G'day leaders. In this podcast, we talk about a fantastic quote or a saying that a setback
is a setup for a comeback. It's a mindset shift and it can help you improve and not
look at failure as a failure. Enjoy.
Why did it count backwards? Are they? We're now recording.
What? Hello, captain.
What do I say? Come fly with me. Let's fly, let's fly.
What are we going to talk about? I don't know. So leadership, life and everything
else. Yeah.
And we're live. No, we're recording.
Again. Again.
We are. This is take two. Take two of this podcast. The sign says we're
on air. So we're recording live.
So funny thing happened. On the way to the store.
Before Daniel's podcast, where we interviewed him, amazing podcast, we recorded this podcast,
but we actually forgot to record. No, it was recording, but it stopped. Something
happened. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll say it was a technical issue.
That's right. So we're recording this for a second time.
Yes. And it's going to be better. Exactly. And which is the perfect segue into the topic
of this podcast. Yes. It's perfect for a setback.
Is a setup. For a comeback.
Yes. Now the reason why we thought about this particular topic, I had a student come up
to me over in Adelaide and he said, God, do you remember that quote I gave you? And I
went, Ooh, I hadn't seen it.
Aren't they always trying to test you?
They are. They're testing my memory. And I hadn't seen this guy for quite a few years,
but it was fantastic that he came up and did this because I love this quote. This setback
is a setup for a comeback. And when he said that to me, I thought, Oh, that I love that
quote, but I'd done nothing with it. I hadn't written it down. I hadn't put it in any of
the workshops or workbooks. I don't know the origin of it other than this guy in the course
over in Adelaide. Anyway, so we thought we'd have a whole podcast on the topic of a setback
being a set up for a comeback.
I love it. Perfect.
It is good. So firstly, just a shout out to a friend of mine. So Yvette Higgins. So Yvette
is a water polo performer, Olympic, no, you're always an Olympian, but she's a former water
polo player. I think she might be playing again socially, but she is an Olympic gold
medalist. She scored the goal on the buzzer to win the game against USA in the 2000 Olympics.
So she was instrumental in winning Australia's first water polo gold medal in Olympic history.
And she was chatting to me the other day about someone that she's mentoring. So her best
friend, Liz Weeks, who was also in that team in 2000, gold medalist, her daughter is now
playing and she's a goalkeeper like myself. And they were asking my advice on how to help
her with regards to her mindset when somebody scores a goal. And it relates very, very closely
to this topic that a setback is a set up for a comeback. Now, when I was playing, I developed
this routine that when somebody scored a goal on me, rather than turning around, grabbing
the ball, throwing it back to halfway and having a huff, what I'd do is before I'd grab
the ball out of the back of the net, I would get myself back into the same position that
I was in when they shot the goal. And then I'd replay it as if I was saving the ball.
Okay. That's what I'll do then. You see that sometimes actually, even like on televised
sports, you see the goalie or the person who didn't get something redoing it. Yeah. Yeah.
Because it's a way of using the failure, which is having a goal scored against you as an
opportunity to learn for the future. So you're basically creating new neural pathways in
your brain that say next time I'm in that situation, this is what I'm going to do. And
as a result, I will save the ball rather than the ball going into the goal. So what I'd
do is I'd replay it in my mind. I'd also replay it physically. So I'd jump out out of the
water and pretend that I was actually saving the ball. Then I'll get the ball, throw it
back to halfway and I'd forget about the goal. Yeah. And the days, I know we're talking about
this on another podcast, but Liz and, and, and that rather than going back to our podcast
and trying to find which one it was, I thought we'd just re-recorded at the start of this
podcast. When, when something happens to you and it's not what you want, you can either
be a victim of that and then let that amplify in your head, or you can rewire it as an
opportunity to learn something and then move forward. Yeah. Now you would have had similar
things in aviation. Absolutely. So, well, in the simulator, we have the luxury of doing
things over and over, which at the time it didn't feel like a luxury because we were
under the pump and it was a stressful situation and we were being graded and, you know, potentially
lose our jobs. But it did give you the opportunity to have a go to, and if you didn't get it
right, better to not get it right in a simulated experience rather than in the aircraft. So
we would go back and do it again. Now in a simulator check, it is easy to, like you were
saying, you know, to get stuck in your head if you do something wrong and then be thinking
about that rather than the task at hand or what's coming up. So you're operating the
