need to learn? The second one is, what have I grown from that? You’re shifting your identity away from the failure, which so many of us sit in, to, man, look at the growth that I’ve had. And that’s what we’re talking about, right? The growth through failure is what you’re saying. You’ve come to a place— I have a system. That allows me to live in the growth of that.

Chris Goede:
And I think that those four tools

Mark Cole:
right there— And let me say this, that should encourage us. John used to say— people used to think that leaders were born, that they could not be developed. That was many, many years ago. We’ve changed that. People really can. Those of us— and most of us relate to how Chris and I are talking about ourselves. We’re hard on ourselves. Most are.

Mark Cole:
Not everybody is. John Maxwell isn’t. John Maxwell says, “I’m my own best friend.” He is his own best friend. And will tell you that. And will tell you that. But he never, never gets caught in self-condemnation for failure.

Chris Goede:
Never.

Mark Cole:
He moves so fast through it. There are many of you out there that are in an enviable place for Chris Goede and I and many others, that you truly are your own best friend and you don’t do it. But here’s— that’s not most of us though. Most of us are more critical of ourselves than we are of others. Back to your Edwin conversation, that whole conversation yesterday. But we can grow. Those of us that are critical, we can grow. We can become— began to accept failure as a friend and be much less condemning.

Mark Cole:
And I want to give us hope because most of us are not in the Maxwell camp there. Yeah, most of us are in the Cole Goede camp. I agree that we condemn ourselves and we can get better with that.

Chris Goede:
And let me encourage you with this. I was reading an article about failure and leaders, and it said 20% of the leaders— Harvard Business Review— that had a systematic approach to failure outperformed their peers futuristically. So it’s, it’s the statement of— and I love Valerie Burton says this all the time— what are you doing today that your future self will thank you for? And what are you doing through failure that your future self, your family, your team, that will thank you for? And that’s what you’re saying. Have this process. Here it is. This is what Mark’s had to learn through a lot of tears and frustration and whatnot. And so apply it to the next time you fail, which for Mark and I may be before the end of this recording. Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And then as you reflect on it, because that’s the greatest tool when you experience something, is to go through the, the power of reflection. Now let’s transition because there’s another great statement that I want us to unpack a little bit here about, about managing decisions. We all make decisions that we think are extremely well positioned for one reason or another, and maybe it flops. We end up finding out it’s because we manage that decision the wrong way. So I want you to take us in the life of Mark. As a leader and talk to us about a decision that you made that thought was a really good decision. Maybe found out it wasn’t, but the way you managed it allowed it to become a great decision.

John Maxwell:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
And let me— I want to talk about that, managing decisions and taking good decisions and making them great through management, not through ideation, and also taking a good decision and making it a bad decision through management.

John Maxwell:
Right.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, let’s do that. Let me capture one thing that I really I really want to grab as it relates to leading through failure. We talked a lot about leading ourselves through failure. I want to grab this concept of leading others through failure because when you and I talk, we, we don’t talk a lot before the show. We, we, but we did today. We talked a little bit and, uh, there is a mo— there is an example that I’m living right now of leading people through failure to where I nailed it. I got it. Speaking of environment, I’m in the environment and I still have good hits and bad misses, right? I have two just in the last little while.

Mark Cole:
Um, one was with a leader that recently joined our team and gave a lot of latitude of how they represent the brand in a certain area, how they represent our message and delivered something that was a little off point, a little off brand, got a little bit of feedback, a little bit, a little bit of blowback from it. How I handled that leader who is a creator, creative, was a textbook in the environment that has treated my failure well. I did it. I, I executed what I had been given, right? Very little feedback, more accolades, and a couple of parameters on what I needed to speak into as it related to message. It was very uplifting. It was very encouraging. It was very learning for them. It was a a failing forward moment that probably did not even register on that leader’s perspective of even being a failure because there was no need.

