December 4, 2025 • 27 mins
Failure happens to all of us.
In this episode, we'll delve into the often-feared concept of failure and discover its hidden potential for growth and learning.
We'll explore the essential role of mindset, how to differentiate between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, and uncover sneaky signs that a fixed mindset holding you back in both your personal and professional life.
Embrace a fresh perspective on failure, seeing it not as a setback, but as a vital stepping stone to success.
Come learn to approach challenges with curiosity, openness to new experiences, and resilience against setbacks. This episode also highlights the crucial distinction between your self-worth and your failures, empowering you to define your worth independently of your setbacks. By the end, you'll be equipped to view failures as valuable experiments and embrace change as a key driver of growth.
Takeaways for You:
- Understand how shifting your view of failure can unlock opportunities for learning and growth.
- Learn to identify and overcome your limitations using curiosity.
- Recognize the symptoms of a fixed mindset and how they might be impeding your progress.
- Discover how to separate your self-worth from your failures, establishing a resilient sense of self.
- Transform your approach to challenges, viewing failure as an experimental learning opportunity and change as a catalyst for personal and professional growth.
OTHER LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Mindset - Carol Dweck
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's talk failure Loaded word huh, lot of anxiety.
It's a huge fear that a lot ofus carry around all the time
like, oh my God, am I gonna failat something?
It sounds like the worst thingin the world, and failure can be
different things for differentpeople.
For some it's losing a job.
For others it's their marriageending.
(00:21):
For others it's losing a bigclient.
There are all sorts ofdifferent things that we can
define.
Oh, I failed.
And it's important to know whatwe consider to be failures and
to really take a good look atthat.
I'm Rachel Provan, and intoday's episode I'm gonna share
with you a new way to thinkabout failure that will change
your life if you let it.
(00:42):
That's all coming up next righthere on Psychology of Customer
Success.
Stay tuned Humans don't thinkor behave like computers.
You can't just run a command andget them to do what you want
them to do, so why are you stillbasing your CS strategy based
solely on logic?
I'm Rachel Provan, csleadership coach, award-winning
(01:04):
CS strategist and certifiedpsych nerd.
I teach CS leaders how to buildand scale world-class CS
departments using a combinationof strategy, leadership and
mindset, using my secret weapon,psychology.
Come join me every Wednesdayfor Psychology of Customer
Success, where we'll dive intowhy people do the things they do
, what motivates them and theeffect that has on your CS
(01:27):
strategy, team dynamics andexecutive presence.
We'll dig into subjects likethe helper personality, how
thought errors like it's justeasier if I do it keep your
department stuck in reactivemode, and how cognitive bias can
really screw up your customerjourney Plus much more.
Make sure to subscribe on AppleSpotify or wherever you listen
(01:47):
to podcasts and make sure toshare it with your CS bestie.
Talk soon and here's to yoursuccess.
So the thing that causes failureis the way you look at the
world and yourself.
It's not a matter of oh, youscrewed up and now you're a
failure, this was a failure.
(02:09):
It all really comes down tomindset.
So just a quick view of mindset, just like a quick one-on-one.
What I'm talking about when Italk about mindset because it
can be a squishy term it'sbasically a set of beliefs that
shape how you make sense of theworld and yourself in it.
It influences how you feel,think and how you behave in any
(02:33):
given situation, and itinfluences what you think is
true.
Now, carol Dweck wrote a reallyamazing book on mindset and she
proposed that there were two,two different kinds of mindsets.
There's a fixed mindset and agrowth mindset.
With a fixed mindset, thingsare the way they are, like your
(02:55):
IQ is this, so you're a genius,you have fixed abilities, this
person's really good at math,this person's bad at math,
whereas a growth mindset is thatthings can change, that failure
isn't permanent, it's anopportunity to learn.
And it's one of those thingswhere, when you first hear about
, you're like oh, I have agrowth mindset, and it reminds
(03:17):
me of those magazine quizzesthat I used to take when I was a
teenager or like preteen orwhatever, and it was always so
obvious what the quote unquoteanswer was that it was almost
laughable that anyone would pickthe other options because it
makes you seem like an idiot.
Who's gonna be like?
Yes, I have a fixed mindset, Iam very close-minded.
(03:39):
It's just not how we think ofourselves, but I tend to believe
that we could be a little bitof both.
There are areas where we have afixed mindset and areas where
we have a growth mindset, andit's our job to work on the ones
where we're fixed, being awarethat this is even something you
(03:59):
can work on and being aware thathaving a limiting belief that
you can't do something isoptional, that it's not a fact.
So just knowing that in thefirst place can be a really
great place to start.
Now, when I hear about fixedmindset, it's what comes to me
(04:25):
and this isn't really part ofthe book is that it's a mindset
that's based in fear, because ifyou say I'm bad at this, I
can't change this is how it is,I'm bad at math, then you're
less likely to have to go and doit.
You're less likely todisappoint people.
You're trying to take the stingout of whatever may happen.
(04:45):
So you're basically putting thekibosh, calling the game on.
I'm not even going to try that,because it didn't work for me
before, or I'm afraid of what'sgoing to happen, or people going
to laugh at me is what a lot ofit comes down to, unfortunately
, a lot of the time.
So when you have a fixedmindset, what I'm going to do
(05:08):
here is because it's so clearwhat answer we should pick.
I'm going to call out someexamples that I see a lot in
customer success and customersuccess leadership that are
symptoms of a fixed mindset, andcertainly some that I've had as
well, because, as much as I'dlike to think I am perfect.