current task with less of your neural resources. Yeah, exactly. You kind of half your brain
still stuck in the past, like kind of going over the things that you did wrong. And if
only I had the opportunity to do it again, sort of thing, whilst you're continuing down
the track and, and yeah, you're at 50% or whatever percentage it is of your available
brain is trying to do the next thing. And it's net, it doesn't go well. It does not
go well. And so we would be told to stop and to let that go, unless it was something where
catastrophic, you know, we're upside down or whatever. But if it was a small hiccup,
we didn't quite follow the procedure properly or the, you know, we missed something to
continue. And then always, you know, in the debrief, the good ones would, the good
checkies would say to you, okay, check captain, yeah, check captain. They would ask you to
self assess. And of course we assess harder. We assess ourselves harder than what, except
for the psychopaths who were like, oh, that was unreal. Look at me, look at me, I'm talking
to you. But it was, you know, a great opportunity. And if you had, if you had a time left over
and a chance, and it was a no jeopardy kind of stuff up, you could have another go. And
like you, you were saying, you know, it's the, it didn't quite do it. So you get it
into your muscle memory and it, it does, it reinforces how it should have been, how you
would have preferred it to go. And then you generally don't have to think about that again,
because it is part of muscle memory and you're better next time. Yeah. I love hearing that.
That's what you captains are doing in the industry. Cause that makes me feel a lot more
at peace that you're training constantly and you're doing it in an environment where it's
simulated, but you get the chance to, to learn from your mistakes and improve and yeah, know
what to do if something goes wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why you're quite unflappable.
That's when things go wrong, you tend to be quite calm and, and ready to, you know, analyze
the situation. So you obviously trained that. Oh, what they say, it's like a swan. I calm
on, on the outside, on the exterior, whereas underneath, you know, I'm peddling like a
bastard. Well kids do it these days with games, gaming. Um, my, one of my sons is, is a freak
at a current game. He just, he practices and practices and he, if he does something wrong
or gets killed, he learns not to do that again. And he, he goes straight back in and has another
go and does. Well, our mistakes are the best opportunity to learn. Cause there's not, like
we say this so often to our kids and we should get it into everyone's head, regardless of
whether they're children or not, that there's nothing like seeing as failure. There's only
learning. Yeah. Trial and error. Trial and error. Let's bring it back. Yeah. Cause it's
kind of disappearing, isn't it? And we were talking about this, um, in the previous attempt
at this podcast when it didn't work that, um, social media just shows a plethora of
success. Everyone's success. Everything's all about success and kids don't actually
get to see all of the hard work behind the success and they don't see the failures. And
it's almost like, Hey, let me just show you my best version of self or my wins. Uh, but
we don't get to see the, the, the attempt at the tries that failed and, or didn't go
as planned in the past. So there's probably less exposure to failure now. Yeah. So kids
want to be good and better straight away without the effort. Yeah. I, I met two ladies, uh,
at a, a networking lunch and they had just started that week, their own, uh, I'm now
trying to think what it is. It was like a, um, mortgage broking and property agency sort
of, uh, set up and they were from the industry and had been working for a major for over
20 years each independently. So they, they came together and they formed their business
and they were talking about some of the things that hadn't gone so well and the, you know,
website and they hadn't got their license in time for this and that and things that
had not happened. And then they were talking about what their first post was going to be
on social media to show that they'd launched and how great it was. And I suggested that
they put the fact that this didn't work, this didn't work, this hasn't happened yet. And
they said, Oh no, but we want people to think that we're professional. And it got me thinking
that that, like you just said, the fact that we put only our best side and heavily filtered
and edited version of ourselves out on social media. Whereas I would be invested in them
that they were human. If they show that, Hey, this didn't work and this didn't work and
we haven't got this yet, but we're getting there. So when they did get it and put it
on, I'd be celebrating with them because I'm on the journey. Yeah. Okay. So they're
transparent. They're showing vulnerability. Yes. They're showing that they've learned
that they're, that they're real. So very much like what we talk about in the leadership
workshops, that you need to be vulnerable. You need to be human and show that you're
human. Cause then we can trust you, especially when it comes to, for example, making mistakes.