Mark Cole:
It was a first time. It wasn’t that big. It was, it was well handled. Fast forward another week or two to a teammate that’s been with me for a long time, a long time. And they missed something very important to me. And my response to that miss was identifying it as a failure. Asking why the failure, asking what we were going to be different. I micromanage that failure as if that teammate has not nailed it a million times for me.

Mark Cole:
Now here’s the payoff. The leader that I did a textbook— give Mark a pat on the back, break my arm, I’m giving myself so many compliments, right? The creativity has only increased since how I handled the first failure. You know what I did with the teammate that’s been with me a long time? The very next day and the next day, I had to go in and micromanage some decisions that I hadn’t had to manage in 15 years. Why? Because of how I handled failure in a teammate. And so my encouragement to you is don’t only think about in this podcast how you handle yourself in failure, Leaders, how you handle your teammates not only will mess up their confidence, it’s going to mess up your agenda.

Chris Goede:
I’m a living proof. And you had to get back in the weeds in this example, not because you wanted to, but because the individual had to come to you because of

Mark Cole:
how you handled that failure. That’s 100%, which now let’s go into this managing decision.

Chris Goede:
Perfect.

Mark Cole:
Goes right into it. Because, uh, I, I hate to say this because it’s been very— so few times there’s been some times that John took a decision that I wouldn’t make, a, a good decision that we managed to a great decision. There’s been times we’ve made a bad decision and we managed it into a good decision. By the way, there’s been times we’ve taken a good decision and managed it right into a bad decision. That’s so true. What John is saying here It’s very, very important for us. What John is saying here is how you manage a decision is underrated, and we overrate decision-making as if we gotta get it right, we gotta get it right, we gotta get it— no, you need to make a decision and then you need to manage that decision. Because we’ve had too many examples of decent mediocre decisions that became great decisions because of management, and too many decisions that we made a good decision and then manage it to a bad decision.

Mark Cole:
So how do we do that? One is— I can think of several with John and I to where it was a, at best, a mediocre decision that became great, a mediocre decision that became bad. One is, is never, ever improperly, uh, label a decision. If you don’t think it was a great decision, then keep that in the forefront of your conversations so that you manage it to be a productive decision. Too often we have yes people around us as leaders. I certainly have been tempted through my life to have yes people around me. What happens with yes people is I make a mediocre decision, they give me a yeah, let’s go, and we should have never said yeah, let’s go, but we went, right? How do we make a mediocre decision a great decision? Decision management, knowing when to cut, cut bait, just kill it. We shouldn’t have done it. If you— too many leaders made a mediocre decision, and because they don’t continue labeling a mediocre decision, they live with a mediocre decision too long, making it a bad decision.

Mark Cole:
Know the decision, rate the decision, and

Chris Goede:
then manage the decision. I think this is so profound because we just think about making a decision and then letting it play out. And to your point, every day we’re making decisions in our life that we just make the decision to let it roll out versus we got to manage it. We got to manage it, especially when it comes to people.

Mark Cole:
We got to be able to do that. John launched a product since I’ve been CEO. So over the last few years, John launched a product that I fundamentally was like, man, I don’t— I don’t get that product. I don’t know if the market really wants that product. I don’t know if that’s the right place to put our resources and energy. I never maintained that, that product was the best decision we could have made at the time. John knew that, I knew that, we talked about it openly. That decision has reaped unbelievable amount of return in that product, that one little product that John just said, I think, I think I want to launch this product, reaped unbelievable.

Mark Cole:
That product has also created a ton of decision management, a ton. I could have looked through that whole time of a disagreement about a little simple thing as a product. I could have looked at that, Chris, and went, See, I told you, I told you it was a bad decision. I told you it was a bad decision. Look at this right here. That’s what happened. This is what happened. This is what we had to do.

