4 Mindsets for Leading Through Failure

In today’s episode, we’re talking about how great leaders think when things don’t go as planned. How do they take setbacks, mistakes, and failures and use them to create momentum instead of losing their ever loving mind?

Welcome to the Eric Dingler Leadership Podcast. I’m Eric, and I’ve designed this podcast so I can help leaders like you lead better so you can live better.

Now, I’m sure you know that if it hasn’t happened yet, if you lead long enough, you’re going to hit seasons where things just don’t work. I mean, it’s like a train wreck that piles up. Every week in our agency, something doesn’t go right. But there are seasons where it just seems like everything goes wrong. Plans fall apart, revenue dips down, the team is struggling, we’re missing goals. And it’s just everything seems to at one time kind of start to go wrong.

Now, unfortunately, I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit. But in fact, some of the biggest leadership lessons of my life have come from seasons that didn’t go as I had hoped, seasons where things were just kind of crazy and all over the place. And what I’ve learned is this: the difference between leaders who grow through those moments and those who get stuck comes down to how we think. It’s our thoughts. It’s our mindsets. As Jon Acuff says, it’s the soundtracks that we have playing in our minds.

Great leaders just think differently about setbacks. They don’t see or they don’t treat failure as final. They use it as feedback. So today let’s walk through four very specific ways that you and I can think when we hit a wall. You’re going to hit walls. You’re going to hit challenges and problems. So what’s the mindset you should start developing now, before you get there? How do you start practicing responding now, before you get there? Because that’s where the growth really happens, is in preparing for the inevitable.

Now, these ways of thinking, these are going to help us create momentum that’s going to help us continue to move forward during setbacks. So I’ve got four mindsets, four thoughts I want to challenge you to think through.

Number one: you can’t grow what you won’t own.

Every single leader I know is tempted at some point in time to blame circumstances. Especially younger, inexperienced, immature leaders. And we all start there. And that’s okay. We want to blame circumstances. It’s easier to say, well, that client wasn’t a good fit. Or, you know, the timing just wasn’t right for us. It’s easier to come up with these things to say. It’s easier to blame circumstances than to ask the hard question: what part of this do I need to take ownership of? Where was my responsibility in that? Where did I play a part in the train going off the track?

Ownership is where leadership begins. So you have to be willing to own what’s happening if you really want to be a true leader. Now, for me, I know when I start believing that life is happening to me instead of through me and around me, well, then I drift into victim mentality. And victim thinking protects pride, but it destroys progress.

Owning what happened doesn’t mean blaming yourself either. It just means saying, if I can own it, I can lead it. And if I can lead it, I can grow it. I can influence it, I can change it. This is why, as leaders, it’s important to understand that yes, we lead people, but we influence people. We change systems. I can fix a broken system. I can’t fix a broken person. I can connect them to therapists. I can connect them to counselors. I think providing mental health services for your team is something that every good company should do. Because I can’t fix a broken person, I can influence them. I can take ownership over the systems. I can take ownership over my responsibilities. If you can own it, you can lead it. And if you can lead it, you can fix it.

Number two: failure is not a courtroom. It’s a classroom.

That’s right. I stopped talking for a second because I knew that many of you were going to go, whoa, that’s pretty good. What was that again? Failure is not a courtroom. It’s a classroom. You are going to fail. In fact, the more, it’s true. It sounds cliche. It sounds like something people say to cover up things. But failure clears a path for innovation. Failure is a way to learn, for sure.

Now, I don’t intentionally want to fail. We try to limit it as much as we can, and we try to prevent it as much as we can. But failures are going to happen. A fear mindset, though, fear sees failure as final. But growth, confidence, sees failure as feedback. You’re going to have failure, but how are you going to respond to it? How do you choose to see it? Is it a courtroom that you’re going to be condemned in, or is it a classroom where you’re going to grow and develop in?