Yes. And you'll remember the other day I was doing the keynote, you came along to, to
assist and we were talking about confidence. Yes. And so one of the techniques that we
teach when we're teaching confidence is how to handle mistakes. And I always challenge
the audience. I say, okay, well, what do people typically do when they make a mistake? And
so the most typical thing they do is say, sorry, they go, I'm sorry. And then the person
goes, and who are you saying sorry for? You or them? Yeah, it's definitely, it's you.
It's not them. You know, when you're saying sorry, it's the same as saying, Oh, I'm so
sorry. Please don't be angry at me. I don't like it when people are angry at me. So when
you're saying sorry, it's a lack of confidence, believe it or not. It's, it's a nice thing
to do. You're doing it because most people who say sorry are nice people. They go, I'm
sorry. Yes. You know, they don't like hurting other people who don't like, you know, feeling
as though they're in trouble. But when you've made a mistake, the last thing you want to
do is say sorry. The other things that people do is they lie. Oh, that wasn't me. Yeah,
yeah, it wasn't my fault. They blame somebody else. That was Michael. They blame somebody
else or they'll just defend themselves. Look, I was busy. I couldn't do it or whatever
it is. But it's so important that when you make a mistake, if you want to, if you want
to show confidence and, and vulnerability, that you own it and give the person awful.
Yeah, we always talk about awful. You own it, you fix it. It's a good acronym. Own
it, fix it, apologize and learn from it in that order. It's got to be in that order.
So, you know, we've got a few clients that we're consulting with and we're talking to
them about the way they handle customers mistakes. And the worst thing you can do when you've
made a mistake is say sorry to a customer. The very first thing that you should say is
that's not the experience that we want for our customers. We made a mistake. I'm going
to fix this by doing these things and I apologize. That was the experience you had. And then
the L is learn from it so it never happens again. And if leaders can do it, if businesses
can do it, it shows vulnerability, it shows honesty and it shows confidence. It shows
that if I made a mistake, I'm not going to hide from it. I'm going to own it. And that's,
that's the way leaders can actually show that any setback is a set up for a comeback because
they're going to learn from the situation and not let it repeat.
Well, especially leaders and that can include parents. There is always someone watching
you and they're watching you to learn from you. Even bad leaders, you know, learn what
not to do. But there's always, so there's an opportunity in everything to inspire, to
teach, to motivate those that are watching you. And so if you do it that way and you
own it and then fix it. So otherwise I was thinking, oh, is it fall a fall? If you mix
it up, don't do it in that order. But the, uh, if you continually do that, then it becomes
that's acceptable to own up to your mistakes. If it's from the top down, it's often respected
more as a company, as a, as a culture.
And when, and when people don't own their mistakes and they hide, et cetera, that becomes
a culture, but, um, you can't trust the person cause you know that they're hiding there.
You know that they're not being honest and open. Yes. Yeah. It's such an important skill
to be able to take ownership of your mistakes. I try and do it, um, with the kids as well.
So if I've react rather than communicate, and I think communicating is communicating
calmly and logically as, as an adult, as a parent should be. But if I react with emotion
because I've lost my control of my emotions, I get frustrated. I'll always apologize for
the tone of voice that I've used, if it was the inappropriate voice, but I'll say that,
but the message was still holds. What I said was correct, but the way I said it was wrong
and I apologize. And I think that is also an example of how, um, we can teach other
kids, we can teach kids about, you know, I, I'm not happy with the way I reacted. I'm
not happy with the emotion that I had in my voice.
And I should have done this. And this is what I'll do next time. So it's, it's taking ownership
of things because we can't tell kids not to yell and scream at us if we're doing the same
to them. That's why energy's matched. I used to have this joke. Um, you know, my, uh, my
next door neighbor used to yell at the kids and, and if you do that one more time, I wanted
to say out the window, I'll yell one more time. Because it seemed to be, that was the
only consequence that I will yell one more time. One more time.
In their opportunities in business and life for the setback is a setup for a comeback.