Mark Cole:
Rather than saying, hey, we made the decision and now we’re going to manage it. And because we managed it, did we have to manage? Oh yeah. Did we have some blowback? Oh yeah. Did we have incredible results during the lifetime of that product? You betcha. Unbelievable. Yeah, but it’s how we managed it. Not how we made it.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. It also ties in his principles on layered thinking. Like, it’d be interesting if we had John sitting here at the table and said, hey, John, personally, what are some of the dumbest decisions you’ve ever made? Which, by the way, he’ll tell us all of them. He would. And if not, Margaret will jump in. Yeah. But that he managed to excellence. And then what are some of the ones that are great that he didn’t? Because I think the reason I say that is that every single person listening or watching has those decisions from you up to John.

Chris Goede:
Like, it’s how we go about managing them and understanding that throughout all of that, we’re going to, we’re going to feel success and failure. Yeah. And not to allow that to paralyze us, just manage it to the next level. Have another layer of making a decision on that decision to make it even better. Yeah. All right. So we’re in this environment. And I want to get an additional thought from you as we kind of wrap up on the success and failure.

Chris Goede:
Your story, you talk about it a lot about coming to Maxwell, and I don’t think I knew until today that Failing Forward was your first book. And I can see how impactful that would have been for you in that time of your life. But if you were to go back maybe 5 years to your 35-year-old self, Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

John Maxwell:
Thank you.

Mark Cole:
Make sure you’re paying attention to me. I caught it.

Chris Goede:
Hope everybody else— 5 years ago, 35. Knowing now what you know now, being around John and growing through so many things that you’ve grown through and understanding that you have learned a lot of lessons, you’ve learned how to manage decision wells. What would you tell your 35-year-old self about failure and about success? And what comes to mind when I ask you that? As we wrap up, I’d love for you to leave that with our listeners and our watchers, viewers, because I think that again will give them another peek into, into inside of practical application that you have learned over the years.

Mark Cole:
I, I really believe some of the best leaders that I’ve heard talk on failure has a perspective that I think is very useful. And the perspective is no regrets. Mm-hmm. The, the perspective is No lamenting yesterday because it devalues today. Yeah. If I regret a step, a life decision that I made, then I disregard the lesson that I took from it that makes today and tomorrow the best days of my life. I believe the people that live on regrets— and they, they tell me that deathbed regrets are a real thing. And I, I’m a guy, I don’t get enough family time, man.

Mark Cole:
I am on the road a lot and I constantly assess myself. If today was my deathbed day, what would I regret? And then I’ve got to tell you, it could change 10 years, 15, 20 years from now. But today I go, man, to regret would denounce how powerful it is to be me right now. Now that’s not saying I’m all that. It’s saying how unbelievably humbled and privileged I am to be be able to access and to accomplish and to participate in the things I get to. So I don’t always win that because there’s a lot of times today I regret yesterday. But when I go back to 35, when I go back to 25, when I go back to 15, I go, wow, if I would have made that decision differently, would I be participating in what I’m doing today? And I try not to go there because I believe it would minimize the unbelievable privilege I feel at what I get to do today. Now, I wanna be very aware in the final minutes of our podcast, some of you are still living in the slum, the, the dip of a failure.

Mark Cole:
And you go, man, yesterday was much better than today. And I hope tomorrow will be better than today. And, and I get that. But as soon as you can get over that perspective, please do. Because you wouldn’t be learning what you’re learning today if you had not stumbled yesterday. And if you had not stumbled yesterday, it probably means you would have stumbled tomorrow when there was more to lose. And I just want to tell you, John says this, that I love it. He says all these people say, man, when I first started, I gave up everything.

Mark Cole:
And he says, well, of course you did. You didn’t have nothing. Yeah, that’s right. Some of us need to realize that we’re thankful of the failure of the current reality, because now we still have life in front of us that can take us to better heights, bigger heights, brighter heights than we’ve ever accomplished before because of what we’re learning right now. Pick up— please, please, please pick up, every one of you, even if you’re not experiencing failure today, even if you’ve overcome yesterday’s failure, pick up this book on How to Get a Return on Failure. You will help others with, I think, the greatest leadership paralyzer there is— failure. The fear of failure is one of the greatest leadership paralyzers. It’s one of the great inhibitors, lids, if you will, of great leadership.