We know this is not the case.
(05:28):
When you have a fixed mindset,you have a tendency to avoid
things that you're not certainthat you can have a positive
outcome on.
You might avoid challenges dueto a perceived threat.
You might not go out for a jobwhere you don't take every
single box on the jobdescription because, oh, I'm not
(05:49):
qualified, whereas maybe youare.
Plenty of people do.
Plenty of people are willing totry that.
Say what's the worst that couldhappen.
One where I see the avoiding ofchallenges in customer success
just from the personality welike to be nice, et cetera is
that of disciplining an employeeor giving an employee negative
(06:11):
feedback.
We really don't like to do thisand, rather than seeing it as a
chance for the employee to grow, we tend to back into fear and
think what's going to happen tome?
How is this going to be a badsituation for me?
Are they going to get mad?
Are they going to yell at me?
Are they going to be difficultto work with?
Which is going to impact myresults?
(06:32):
It's very self-focused and,again, it's rooted in fear, and
we don't even tend to be thatstraightforward about it.
So, instead of just saying I'mnot going to discipline that
employee because I don't like it, we say we put it off.
We say today is not a good daybecause they have that really
(06:54):
important call and I don't wantto throw them off their game.
Or today's not a good day forme because I have back-to-back
meetings.
There's never a good day todiscipline an employee.
It's the fear of what theresults are going to be.
Now.
That's avoidance of challenges.
Fear of failure is just youcan't fail if you don't play the
game.
You can't fail if you don't try.
(07:15):
So you tend to avoid risks, butthe thing is that prevents
innovation.
You can't innovate, you can'tcome up with the great next new
thing if you're unwilling tofall on your face now and again.
That's something I'vedefinitely had to come to terms
with as I've transitioned out ofjust being in corporate in
(07:38):
startups and being in the publiceye.
More People are going to saythings about me and I've had to
kind of get over that, butbefore I had that in such a
confronting way, it definitelyimpacted what I did in
Pinesights 2020.
But I can see now theopportunities that I missed
(07:59):
based on worrying about whatpeople would say, worrying about
what people would think.
And in these cases you mightnot speak up in a meeting.
If you are the most juniorperson there, you might not want
to try something new in case itdoesn't work out.
Versus if you hear people saylike, oh well, we've always done
it this way, don't fix whatisn't broken.
(08:20):
That is all symptoms of a fixedmindset in that particular
situation.
The others are resistance tochange, which I think we all
have to a degree, because it'sseen as a threat, as an
existential threat to our brains.
Oh, I've kept alive so far inthese situations that I'm used
(08:42):
to.
I don't know if I will inanother situation.
And again, that's our veryprimitive brain that's primarily
concerned with keeping us alive.
It's not focused on, oh, theworst that could happen is
someone laughs at me.
It feels like the worst thingthat could happen is, oh, I get
fired, I can't find another job,I can't pay my rent and I end
(09:03):
up living under a bridge andthen we die.
Your brain will take it.
That could, maybe not to thedeath point, but your brain goes
there quickly, because that'sstill a holdover from evolution
and again served us very well.
We're still here, but it is not.
It's something that we cancontinue to evolve in our own
minds.
It makes us able to do more andlive a better life.
(09:28):
If we can start to question thatresistance to change, you may
also find if you have a fixedmindset, you might also limit
your willingness to learn andadapt.
Let's say, all of a sudden yourdepartment has to handle sales.
Now you're responsible forupsell cross-sell.
There was a lot of resistancewhen that started happening in
(09:49):
CS.
It's not my job, I don't likethat, I don't want to do that,
it's not who I am, and those area lot of assumptions, whereas
really I think sales can be aservice, it can be
heart-centered.
But again, it's that fear, it'sthat fixed mindset.
And finally, taking criticismpersonally, which I am the queen
(10:10):
of, I've gotten better about it, but I definitely.
If someone was like feedback isa gift, I would always want to
say great, did you keep thereceipt?
Because I'd like to send itback.
I didn't ask for this gift.
The fact is, most of the time,people are not meaning to insult
you.
They're trying to help you.
They're trying to help you bebetter.
(10:31):
And you'll never get better ifyou don't understand the areas
where you might need to the nexttime you get a criticism.
What if that piece ofinformation, what if that piece
of feedback wasn't about you?
What if it didn't mean anythingabout you?
What if it just meant thismight be a different way to try
(10:54):
something, that there was novalue judgment involved, more of
a science experiment.
Oh, that particular experimentdidn't work the way you might
have wanted it to.
Here's what you might want totry and say, and we'll be
getting into that a little bitmore in a few minutes.
With a fixed mindset, you'renever going to get any better
and your results will alwaysstay the same or get worse,
(11:16):
because the world is alwayschanging and evolving.
So you're never going to beable to just keep doing the same
old things that have worked andhave them continue to work.
We've seen that with differentlevels of the SaaS economy.
We're going to see that with AI, that it's going to be
important that we're able toroll with the punches and
approach it with a growthmindset.
(11:38):
Now, growth mindset?
It just doesn't sound veryrelatable to me, same way that
fixed mindset doesn't soundrelatable to me.
What strikes me as moreresonant and makes me more open
to it is, rather than fear,which is the fixed mindset.
How can I approach this withcuriosity?
(11:59):
So growth mindset is justcurious.
It's basically the idea thatyou're always going to be
learning, you're going to beeager to learn and improve your
strategy and that you're goingto persist in the face of
difficulties.