You could rebrand if you, if something didn't work, uh, pivot like in startups and, um,
having been involved in a startup that we were, that I learned a lot from that in the
business, that pivot and fail fast. And fail fast forward. Yeah. Fail forward fast. I've
heard. Right. Yeah. I like that. I like that. And so, uh, and then if there was an oppo,
something did go wrong or an expectation wasn't met. So therefore, uh, a setback, um, you,
you lost something, you failed something, it didn't happen, et cetera. That if you,
um, own it and do exactly that without knowing that it was awful, it, it actually makes the
person, the recipient of that more of an advocate. So they're, they're a champion for you. That's
right. The trust. And then because you've gone beyond expectation, because like you
said, people don't own up to it. There's a, there's a, an innate thing where for safety,
we, we don't want to admit that we've, we've failed, that we haven't done what we said
we've done, we do. And so if, if we do that, we own it and then we give them more than
what they expected. Yeah. Which is what we talk about in the customer centricity course.
Yes. If you make a mistake, it's not a bad thing for a customer. As long as you own it
straight away, that's not the experience we want for our customers, but then you fix it
beyond their expectations. And what the research shows is that if you make a mistake and then
you fix it beyond the customer's expectations, you've just won a customer for life, a customer
advocate, because the initial mistake causes frustration. Then when you fix it beyond their
expectations, they're elated. And it's the change in their emotional state, which makes
them remember that experience. And that's it. Yeah. Exactly. The emotion. So the set
back, and we all feel that, you know, the negative in you, your whole, everything about
you, there's a depression and I don't mean depression necessarily as a mental thing,
it's that lowering of energy. Yeah. And then, so if you can do it, you then get re-inspired
and reinvigorated for the set up. For the comeback. For the comeback. It's almost like
you have that rocky moment, you know, they're up the stairs and that's right, I can hear
the music in my head now. No problems, just opportunities for solutions. I have the tiger.
So just going back to the corporate environment, when leaders show humility and vulnerability
and they own their mistakes and then that becomes acceptable for everyone else to do
it as well, it creates what's called psychological safety. Because when you don't feel safe,
when you feel as though when you make a mistake, there's going to be big repercussions. And
sometimes there are big repercussions if it's a situation where safety is involved. But
what I'm talking about is just standard human mistakes. If it's okay to make mistakes, you
make less mistakes. And the way it works, and I'll tie this back to the water pol example
I was giving earlier. So if I made a mistake, so if somebody scored on me and then I didn't
grab the ball, I replayed it in my mind, this is what I'm going to do next time and I'm
ready to go for next time, throw the ball back to halfway, I would forget the negative
experience. It would be gone. And at the end of that game, if I did that during a game,
at the end of the game, I could remember all of the saves that I made, but I couldn't
remember a single goal that they scored against me. But the days where I wasn't on my game,
I wasn't on top of my mental game, and I'd score a goal and I'd have a big huff and puff
and I'd get angry. And then I'd throw the ball back to halfway and not get it out of
my head. It became a cumulative thing. So the next time they're coming down to attack
and they're getting ready to throw another goal at me, I'm still in my head about the
previous experience. So I'm feeling anger, which then hijacks a lot of my neural resources,
which means I'm now operating on less of a brain than I had when I was clear. And so
then I would make more mistakes and it became cumulative. And the same thing happens in
an organization. If you fear making mistakes, you make more mistakes.
Let's go back to the Topic at Hand. So a setback is a set up for a comeback.
Yeah. So I remember a few situations in my life and in my career where it didn't go as
well. It didn't go as well. And I was beating myself. I'm always my harshest critic as you
are as well. You're your own harshest critic, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if
you use it to learn. So if you are criticizing yourself, it's okay if you then learn from
that experience.
Using it as feedback.
Using it as feedback, not criticism, which was the other podcast that we did. There's
no such thing as criticism. There is only information that you get to choose what you
do with. But it's the same with self-criticism. If you're looking at something that you did
and you're beating yourself up, that's the wrong approach. Certainly be critical of what
you did, but in a mindset that you're learning from it. So, okay, what could I do differently
next time? What led to the failure? What can I adjust in the future? What is the lesson
I can take out of this failure or this adversity that I've gone through? And then like we talk
about in the anti-fragility workshops and keynotes that you do, that you are then moving
forward with skill and strength and experience, which is so vital.
