Have you ever faced a moment of failure that left you stumbling for a path forward? I'm Colby Morris, your guide through the quagmire that every leader inevitably encounters. Today's session is raw and real; it's about confronting the fact that failure is a part of leadership. We're peeling back the layers to reveal the core steps necessary to bounce back stronger and more prepared. From the intimate process of owning up to your mistakes to the power of an after-action review, I'm sharing insights that transform setbacks into success.
Grab your notebooks, leaders, because we're tackling the tough conversations head-on. You'll learn how to admit failures to yourself and then to your team with authenticity and how this vulnerability can actually bolster your leadership. I'll walk you through the after-action review process, an invaluable tool in assessing what went awry and how to prevent it next time. No leader is immune to the occasional fall, but with the strategies discussed in today's episode, you'll be equipped to rise again with unmatched resilience and wisdom. Ready to turn your leadership hurdles into triumphs? Then let's get started.
Have you ever faced a moment of failure that left you stumbling for a path forward? I'm Colby Morris, your guide through the quagmire that every leader inevitably encounters. Today's session is raw and real; it's about confronting the fact that failure is a part of leadership. We're peeling back the layers to reveal the core steps necessary to bounce back stronger and more prepared. From the intimate process of owning up to your mistakes to the power of an after-action review, I'm sharing insights that transform setbacks into success.
Grab your notebooks, leaders, because we're tackling the tough conversations head-on. You'll learn how to admit failures to yourself and then to your team with authenticity and how this vulnerability can actually bolster your leadership. I'll walk you through the after-action review process, an invaluable tool in assessing what went awry and how to prevent it next time. No leader is immune to the occasional fall, but with the strategies discussed in today's episode, you'll be equipped to rise again with unmatched resilience and wisdom. Ready to turn your leadership hurdles into triumphs? Then let's get started.
Welcome to Things Leaders Do, the podcast that uncovers the secrets of becoming an extraordinary leader. If you're a leader who's constantly seeking growth, inspiration and tangible ways to level up your leadership, then you've come to the right place. Remember, the world needs exceptional leaders, and that leader is you. Now here's your host, colby Morris.
Speaker 2:
Hey leaders, welcome back to the TOD podcast. This is your host, colby, and I am really excited that you joined us today. I feel like today's topic is one that leaders don't like to talk about, but we'll get to that in a minute. First, I want to thank everybody who's been reaching out. If you haven't already, you can connect with me anytime. Go over to my LinkedIn page. My link is in the show notes. Just click on that. It'll take you directly to my profile. Feel free to connect there. Or you can go over to the Instagram page Things Leaders Do and connect with me there. I'd love to have a chat with you either way, and I've had some pretty amazing discussions over the last couple weeks Shout out to my friends there in New York and it's been a really interesting past couple weeks with all the people I've had the opportunity to talk to, to connect with, discuss leadership and walk through some of their issues with them, and it's been good. So let's get to today's topic.
Speaker 2:
Again, I said, a lot of people don't like to talk about this, especially leaders, but we need to know what to do when leaders fail. I know that doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but if you're a new leader. You need to know this. It's not if it's when, as a leader, you will fail. You have to realize you are an imperfect person. You are leading imperfect people. There's a lot of moving parts to what you do, and so there is always an opportunity that something is not going to go right. There's an opportunity for something to go wrong that maybe you didn't foresee, maybe you didn't plan for, maybe you should have seen it, but a lot of the seasoned leaders will tell you it's going to happen, and it's more in how you respond to it than it is anything else, because when you mess up, you got to bounce back, and so we're gonna look a little bit at this and I'm gonna walk you through some things to really help you get over it. And If you haven't failed yet you know you're still new to leadership man I'd really encourage you to take some notes today, because when it happens, you're gonna want something to fall back on.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so here are the steps I want you to dig. I came up with three of them today. The first one is you need to admit it to yourself first, and then your team second. Now that may seem a little Obvious, and to some people it may seem counterintuitive, especially if you are a part of the extreme ownership mindset, but our first response to failure as a human is Generally to deflect it or deny it or Not own it. So that's why I say we have to admit it to ourself first. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:
You have to really look at yourself and and see when it went wrong. You have to realize that you made the mistake. You have to own it and then you have to publicly own it. See, you've got to dig down deep inside you and it's hard asking questions what could I've done? Where did I go wrong? Did I really screw up with this avoidable? You have to find the places where you could have done something differently, even if somebody else on on your team made them a state. Then you're gonna have to look at it and wonder did I not train that person? Did I not communicate the expectations enough? What? What could I have done better with that person? Or If a process didn't work, why didn't it work? Did you not see the single point of failure? You have to own it, period, all right.
Speaker 2:
The second step is I want you to do an after-action review. An after-action review. You have to see where things went wrong, and If you haven't Been a part of any kind of after-action review or if that's a foreign term to you, it's pretty much what it sounds like and there are all kinds of different versions of it out there. One of my favorite podcasts, the order of man with Ryan Mickler, they they go through a lot of the after-action reviews, but I I'm gonna walk you through just the basic pieces of an after-action review and you know basically how you work through it. So I basically do a couple boxes on the left, a couple boxes on the right, boxes on the left or my questions, boxes on the right. Are the answers. Okay, so, like a Two-column table, more or less All right, the very first question I ask is what happened?