Mark Cole:
Learn, figure out how to overcome failure, how to get a return on failure. Chris, it’s been incredible today. Hey, we have a podcast listener that appreciated a podcast you and I did. The podcast was, it’s not about you. Leadership, communication, and putting others first. And our podcast listener says, Mark, Chris, thanks for the help— for the beautiful podcast. Wow. Now listen to this.

Mark Cole:
They said beautiful podcast. Now listen to this next line. This was my first time viewing on YouTube and they called it a beautiful podcast. Jake, do you hear that? It’s a beautiful podcast. And it was my first— can I have their first, last name and their address? I’ve always listened on Apple Podcasts, but I loved the view. Then here’s the question that I want to take just a minute on. What are your views on how to deal with difficult leaders in the workplace, especially those who are condescending and pushing one down morally and socially? And Chris, I’m going to take a stab at this and I want you to as well. There’s the question.

Mark Cole:
Um, number one, I have found that a lot of leaders are blind to themselves and they don’t realize they’re condescending and they’re devaluing. And my first step— and perhaps podcast listener, and now I know why they didn’t provide your name because we don’t want to give that because you’re working for a rotten leader. First thing I do is I go and I ask them the question, are you aware how demeaning you are to myself and others? And when I ask that question, I don’t just ask the rhetorical question. I give them examples of how they morally and socially demeaned me and others. It’s never personal. I show it as a systemic problem. It happens multiple times. Oftentimes I find when I give that advice, people go, yeah, I already tried that.

Mark Cole:
Try it again. Give them new fresh examples. Do you realize you’re still doing this? Because they’re blind to it. They can’t see it the first time. They need to see it the second time. When I’ve went to somebody twice on the same issue with different examples that are multifaceted examples, now I take somebody with me. I take somebody else that feels the same way about this leader, and I try to go in a company of care, not of judging and, and condemning. I don’t think you get anywhere with that.

Mark Cole:
I take somebody with me and we try to show a behavioral challenge in accountability and try to do that. If you still continue to work for somebody that demeans you and that kind of thing, I would challenge you to see if there is a bigger reason you’re there, something you need to learn. Or if it’s time to move on and go find somewhere that will value you.

Chris Goede:
I 100% agree with your recommendation and coaching on that. Let me give you some language that I would use while doing what Mark suggested that you do. When you begin to have those conversations, I’d love for you to use the intent versus perception language because they just may not know. They may, they may not know. And so anytime you go and have a conversation with that, and I was going to Mark, say, hey, I know your intent was not to demean me or to put me down. However, the perception I’m getting or the team’s getting is this. Can we talk about that? So you immediately put a defensive wall down when approaching a tough conversation because of that language. Mark’s 100% spot on.

Chris Goede:
I would do it. That language just may help you do it. The other thing I would say is this exists in organizations, unfortunately, around the world. We call them level one leaders. And one of the things that I would encourage you to do is understand what your top values are and to understand why you’re there, like Mark said, and make sure that the environment does not become contagious to who you are and your values. Don’t allow that leader to then rub off on you. Understand what your values are and stay laser focused on how you lead, how you interact, how you— even leading up, you do it based off of your core values. Don’t allow that individual to change you.

Mark Cole:
Beautiful. Beautiful.. And that’s why we do this podcast. We hope that added value to you. Thank you, comment— uh, uh, the person that gave us this podcast viewer now, thanks for saying Chris and I were beautiful. I think that’s a stretch, but thank you. And, uh, we’ll see you next time. And until next time, bring powerful, positive change to the world around you because everyone deserves to be led well.

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Transcript created by Castmagic.