Yes. Yeah, yeah, no, that's right. And I was reading a book where Mr. Dyson from Dyson
Vacuum, his failures amounted before he actually had, and I'm saying failures, but they weren't
actually failures. Times that didn't work or adjustments were required. 5,371 times,
I think it is off the top of my head. That number.
Wow, that must be Edison. Yeah. And rather than look at them as failures,
they were tweaks and improvements to the design so that he actually got to the dual cyclonic
design, vacuum, that 0.3 of a micron or whatever, which is cigarettes and smoke, I learned.
Oh, well. Yeah, it can. So all of these, he could have
started with the original patent and just left it at that, which, but, you know, got,
went on to improve, improve, improve and still has the thing of they're still improving.
They're not just stopping there. Not staying still. That's good. I like that.
And that's, and I guess if you went and spoke to Mr. Dyson, who we don't know.
No, but I've heard they've got a Harrier Jumpjet out the front of their factory, their head office,
which would be very cool. And it's not a model. It's a real one.
An actual Harrier Jumpjet. And that's because?
It's ingenuity and so in innovation, creativity.
Because the Harrier Jumpjet was the first plane to jump off an aircraft character vertically.
Go upwards. Go upwards. Yes, very much so. So I guess if you approached Mr. Dyson, he'd
say that, yeah, they weren't failures. That was, that was, I was learning and progressing
and improving and innovating very much like the Edison quote. I'll say it again. I've said it before.
And I really hope this is true. It's on the internet. So it's got to be true.
Mr. Edison, when he was inventing the light globe, failed many, many times.
In fact, he had many, many patents that didn't work. And a journalist, this is how the story goes on the internet.
A journalist once said to him, Mr. Edison, how do you feel about failing 10,000 times?
And he said, sir, I did not fail 10,000 times. I found 10,000 things that do not work.
And he definitely said it with that tone of voice. Yes. Yes. It's like Confucius say,
Apple iPod is better than Samsung. Whatever. I don't know.
That's that joke we were quoting people from the past this morning.
So many quotes on the internet where you go, hold on, that person couldn't have said it because that technology didn't exist.
That's right. Socrates was a big fan of the iPhone.
But Edison's approach to failure, that there's no such thing as failure. It's just learning.
Yeah. We should all adopt that. So it's information. It's information.
Yeah. So a setback is a set up for a comeback.
And this is our comeback podcast. It's the first time we tried to record this. It failed.
It didn't fail. It was a technical failure. But are we passing the buck to the technical failure?
Well, neither of us pressed a button that made it fail.
We can say it was such a great podcast, too. Yeah, it was.
I was really impressed with that one. We remember when we found out that it failed.
We looked at each other again. Oh, that was so good, though. That's right.
So, no, what a fantastic segue into our podcast now.
Absolutely. All right. So to summarize, there's no such thing as failure.
No. There's only learning. But a setback. So any time things don't go as you plan,
and you might have labeled it as failure. Reframe. Reframe it into a set up.
Yes. An opportunity for a comeback.
And that comeback will be with you with more skill, more knowledge, more strength.
Yes. More experience. More resilience. More anti-fragility.
That's it. Perfect opportunity. So fail forward fast.
Fail forward fast. There's no such thing as failure. No. No. Okay.
So more dogs. More dogs. Where are you, Bollinger?
Bollinger, we're still waiting. You were the first we called out.
Bose, we're still waiting for you. Lindt. Lindt. Chocolate. We're happy to take...
Oh, we do have. We do have one sponsor for this episode. And it was...
The Car Wash Kid. The Car Wash Kid from Balmain. The local Balmain hero.
Yes. The Car Wash Kid. He goes around washing cars in Balmain.
And he said that he'd sponsor this podcast. Thank you very much to Balmain.
The Car Wash Kid. The Car Wash Kid. Yeah, yeah. So how are we getting paid? Car wash?
That'd be nice. All right. We'll put it out there. That's our first sponsorship.
Our cars will be washed. Awesome. All right. So good to see you.
I saw you this morning. So good to see you. Until next time, Guy.
Until next time. Oh, okay. Is that going to be our sign off? Until next time.
Bye, Guy. Bye, Michelle.
Well, that was fun. That was fun.
You're such a clown. Lady captain.
And who's going to listen to this? Maybe our mums. Thanks, mum.