And this is particularly why Iwant to talk about this right
now, because it's been a toughtime for CS in the past year and
(12:22):
a half and I see how frustratedpeople are getting and I am
really impressed with the levelof stick-to-itiveness that a lot
of people have.
But this is just, in anotherway, a reminder of whenever you
get one of those things thatfeels like it just knocks the
wind out of you, knocks you down.
(12:43):
You can let that be that, youcan let that be a failure, or
you can say, okay, but what didI learn?
What would I do differentlynext time?
If a situation is like that,where you've learned and you
know how to do somethingdifferently and improve your
results, that's not a failure.
(13:03):
So if you're feeling stuck, ifyou're in a fixed mindset the
things I brought up at thebeginning, what you consider to
be failure losing a job, losinga big client, losing an employee
, your marriage, breaking upmaking what you used to make.
Those are all just results.
(13:50):
They may not be results youlike, but that's all they are.
They're data points.
It's what you're deciding thatthose data points mean about you
as a person.
That's the problem that you'redeciding that they have any
indication of how valuable youare, how lovable you are, how
worthy you are.
(14:11):
But here's the good news and thebad news.
No one gets to decide that butyou.
No matter what anyone else says, that is all just thoughts and
words in their brain.
It doesn't mean everyone thinksthat about you and it doesn't
get to dictate anything aboutyou.
Only you get to decide whatyour worth is, and there is no
(14:34):
reason in the world to decidethat you're worth nothing.
That's a self-fulfillingprophecy.
If you decide I'm worthless, I'mthe worst, you're not gonna go
out there and make your lifebetter and you're not gonna make
other people's lives better.
If you decide you're worthlessbecause you've done something
objectively bad, you've hurtpeople, you can sit there and be
(14:55):
worthless and say, oh whoa isme and I suck.
Or you can go out there andstart to turn it around and make
amends and change things and dobetter next time.
It doesn't have to be set instone.
That's where you can have thatgrowth mindset of well, what now
?
We all get bad results.
Sometimes we're human, we workwith the information we have and
(15:20):
we make the best decisions wecan at the time, and sometimes
we choose wrong, oops.
Not only is failure extremelynormal, but it is a huge asset,
if you allow it to be.
So what I like to do is and ittakes me a second, I'm not
perfect here but when somethingis hard and things don't go the
(15:42):
way I want them to and I feellike, wow, I had huge
expectations for this.
I thought it was gonna go oneway and that crashed and burned
and I suck.
It did not work out.
I thought I was gonna do greatand now I suck, try and detach
and think of everything as ascience experiment.
Now scientists look ateverything as they have a
(16:05):
hypothesis which is just hey, Ihave a thought, I think this
might work, and they perform anexperiment.
Okay, so I'm gonna try it outand see if I'm right or wrong,
and then from that they get aresult.
So what if scientists decidedthat they were a failure the
first time?
They didn't get the result theyintended?
We'd all be stuck back in thehouse with being scared of COVID
(16:27):
or probably would have diedfrom an ear infection when we
were nine months old orsomething.
With everything you try, youeither get the result you wanted
or you get the lesson youneeded.
Every failure is a data pointthat says, oh, that experiment
didn't work.
Let's try and figure out why.
And when we figure out why,that's going to give us an idea
(16:49):
of what might work better.
There's a I think it's EECummings saying that's ever
tried, ever failed, no matter,try again, fail again, fail
better.
And that's all you have to bewilling to do to understand that
a failure isn't necessarily theend.
It's just a what now?
(17:10):
What next?
What did I learn and how can Itry again with this information
and not do the exact same thingover and over?
Because if you don't take thetime to stop and analyze that,
you're likely to do the samething over and over, expecting a
different result, and peoplelike to say that's the
(17:32):
definition of insanity.
It's also a natural way to be,we hear if at first you don't
succeed, try again.
It should be to try somethingelse, try something slightly
different.
It's really when you give intofear that you keep making those
same mistakes.
And look, cs can be a hard jobAt this moment.
(17:53):
A lot of people are out of work.
Some have been laid off twicein 12 months, nine months.
And I don't care what a greattalk I give you.
I understand that's not gonnafeel great, it's not gonna feel
like an opportunity.
But if you can look at it morelike this is a puzzle for me to
solve, rather than all thesethings are happening to me.
(18:14):
It can be a bit of a stretch tosay they're happening for you,
but I don't quite go that far.
But can you look at it that way?
Can you say because here's thething if you keep trying
different things, eventuallyyou're gonna hit on the right
thing.
Your success is inevitable solong as you just keep trying and
improving and getting a littlebit better each time.
(18:35):
It's just science, it's justdata, it's throwing stuff at the
wall and seeing what sticks.
And the other way to look at it,the other way to understand how
failure is so important, is wedon't grow when everything's
great.
We have a tendency to just keepwith the status quo, because
(18:58):
why wouldn't we?
Things are going great.
I don't wanna mess it up.
It's when, all of a sudden,what used to work doesn't work
anymore that we have to figuresomething else out.
And to do that, you have to dosomething you've never done
before, think a way you've neverthought before, and that's
growth.
Not just a growth mindset, butthat's you growing as a person.
(19:19):
That's your next evolution.
Often, when we keep hitting ourhead against the same challenge
, it's because we've hit uponsomething that is life's giving
us.
This thing of this is what's inyour way.
It's time to reach your nextevolution.
It's time to level up.
This is what you're gonna haveto solve.
To do that Sometimes I like to.
(19:42):
If someone's really having ahard time and they feel like
everything is falling apart, Iwill tell them about something
that my friend and I call beingin the goo.