Speaker 2:
What happened? What were the costs, the people involved, the event, the timeline, what happened? Okay. So, and then two, what was intended to happen? What were the original objectives? What were the targets or the expectations that you had? Okay, what were the key milestones and who were those owners of those key milestones? Okay, and the next question is what can be learned? What? What lessons can be learned from this event? How does this? How does this relate to people, processes, the tools, the methods, those kind of things. And then number four what should be done next time? In other words, are changes around the processes or the training, skills, resources, anything like that, or any changes required of those things. So, if you go up to the very first one, you know, actually we'll look at.
Speaker 2:
The first two is what happened, what was intended to happen. So, if you have a project that you're working on, obviously what was intended to happen is the final goal, that's the project we intended to finish this week under our labor hours. Okay, but what really happened? Well, two people went over in labor hours. We ran 22 hours overtime. That put us over budget and we didn't meet the target. Okay, then.
Speaker 2:
Then number three what can be learned? What lessons were learned from this event? Okay, how does it relate to people and processes? Okay, now you got to dig a little deeper. Okay, what? Why did we go over and overtime? Why were these two people able to work so much overtime?
Speaker 2:
Who broke down in the communication here? Who's responsible for that? Was it a manager who wasn't managing hours? Was it employees that didn't clock in and out on time? Was it a custom request that wasn't communicated up the chain. So we knew that they were waiting for something. Okay, you have to dig down and learn about that. And then again, number four what should be done next time? That's gonna all depend on what you learned out of the other one, right? So if a manager did not manage their overtime that's what we learned in number three then what should be done next time? That manager needs to manage overtime better, but also I, as their leader, need to have a good idea of where they are towards the end of the week. I can check payroll, I can put the ownership of that on them and say, hey, every Thursday, I want you all to send me a payroll report of where you are on hours, what you're predicting for Friday and the weekend and how you're gonna manage the overtime. Okay, but you're gonna have to put some changes around those processes if there was a failure. Okay, does that make sense? I hope so, because you can't answer me right now.
Speaker 2:
All right, and then we're gonna get to our third step, and this is I want you to involve your team members. Okay, and maybe you did it the first part, but when you're looking at what went wrong, you're looking at this failure. This is going to require you to be vulnerable. Okay, but you need to bring your team in and find out how this could have gone better. Okay, you need to ask some questions. Did anyone see a flaw in the plan that I came up with? Did someone see it and just didn't say anything? Okay, ask them. How could have been handled better. Okay, now let me.
Speaker 2:
Let me backtrack just a little bit here. I said you need to be vulnerable, but in this discussion, there has to be trust. There has to be trust. You have to have a foundation of trust to have a great conversation here, because if you don't, they're not gonna open up to you, they're not gonna tell you. Okay, and if you lead in a way where there's not trust built in, this conversation won't happen anyway, because they're not going to want to tell you because they don't trust you. If they say yeah, I saw that, you know no one was managing the payroll system. Somebody should have done that. I don't want them to feel like I'm going to punish them because they didn't say anything. I'm going to let them know oh man, that's great, that's a good point. How can we fix that next time? Thank you, john, for pointing that out. I need to reward them for speaking up and expect that trust within the relationship to be what allows them to speak their mind.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so ask them how could this have been handled better? Was there a particular piece of this that someone would have wanted to handle Like? Is this within your strength? Is this something that someone else or someone here would have wanted to manage this piece of something? Let's find out if this is in their strengths, or is the person responsible? Is that one of their weaknesses? You have to find people's strengths and weaknesses on your team and make sure they're used appropriately. Okay, ask the questions, but also be real. Okay, this is a learning experience. You have to be authentic with them. You're going to try to learn from this failure.
Speaker 2:
John Maxwell one of my favorite leadership gurus you've heard me mention him a lot of thousands of times, probably John Maxwell said sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. Yeah, so true. Every failure has to be an opportunity to learn from what the failure taught you, because if you don't, you're destined to repeat it. Number one, but two, you don't get any sharper, you don't get any better by not learning from your mistakes. Okay, so sometimes, yes, you're going to win, but sometimes you're unfortunately going to have to learn from when you failed. I know that's not a great politically correct type statement these days, but all of us are in the workplace. I'd imagine.
Speaker 2:
Whether you're a new leader, a seasoned leader, middle of the pack, middle manager, regional manager, district manager, it doesn't matter. You're going to fail. More than that, you're going to have people on your team that fail and you still have to own it. You still have to take that piece of it. You still have to figure out how it could have been done better. So before you fly off the handle and start blaming and pointing fingers and all that kind of stuff, you need to check within yourself and figure out where things went wrong and then do your after action review. I can't tell you how many lessons I've learned from doing a stinkin' after action review. It's made my life so much easier. All right, everybody, I appreciate your time today. I know it's a short one, but that's how I like to keep these things. So I'll give you some tools to work with so you can go out there and be a better leader faster. Again, my goal is to give you the tools and the knowledge to go out there and be a better leader. I want you to win, but, more importantly, when you fail, I want you to learn from it.
Speaker 2:
Please do me a favor, if you are getting value from this podcast. I'm going to ask two favors of you. I'm going to ask number one just take a screenshot and share it on your social media right now. Just a quick screenshot. Hey, this is something I'm listening to Leaders out there. I think you would enjoy it. Something like that. You can tag me if you want. And two, if you don't mind, would you rate and review the show? Or at least just click the stars? If you don't want to leave a review, that's fine, but I'm really trying to help as many leaders as I can. The more you can help me out, the more I appreciate that it's doing the good work, trying to help leaders. So go out there, continue to lead, realize that failure is not fatal. You're going to learn from it, and you know why? Because those are the things that leaders do.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to Things Leaders Do. If you're looking for more tips on how to be a better leader, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and listen to next week's episode. Until next time, keep working on being a better leader by doing the things that leaders do.