A fixed mindset treats mistakes like a verdict from the courtroom, proof of what you can’t do. But great leaders, healthy leaders, the type of leader you are, you treat mistakes as tuition already paid. Because here’s just the truth: every setback has something to teach you. So if you’ll stay in the room long enough, well, you’re going to learn from it. So don’t try to just immediately move beyond the failure, cover it up.

For me, in my own business, I’ve paid for some very expensive lessons. I’ve made choices that cost us money, time, and unfortunately, even team trust. But every one of those mistakes became a class I couldn’t have taken anywhere else. Failure isn’t trying to tell you who you are. It’s trying to show you what you need to learn next.

So you’re going to have setbacks. You’re going to have mistakes. You’re going to have failures. All of these things are indicators for growth. They are triggers that should fire the gun that propels you forward. These are things that, no, we don’t want them, but they’re going to happen. So we might as well make the most of them. Some of them we can’t even make the best out of. Some of them, they just are terrible. And I’m not taking away from that. And there are going to be failures that are going to need you to take time to grieve, and your team to grieve. There are going to be failures that are going to result in losses. So don’t take the pendulum too far to the extreme, where you just try to bulldoze through and you don’t have empathy, you don’t have compassion.

Failure is hard. And sometimes you have to sit there with it for a minute. You’ve got to sit there for a bit and just say, wow, this hurts. This hurts. I’m sorry. We’re here. Let’s talk about it. How are you? How are you feeling? What are you doing? Okay, you’ve got to let people process that. But you don’t stay there. It’s not a courtroom. It’s not the final verdict. It’s not over. Now you’re going to lead your team through it. You’re going to point to a picture of a better future and say, this is where we’re going. This is how we’re going to get there. We are going to overcome this. And this is how. So it’s a balanced approach. And I want to encourage you to find that balance, to strike that balance. But the truth is, failure is not a courtroom. It’s a classroom.

Number three: curiosity always outgrows criticism.

Every single time when something goes wrong, I think that for most of us, our natural response is to judge it, to criticize ourselves, to criticize our circumstances, to even criticize others. But curiosity is where growth begins. A healthy leader, an emotionally healthy leader, will pause long enough to ask better questions. Questions like, what can I learn from this? What’s this showing me about how I lead? What needs to change next time?

You see, criticism closes the door to hope. Curiosity opens the door to possibilities. When we just criticize and shut things down, well, that’s it. There’s no hope. We can’t go anywhere. This begins to reinforce the idea of a fixed mindset. But a healthy leader is going to say, hey, listen, let’s figure this out. Let’s dig into this.

All right, because here’s the thing I want you to walk away with from this. If you want to create momentum after a setback, get curious before you get critical. Sure, you’re going to unearth mistakes. There are going to be things you’re going to have to sit down and say, hey, from this day forward, we’re never going to do this again. Hey, from this day forward, that’s not how we’re going to do this. We’re just saying that in the past, that was the past, and that’s how we got to the point where that happened. But from this day forward, we’re not doing this anymore. And here’s what we’re going to do instead. And then you ask your team, how do you see us moving forward from this? How can we respond so that we never get back here again?

Be curious about failure. Be curious about mistakes. Ask questions. Don’t wallow in it. Don’t ask questions that belittle people. Again, leadership is a balance. And too many times, too many people, they want to be the pendulum that’s at one extreme of the arc to the other, because it’s moving, it’s exciting, it’s out there, it’s on the edge. But the problem is, when we go to one extreme or the other, we’ve gone far past balance. And balance is where the pendulum swings through on its way from one extreme to the other. So you want to be balanced in this. You want to have reality. All of this is real. We’ve talked about it. Setbacks hurt. Failure can be devastating. It’s not fun. Be curious, because curiosity always outgrows criticism.

Number four: growth requires the right environment.