Basically, if you think about acaterpillar, a caterpillar
turns into a butterfly, but theydon't just go in for a nice
little nap and merge allbeautiful.
It's not like the very hungrycaterpillar like eat some nice
(20:05):
snacks, take a nap.
Here you are.
A caterpillar actually is kindof gross.
It digests its own body.
So, yeah, basically, at onepoint it basically bites its own
head off.
I don't really understand it,but it digests its entire body
and at one point inside thechrysalis, it's just this green
goo.
It completely breaks down inorder to be able to reformulate
(20:29):
its cells to become what's next?
And a caterpillar in thatmoment doesn't know.
Oh cool, I'm becoming abutterfly.
Now they're like holy crap, I'mdying.
This is the most terrifyingthing that has ever happened to
anyone.
I'm turning into goo.
So that's what's happening asyou're leveling up.
You're in the goo, and sometimesmy friend and I will be oh,
(20:51):
how's it go?
Oh, I'm in the goo today, whereit's just everything is a mess.
I don't know what to do next.
Everything has fallen apart.
That's the goo period, becausethat's when you're figuring out
how you have to transform.
It's a transformative processand that's why setbacks often
act as a slingshot.
(21:11):
It's inevitable.
There's no way around it.
Failure is only a sign thatit's time to level up.
It's time to try somethingdifferent.
There's this saying that firstGod throws a rock, then a pebble
, then a boulder, and that'sbasically to indicate that God,
universe whatever you want tobelieve in life, whatever is
(21:34):
trying to teach you lessons toget you to your next level.
And sometimes you're doingsomething that isn't serving you
, and the first time thathappens you get a pebble, so it
hurt a little bit Like thatwasn't great.
But okay, I'm gonna keep going.
I'm gonna go on my merry wayand continue exactly what I've
been doing, and the next timeGod throws a rock, that hurt
(21:57):
more.
But if you keep going and keepdoing the same thing, that is
getting you hit with rocks.
Eventually you get a boulder.
And for some people, myselfincluded, sometimes you got to
get the boulder before you'rewilling to accept that it's time
for a change.
And it doesn't have to be like,oh, I'm in the wrong line of
(22:18):
work, it might just be.
I need help.
I need to ask someone who has adifferent perspective do you
see something I'm doing wronghere?
Because I just can't see it?
And look, I would not have abusiness without a good, a
couple good, solid boulders here.
I wouldn't have the marriageand family I do without some
(22:41):
tough lessons in my dating life.
I did a lot of things wrong andfixed them, started doing
different things that workedbetter, and you know what?
I wouldn't be a failure if Ididn't have those things either.
They happen to be my favoritethings in my life right now, but
I got it wrong a lot and that'shonestly why I teach now, why I
(23:04):
teach CS strategy, why I teachmindset.
Because if you can take ashortcut, if you can get one
shortcut here where you don'thave to be hit by all the rocks
and can learn things faster thanI did, that is my hope for you,
because I learned a ton over,you know, 17 years in CS, but it
(23:24):
was not an easy climb.
There were a lot of mistakes.
So it is okay to look atsomebody's roadmap and say I'm
going to try that you may needto adjust a little for your
particular landscape, but youdon't always have to figure it
out on your own.
Growth comes from being souncomfortable.
You have to figure it out andthat's why everyone gets to the
(23:48):
high points in their life andthey say you know what?
I wouldn't be here if I didn'tgo through this, this and this
crappy thing.
So now I get it.
Why I had to go through thosethings?
That is the view from the topof the mountain and you know
it's not like there's an end.
You don't get to the top oflife and, yeah, I win life, but
(24:09):
you do level up.
It's a continuation oflearnings and when you're in
that process it sucks, but italso means you're on your way.
This is what makes it happentrying something different.
And as a final button on this tomake this actionable, look at
an area at work where you don'tlike the results you've gotten
(24:30):
so far.
What can you do differently?
Make it a science experiment.
It's okay if you don'timmediately know what to do
differently, but brainstorm,talk to other people, use chat,
gpt, ask others what they'vedone.
You don't have to wait untilyou're at rock bottom to try
(24:50):
something new, to changedirections, if you know what
you're doing isn't working.
What's the worst thing thatcould happen by changing?
Actually, don't answer that.
Instead of thinking that, thinkwhat's the best thing that
could happen.
It's not a question we askourselves often enough.
We're always worried about therisks, and that's fair.
We need to think critically,but often we don't consider what
(25:13):
the benefits of something newor something hard or something
scary could be, because we'reonly concerned with you know the
scary parts or what could gowrong.
So that's just the other pieceof information I'd like to leave
you with what's the best thatcould happen?
So thanks so much for joiningus today for another episode of
Psychology of Customer Success.
(25:35):
If you want to level up your CSleadership strategy and mindset,
you can go to provansuccesscomTo get on the early notification
list for Customer SuccessLeadership Academy, which will
be relaunching in February.
So it's getting close againRight now.
We're in there.
We're making progress with ouramazing current cohort.
(25:57):
They're having all sorts ofwins every day, but it'll be
time again soon for new peopleto come in and learn and level
up.
And if you'd like to work withme on things like this as well
as strategy, because when youcombine mindset like this with
the right strategy, that's whenyou really get fireworks, that's
(26:18):
when you get real change, notwhen you just have an idea of
what you should be doing.
Oh, this is a good strategy,but you're not able to put it in
action because of your limitingthoughts, you're limiting
actions, you're I'm too busy,I'm too stressed.
This is more important than mywork.
Those are all things that wework on and that's why I talk
(26:39):
about them here, because I don'tthink people talk enough about
sort of the intangibles that getin the way of our success.
Again, thank you for joining us.
If you enjoyed this, definitelygive us five stars on iTunes.
That really helps.
And if you want to say hi, comefind me on LinkedIn.
(27:00):
We have a podcast page so youcan search for Psychology of
Customer Success page on there.
Come say hi to me, network withother people and that's it.
So until next time, take careof yourself, get some rest and
don't forget to share thisepisode with your CS Bestie.
Talk soon, and here's to yoursuccess.
Let's talk failure Loaded word huh, lot of anxiety.
It's a huge fear that a lot ofus carry around all the time
like, oh my God, am I gonna failat something?
It sounds like the worst thingin the world, and failure can be
different things for differentpeople.
For some it's losing a job.
For others it's their marriageending.
(00:21):
For others it's losing a bigclient.
There are all sorts ofdifferent things that we can
define.
Oh, I failed.
And it's important to know whatwe consider to be failures and
to really take a good look atthat.
I'm Rachel Provan, and intoday's episode I'm gonna share
with you a new way to thinkabout failure that will change
your life if you let it.
(00:42):
That's all coming up next righthere on Psychology of Customer
Success.
Stay tuned Humans don't thinkor behave like computers.
You can't just run a command andget them to do what you want
them to do, so why are you stillbasing your CS strategy based
solely on logic?
I'm Rachel Provan, csleadership coach, award-winning
(01:04):
CS strategist and certifiedpsych nerd.
I teach CS leaders how to buildand scale world-class CS
departments using a combinationof strategy, leadership and
mindset, using my secret weapon,psychology.
Come join me every Wednesdayfor Psychology of Customer
Success, where we'll dive intowhy people do the things they do
, what motivates them and theeffect that has on your CS
(01:27):
strategy, team dynamics andexecutive presence.
We'll dig into subjects likethe helper personality, how
thought errors like it's justeasier if I do it keep your
department stuck in reactivemode, and how cognitive bias can
really screw up your customerjourney Plus much more.
Make sure to subscribe on AppleSpotify or wherever you listen
(01:47):
to podcasts and make sure toshare it with your CS bestie.
Talk soon and here's to yoursuccess.
So the thing that causes failureis the way you look at the
world and yourself.
It's not a matter of oh, youscrewed up and now you're a
failure, this was a failure.
(02:09):
It all really comes down tomindset.
So just a quick view of mindset, just like a quick one-on-one.
What I'm talking about when Italk about mindset because it
can be a squishy term it'sbasically a set of beliefs that
shape how you make sense of theworld and yourself in it.
It influences how you feel,think and how you behave in any
(02:33):
given situation, and itinfluences what you think is
true.
Now, carol Dweck wrote a reallyamazing book on mindset and she
proposed that there were two,two different kinds of mindsets.
There's a fixed mindset and agrowth mindset.
With a fixed mindset, thingsare the way they are, like your
(02:55):
IQ is this, so you're a genius,you have fixed abilities, this
person's really good at math,this person's bad at math,
whereas a growth mindset is thatthings can change, that failure
isn't permanent, it's anopportunity to learn.
And it's one of those thingswhere, when you first hear about
, you're like oh, I have agrowth mindset, and it reminds
(03:17):
me of those magazine quizzesthat I used to take when I was a
teenager or like preteen orwhatever, and it was always so
obvious what the quote unquoteanswer was that it was almost
laughable that anyone would pickthe other options because it
makes you seem like an idiot.
Who's gonna be like?
Yes, I have a fixed mindset, Iam very close-minded.
(03:39):
It's just not how we think ofourselves, but I tend to believe
that we could be a little bitof both.
There are areas where we have afixed mindset and areas where
we have a growth mindset, andit's our job to work on the ones
where we're fixed, being awarethat this is even something you
(03:59):
can work on and being aware thathaving a limiting belief that
you can't do something isoptional, that it's not a fact.
So just knowing that in thefirst place can be a really
great place to start.
Now, when I hear about fixedmindset, it's what comes to me
(04:25):
and this isn't really part ofthe book is that it's a mindset
that's based in fear, because ifyou say I'm bad at this, I
can't change this is how it is,I'm bad at math, then you're
less likely to have to go and doit.
You're less likely todisappoint people.
You're trying to take the stingout of whatever may happen.
(04:45):
So you're basically putting thekibosh, calling the game on.
I'm not even going to try that,because it didn't work for me
before, or I'm afraid of what'sgoing to happen, or people going
to laugh at me is what a lot ofit comes down to, unfortunately
, a lot of the time.
So when you have a fixedmindset, what I'm going to do
(05:08):
here is because it's so clearwhat answer we should pick.
I'm going to call out someexamples that I see a lot in
customer success and customersuccess leadership that are
symptoms of a fixed mindset, andcertainly some that I've had as
well, because, as much as I'dlike to think I am perfect.
We know this is not the case.
(05:28):
When you have a fixed mindset,you have a tendency to avoid
things that you're not certainthat you can have a positive
outcome on.
You might avoid challenges dueto a perceived threat.
You might not go out for a jobwhere you don't take every
single box on the jobdescription because, oh, I'm not
(05:49):
qualified, whereas maybe youare.
Plenty of people do.
Plenty of people are willing totry that.
Say what's the worst that couldhappen.
One where I see the avoiding ofchallenges in customer success
just from the personality welike to be nice, et cetera is
that of disciplining an employeeor giving an employee negative
(06:11):
feedback.