Now, hang on here with me. Don’t give up just because you heard that. Listen to the whole explanation. Growth requires the right environment. You can’t grow in isolation, because you’re only going to grow to the level of the conversations you’re having most often. And if you’re isolating yourself, then you’re never going to grow. You just can’t. It’s impossible. Conversations is where leadership growth happens. That’s why you’ll grow to the level of the conversations you have the most often. If you spend time with people who reinforce your limits, well, you’re going to stay limited. But if you surround yourself with people who stretch your thinking, challenge your assumptions, who call out your best, well, your mindset is going to change. Growth is contagious. When you’re around growing people, you have to have the right environment.

As I record this, my family and I, we are in the United States for a season. We’re actually at my parents’ house. I’m standing recording this in what was my bedroom as a teenager. If you saw it now, you would not think this was my room. It is full of many, many, many Boyds Bears and Longaberger baskets. If you know, you know. But my mom took this room over and turned it into a guest room that my wife and I are using right now. Sometimes my brother and his wife use it. It doesn’t really matter. I’m in my childhood home. I guess I’m talking about it so much because I’m traumatized by the change. But in fairness, I haven’t lived in this room for over thirty years, so it’s my parents’ house. They can do what they want with it.

But in the basement of the house, my daughter and I, we’ve set up a little paint studio. We have our palettes up and our oil paints, and we’ve been doing some still lifes down there, because my dad has a small artificial greenhouse, basically, in his basement. He keeps these beautiful flowers alive all year long, all fall, winter, and spring. And he takes cuttings of them and is expanding them out. And then next spring, he’s able to take them all out and put them out back on their patio. And they have this just amazing backyard fire pit patio area that they love to sit out and entertain friends in. But those plants are growing there because he’s created the right environment. And environment is key to this.

And so my question for you is, how are you creating an environment for your growth? Now, we often need help with this. In fact, I needed help with this so often, and enjoy being in these communities, that I’ve now created an environment for leaders to grow in. And the first step for people to come into this environment, to be in the Mastermind that meets once a week (we just met a couple hours ago and had a fantastic conversation), if this is something you’d be interested in, it’s not for everybody. It’s a bit of an exclusive club, to just be honest, because I want to be careful of the environment I’m spending time in. But the first step for this, and I’d love to have a conversation with you about it, is to start with a coaching call. Because, honestly, everybody in the group needs to be coachable. So it’s best to get started with a coaching call. It’s a complimentary coaching call. Just you and me spend a little time together. And that’s the first step. And so I would love to invite you to check that out. Go to ericdingler.com/call and schedule a complimentary twenty five minute coaching call, and let’s get to know each other a little bit. All right, so head on over to ericdingler.com/call.

So let’s review four things I shared with you. Mindsets you need to have. You need to write these down. You need to be looking at these. You need to be thinking about these, because this is how a healthy leader, a great leader, turns mistakes, failure, setbacks. This is how they grow personally through it. They grow their team through it. They grow their company through it. And they come out on the other side. Sure, scarred. I’m not downplaying it. It hurts. It sucks. But if you want the results, you’ve got to pay the price. And every leader I know has scars. And so you’re going to have scars. Just the way it is. But how you grow through all of this, there are four things we talked about.

Number one, you can’t grow what you won’t own. Just take the responsibility. Just be an adult about it and own it. Number two, failure is not a courtroom. It’s a classroom. I repeat this one to myself, my team, and my kids quite often. Number three, curiosity always outgrows criticism. And number four, growth requires the right environment.

Now, the difference between leaders who get stuck and leaders who grow isn’t talent. It’s their mindset. It’s how they think. Because how you think is how you respond.

Well, you’ve made it to this point, which tells me you’ve got a little something out of this, or you’re listening to this to help you fall asleep. I don’t know which one. But you’ve made it to this point, which, come on, if you’ve made it to this point, it’s time to leave a review. It’s time to share the episode with someone. It’s time to leave a Spotify comment. Whatever your favorite platform is that you do podcasts on, do the thing that it has set up to do. You’ve made it this far, you might as well do it. This is what helps the podcast be found and discovered by others. It’s the only payment I’m asking for from you, is that you just leave a review, subscribe, Spotify.