We really don't like to do thisand, rather than seeing it as a
chance for the employee to grow, we tend to back into fear and
think what's going to happen tome?
How is this going to be a badsituation for me?
Are they going to get mad?
Are they going to yell at me?
Are they going to be difficultto work with?
Which is going to impact myresults?
(06:32):
It's very self-focused and,again, it's rooted in fear, and
we don't even tend to be thatstraightforward about it.
So, instead of just saying I'mnot going to discipline that
employee because I don't like it, we say we put it off.
We say today is not a good daybecause they have that really
(06:54):
important call and I don't wantto throw them off their game.
Or today's not a good day forme because I have back-to-back
meetings.
There's never a good day todiscipline an employee.
It's the fear of what theresults are going to be.
Now.
That's avoidance of challenges.
Fear of failure is just youcan't fail if you don't play the
game.
You can't fail if you don't try.
(07:15):
So you tend to avoid risks, butthe thing is that prevents
innovation.
You can't innovate, you can'tcome up with the great next new
thing if you're unwilling tofall on your face now and again.
That's something I'vedefinitely had to come to terms
with as I've transitioned out ofjust being in corporate in
(07:38):
startups and being in the publiceye.
More People are going to saythings about me and I've had to
kind of get over that, butbefore I had that in such a
confronting way, it definitelyimpacted what I did in
Pinesights 2020.
But I can see now theopportunities that I missed
(07:59):
based on worrying about whatpeople would say, worrying about
what people would think.
And in these cases you mightnot speak up in a meeting.
If you are the most juniorperson there, you might not want
to try something new in case itdoesn't work out.
Versus if you hear people saylike, oh well, we've always done
it this way, don't fix whatisn't broken.
(08:20):
That is all symptoms of a fixedmindset in that particular
situation.
The others are resistance tochange, which I think we all
have to a degree, because it'sseen as a threat, as an
existential threat to our brains.
Oh, I've kept alive so far inthese situations that I'm used
(08:42):
to.
I don't know if I will inanother situation.
And again, that's our veryprimitive brain that's primarily
concerned with keeping us alive.
It's not focused on, oh, theworst that could happen is
someone laughs at me.
It feels like the worst thingthat could happen is, oh, I get
fired, I can't find another job,I can't pay my rent and I end
(09:03):
up living under a bridge andthen we die.
Your brain will take it.
That could, maybe not to thedeath point, but your brain goes
there quickly, because that'sstill a holdover from evolution
and again served us very well.
We're still here, but it is not.
It's something that we cancontinue to evolve in our own
minds.
It makes us able to do more andlive a better life.
(09:28):
If we can start to question thatresistance to change, you may
also find if you have a fixedmindset, you might also limit
your willingness to learn andadapt.
Let's say, all of a sudden yourdepartment has to handle sales.
Now you're responsible forupsell cross-sell.
There was a lot of resistancewhen that started happening in
(09:49):
CS.
It's not my job, I don't likethat, I don't want to do that,
it's not who I am, and those area lot of assumptions, whereas
really I think sales can be aservice, it can be
heart-centered.
But again, it's that fear, it'sthat fixed mindset.
And finally, taking criticismpersonally, which I am the queen
(10:10):
of, I've gotten better about it, but I definitely.
If someone was like feedback isa gift, I would always want to
say great, did you keep thereceipt?
Because I'd like to send itback.
I didn't ask for this gift.
The fact is, most of the time,people are not meaning to insult
you.
They're trying to help you.
They're trying to help you bebetter.
(10:31):
And you'll never get better ifyou don't understand the areas
where you might need to the nexttime you get a criticism.
What if that piece ofinformation, what if that piece
of feedback wasn't about you?
What if it didn't mean anythingabout you?
What if it just meant thismight be a different way to try
(10:54):
something, that there was novalue judgment involved, more of
a science experiment.
Oh, that particular experimentdidn't work the way you might
have wanted it to.
Here's what you might want totry and say, and we'll be
getting into that a little bitmore in a few minutes.
With a fixed mindset, you'renever going to get any better
and your results will alwaysstay the same or get worse,
(11:16):
because the world is alwayschanging and evolving.
So you're never going to beable to just keep doing the same
old things that have worked andhave them continue to work.
We've seen that with differentlevels of the SaaS economy.
We're going to see that with AI, that it's going to be
important that we're able toroll with the punches and
approach it with a growthmindset.
(11:38):
Now, growth mindset?
It just doesn't sound veryrelatable to me, same way that
fixed mindset doesn't soundrelatable to me.
What strikes me as moreresonant and makes me more open
to it is, rather than fear,which is the fixed mindset.
How can I approach this withcuriosity?
(11:59):
So growth mindset is justcurious.
It's basically the idea thatyou're always going to be
learning, you're going to beeager to learn and improve your
strategy and that you're goingto persist in the face of
difficulties.
And this is particularly why Iwant to talk about this right
now, because it's been a toughtime for CS in the past year and
(12:22):
a half and I see how frustratedpeople are getting and I am
really impressed with the levelof stick-to-itiveness that a lot
of people have.
But this is just, in anotherway, a reminder of whenever you
get one of those things thatfeels like it just knocks the
wind out of you, knocks you down.
(12:43):
You can let that be that, youcan let that be a failure, or
you can say, okay, but what didI learn?
What would I do differentlynext time?
If a situation is like that,where you've learned and you
know how to do somethingdifferently and improve your
results, that's not a failure.
(13:03):
So if you're feeling stuck, ifyou're in a fixed mindset the
things I brought up at thebeginning, what you consider to
be failure losing a job, losinga big client, losing an employee
, your marriage, breaking upmaking what you used to make.
Those are all just results.
(13:50):
They may not be results youlike, but that's all they are.
They're data points.
It's what you're deciding thatthose data points mean about you
as a person.
That's the problem that you'redeciding that they have any
indication of how valuable youare, how lovable you are, how
worthy you are.
(14:11):
But here's the good news and thebad news.
No one gets to decide that butyou.
No matter what anyone else says, that is all just thoughts and
words in their brain.
It doesn't mean everyone thinksthat about you and it doesn't
get to dictate anything aboutyou.
Only you get to decide whatyour worth is, and there is no
(14:34):
reason in the world to decidethat you're worth nothing.
That's a self-fulfillingprophecy.
If you decide I'm worthless, I'mthe worst, you're not gonna go
out there and make your lifebetter and you're not gonna make
other people's lives better.
If you decide you're worthlessbecause you've done something
objectively bad, you've hurtpeople, you can sit there and be
(14:55):
worthless and say, oh whoa isme and I suck.
Or you can go out there andstart to turn it around and make
amends and change things and dobetter next time.
It doesn't have to be set instone.
That's where you can have thatgrowth mindset of well, what now
?
We all get bad results.
Sometimes we're human, we workwith the information we have and
(15:20):
we make the best decisions wecan at the time, and sometimes
we choose wrong, oops.
Not only is failure extremelynormal, but it is a huge asset,
if you allow it to be.
So what I like to do is and ittakes me a second, I'm not
perfect here but when somethingis hard and things don't go the
(15:42):
way I want them to and I feellike, wow, I had huge
expectations for this.
I thought it was gonna go oneway and that crashed and burned
and I suck.
It did not work out.
I thought I was gonna do greatand now I suck, try and detach
and think of everything as ascience experiment.
Now scientists look ateverything as they have a
(16:05):
hypothesis which is just hey, Ihave a thought, I think this
might work, and they perform anexperiment.
Okay, so I'm gonna try it outand see if I'm right or wrong,
and then from that they get aresult.
So what if scientists decidedthat they were a failure the
first time?
They didn't get the result theyintended?
We'd all be stuck back in thehouse with being scared of COVID
(16:27):
or probably would have diedfrom an ear infection when we
were nine months old orsomething.
With everything you try, youeither get the result you wanted
or you get the lesson youneeded.
Every failure is a data pointthat says, oh, that experiment
didn't work.
Let's try and figure out why.
And when we figure out why,that's going to give us an idea
(16:49):
of what might work better.
There's a I think it's EECummings saying that's ever
tried, ever failed, no matter,try again, fail again, fail
better.
And that's all you have to bewilling to do to understand that
a failure isn't necessarily theend.
It's just a what now?
(17:10):
What next?
What did I learn and how can Itry again with this information
and not do the exact same thingover and over?
Because if you don't take thetime to stop and analyze that,
you're likely to do the samething over and over, expecting a
different result, and peoplelike to say that's the
(17:32):
definition of insanity.
It's also a natural way to be,we hear if at first you don't
succeed, try again.
It should be to try somethingelse, try something slightly
different.
It's really when you give intofear that you keep making those
same mistakes.
And look, cs can be a hard jobAt this moment.
(17:53):
A lot of people are out of work.
Some have been laid off twicein 12 months, nine months.
And I don't care what a greattalk I give you.
I understand that's not gonnafeel great, it's not gonna feel
like an opportunity.
But if you can look at it morelike this is a puzzle for me to
solve, rather than all thesethings are happening to me.
(18:14):
It can be a bit of a stretch tosay they're happening for you,
but I don't quite go that far.
But can you look at it that way?
Can you say because here's thething if you keep trying
different things, eventuallyyou're gonna hit on the right
thing.
Your success is inevitable solong as you just keep trying and
improving and getting a littlebit better each time.
(18:35):
It's just science, it's justdata, it's throwing stuff at the
wall and seeing what sticks.
And the other way to look at it,the other way to understand how
failure is so important, is wedon't grow when everything's
great.
We have a tendency to just keepwith the status quo, because
(18:58):
why wouldn't we?
Things are going great.
I don't wanna mess it up.
It's when, all of a sudden,what used to work doesn't work
anymore that we have to figuresomething else out.
And to do that, you have to dosomething you've never done
before, think a way you've neverthought before, and that's
growth.
Not just a growth mindset, butthat's you growing as a person.
(19:19):
That's your next evolution.
Often, when we keep hitting ourhead against the same challenge
, it's because we've hit uponsomething that is life's giving
us.
This thing of this is what's inyour way.
It's time to reach your nextevolution.
It's time to level up.
This is what you're gonna haveto solve.
To do that Sometimes I like to.
(19:42):
If someone's really having ahard time and they feel like
everything is falling apart, Iwill tell them about something
that my friend and I call beingin the goo.
Basically, if you think about acaterpillar, a caterpillar
turns into a butterfly, but theydon't just go in for a nice
little nap and merge allbeautiful.
It's not like the very hungrycaterpillar like eat some nice
(20:05):
snacks, take a nap.
Here you are.
A caterpillar actually is kindof gross.
It digests its own body.
So, yeah, basically, at onepoint it basically bites its own
head off.
I don't really understand it,but it digests its entire body
and at one point inside thechrysalis, it's just this green
goo.
It completely breaks down inorder to be able to reformulate
(20:29):
its cells to become what's next?
And a caterpillar in thatmoment doesn't know.
Oh cool, I'm becoming abutterfly.
Now they're like holy crap, I'mdying.
This is the most terrifyingthing that has ever happened to
anyone.
I'm turning into goo.
So that's what's happening asyou're leveling up.
You're in the goo, and sometimesmy friend and I will be oh,
(20:51):
how's it go?
Oh, I'm in the goo today, whereit's just everything is a mess.
I don't know what to do next.
Everything has fallen apart.
That's the goo period, becausethat's when you're figuring out
how you have to transform.
It's a transformative processand that's why setbacks often
act as a slingshot.
(21:11):
It's inevitable.
There's no way around it.
Failure is only a sign thatit's time to level up.
It's time to try somethingdifferent.
There's this saying that firstGod throws a rock, then a pebble
, then a boulder, and that'sbasically to indicate that God,
universe whatever you want tobelieve in life, whatever is
(21:34):
trying to teach you lessons toget you to your next level.
And sometimes you're doingsomething that isn't serving you
, and the first time thathappens you get a pebble, so it
hurt a little bit Like thatwasn't great.
But okay, I'm gonna keep going.
I'm gonna go on my merry wayand continue exactly what I've
been doing, and the next timeGod throws a rock, that hurt
(21:57):
more.
But if you keep going and keepdoing the same thing, that is
getting you hit with rocks.
Eventually you get a boulder.
And for some people, myselfincluded, sometimes you got to
get the boulder before you'rewilling to accept that it's time
for a change.
And it doesn't have to be like,oh, I'm in the wrong line of
(22:18):
work, it might just be.
I need help.
I need to ask someone who has adifferent perspective do you
see something I'm doing wronghere?
Because I just can't see it?
And look, I would not have abusiness without a good, a
couple good, solid boulders here.
I wouldn't have the marriageand family I do without some
(22:41):
tough lessons in my dating life.
I did a lot of things wrong andfixed them, started doing
different things that workedbetter, and you know what?
I wouldn't be a failure if Ididn't have those things either.
They happen to be my favoritethings in my life right now, but
I got it wrong a lot and that'shonestly why I teach now, why I
(23:04):
teach CS strategy, why I teachmindset.
Because if you can take ashortcut, if you can get one
shortcut here where you don'thave to be hit by all the rocks
and can learn things faster thanI did, that is my hope for you,
because I learned a ton over,you know, 17 years in CS, but it
(23:24):
was not an easy climb.
There were a lot of mistakes.
So it is okay to look atsomebody's roadmap and say I'm
going to try that you may needto adjust a little for your
particular landscape, but youdon't always have to figure it
out on your own.
Growth comes from being souncomfortable.
You have to figure it out andthat's why everyone gets to the
(23:48):
high points in their life andthey say you know what?
I wouldn't be here if I didn'tgo through this, this and this
crappy thing.
So now I get it.
Why I had to go through thosethings?
That is the view from the topof the mountain and you know
it's not like there's an end.
You don't get to the top oflife and, yeah, I win life, but
(24:09):
you do level up.
It's a continuation oflearnings and when you're in
that process it sucks, but italso means you're on your way.
This is what makes it happentrying something different.
And as a final button on this tomake this actionable, look at
an area at work where you don'tlike the results you've gotten
(24:30):
so far.
What can you do differently?
Make it a science experiment.
It's okay if you don'timmediately know what to do
differently, but brainstorm,talk to other people, use chat,
gpt, ask others what they'vedone.
You don't have to wait untilyou're at rock bottom to try
(24:50):
something new, to changedirections, if you know what
you're doing isn't working.
What's the worst thing thatcould happen by changing?
Actually, don't answer that.
Instead of thinking that, thinkwhat's the best thing that
could happen.
It's not a question we askourselves often enough.
We're always worried about therisks, and that's fair.
We need to think critically,but often we don't consider what
(25:13):
the benefits of something newor something hard or something
scary could be, because we'reonly concerned with you know the
scary parts or what could gowrong.
So that's just the other pieceof information I'd like to leave
you with what's the best thatcould happen?
So thanks so much for joiningus today for another episode of
Psychology of Customer Success.
(25:35):
If you want to level up your CSleadership strategy and mindset,
you can go to provansuccesscomTo get on the early notification
list for Customer SuccessLeadership Academy, which will
be relaunching in February.
So it's getting close againRight now.
We're in there.
We're making progress with ouramazing current cohort.
(25:57):
They're having all sorts ofwins every day, but it'll be
time again soon for new peopleto come in and learn and level
up.
And if you'd like to work withme on things like this as well
as strategy, because when youcombine mindset like this with
the right strategy, that's whenyou really get fireworks, that's
(26:18):
when you get real change, notwhen you just have an idea of
what you should be doing.
Oh, this is a good strategy,but you're not able to put it in
action because of your limitingthoughts, you're limiting
actions, you're I'm too busy,I'm too stressed.
This is more important than mywork.
Those are all things that wework on and that's why I talk
(26:39):
about them here, because I don'tthink people talk enough about
sort of the intangibles that getin the way of our success.
Again, thank you for joining us.
If you enjoyed this, definitelygive us five stars on iTunes.
That really helps.
And if you want to say hi, comefind me on LinkedIn.
(27:00):
We have a podcast page so youcan search for Psychology of
Customer Success page on there.
Come say hi to me, network withother people and that's it.
So until next time, take careof yourself, get some rest and
don't forget to share thisepisode with your CS Bestie.
Talk soon, and here's to yoursuccess.
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