Work Fails

We all make mistakes - it's what makes us human! But what happens when you mess up at work?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily and this is Bridget and you're
listening to stuff mom never told you. And we're talking
today about a subject that I have unfortunately a lot
of experience with, and that is messing up at work. Um.

(00:29):
I bet a lot of y'all can probably identify with that.
It's a it's something that happens, but it's not something
that has talked about very publicly. No one wants to
be very open about the times where they, you know,
did the wrong thing or should have done this and
they did that, or you know, completely miss something or
completely mess something up and you know, made everything bad.

(00:51):
And we should we should talk about our failures. Failure
is a really important part of success. It's a really
important part of any process. And we should be in
racing failure. Um. And I definitely have had my fair
share work problems. I'm making myself sound like a really
like great desirable person to join your team. I feel

(01:11):
like we've just been sharing more stories in preparation and
if you it's like we're we've been one upping each other,
like you want to hear about how bad this one
time it's been great? Yeah, it is cathartic. I mean people. Really,
it resonates with people when you talk about your your
failures in a concrete way, and so in a former life,
I think I've mentioned this before. My job involved putting

(01:33):
together trainings for activists and organizers and campaigners to figure
out how they could use technology to be these badass
you know, political strategists and operatives. And one of the
things I found is that when trainers and mentors shared
their stories of times, concrete times where they mess something
up or they missed the mark, those are the stories

(01:55):
that stuck with um, the participants, And like, you know,
I think I think about those stories anytime I hit
send on a big email. I think about, you know,
stories when people have told me like, well, this was
a horror story. My heart is like starting to be
a little faster, just just thinking about the pressure of
being a professional strategist and hitting send on emails to
have about people so much pressure have you had tell

(02:16):
me about? Well, before I tell you about my big
screw up, I also want to underline what you were
just saying about the importance of specificity. There's a big
difference between when we talk in cliche about you know,
lean into the discomfort of failure, mistake, Yeah, it's okay,
you know that, those sort of like as someone in
the professional development space, those cliches are easy to fall

(02:39):
back on because we don't always have time to get
specific about the many ways in which we've all learned
from messing up. But it's important to remember, even though
it is in the past, the more specific you can
be in sharing how you overcame that challenge, the more
relatable and inspiring. It becomes not just these like blase

(03:00):
a cliche statements that are not very empowering. In fact,
if you look at the narrative arc in storytelling that
we see throughout history, from Shakespeare and Aristotle, you know,
all the way through to how we talk about you know,
politicians in the public eye sharing their come up story
or hip hop, and the whole idea of getting bossed up.

(03:21):
That whole idea what underscores the phrase bossed up is
you overcame something, and so in many ways, we as
human beings are innately inspired by someone else's failure stories.
When you get specific about how you overcame and dealt
with obstacles and challenges. In some ways, everybody actually loves
an underdog story, but it depends on how you tell it,

(03:41):
doesn't it totally? I mean, I couldn't agree more. I
think that the times in my life where I've heard
people that I think of as very successful or you know,
badasses in my field, when those women, especially are vulnerable
enough to tell about a time where they missed the mark,
it just normalizes the whole thing. And you think, you know,
even the person that you think of as you know,
your um, career, idol or whatever, like, even they have

(04:05):
dealt with this. And I'm reminded of Jess Morales. Shout
out to Jess Morales, friend of the show. UM, you
may know her as if you if you were paying
attention to your phone during the election and you were
pro Hillary, you might know her as Jess from h
F A. UM. Jess as a real person who I
know in real life and I met also through n
I y UM. And so Jess is someone who I

(04:30):
think of as like being at the top of her
game professionally in our field. She has has led really
important campaign She's been profiled in publications like Vogue magazine
in The Washington Post about how great she is that
sort of leading these movements online. And she is just
a real badass and I'll never forget at at n
O I training. She that I was a participate in,

(04:51):
so I was not like leading the training. She told
this story of working for I think it was Emily's
List when she was just starting out in her career
and she was sending out a mass email and she
had done the heading so that it would personalize whoever
was getting this email. So if it was I was
getting it would say dear Bridget, if you were getting
it, it it would say dear Emily. And she tested it
and she got the test back and it said dear Jess.

(05:11):
So she was like, great, send it out perfect. What
she didn't realize is that everybody who got this email
this we're talking thousands upon thousands of people. But yeah,
I don't know what their list is like, but I
was gonna say millions. Yeah, it's probably huge. Um all
got this email that said dear Jess And so Emily's
List is already an organization that has a woman's name

(05:31):
in it. So people were just people were very, very confused,
to the point where this became a hashtag I am
Jess um and I just love that, you know, if
that had happened to me, I would be mortified, and
I'm sure she was mortified, but being able to talk
about it in this concrete, specific way of here's what happened,
here's what I did in the aftermath, and here's what
I learned. Almost every time I send an email, I

(05:54):
think about that story. I think about I am Jess,
and it's helped me tremendously. I love that and would
be this first admit that I have done exactly that,
except I remember I was being paid to write and
set up and send emails that were for fundraising purposes
on behalf of my clients, um before I started bossed up,

(06:14):
way back in the day, when I was a digital strategist,
and I got a link error, which is like one
of the worst because when you send someone with a
bad link, they can't donate. The whole reason you sent
that this email was so they could donate, which means
the only thing they can do and that circumstances unsubscribed.
So you just set your whole email list up to
give you a good reason why they should unsubscribe and

(06:37):
send you angry responses. And I remember realizing my mistake
taking it to my boss. My boss being very angry,
and then the client being very angry, and then myself
having to fix it and thinking to myself, there are
so many ways in which in this job I've been
set up to fail, Like, there's so many ways to
screw up, there are so many ways to mess up

(06:58):
that it was daunting. It made me want to It
almost paralyzed me. Have you ever felt that like rush
of blood to your cheeks? You're like mortified, humiliated. You're
supposed to be a professional at this and you know
you made a what it was a very basic mistake
and there wasn't anything you could say about it other
than listen, there's no one to blame but me. I

(07:20):
screwed up, And it just feels so like you just
want to crawl under a rock and maybe never do
this ever again. Like you're like, I can't even handle
this right now, that thing that you're describing, I've been
in that situation so many times, and I think that's
what That's why it's important that we talk about work failure,
because you shouldn't feel paralyzed when you make a mistake. Right,

(07:40):
Making a mistake is normal. It happens if you don't
have systems in place where that is under where that
is understood to be something that's going to happen, might happen,
might occur. Um. You know, that's really a better system.
And so I feel like when people describe feeling paralyzed,
feeling shame, shame, it's really this this spy roll of
Shane that starts to suck you down exactly, and then

(08:02):
you start wondering, am I my my mistake? Am I
good enough? Can I do this? All of that? And
um my, I mean I've made so many mistakes in
my in my come up, you know, working, um, but
one that really sticks with me is when I was
working at a media company doing social media for a
very large, uh media outlet that you've definitely heard of. Um,
it will not say the name. I don't know if

(08:23):
I don't know if there's a legal thing, so I
don't know. All right, let's just say it was the
network where they're Big Star, someone whose name rhymes with
Machel Manow. I just basically said it. But alright, so
I didn't say it, but figure it out and google it. Um.

(08:45):
And you know, this was for me. This was started
as kind of a dream job. But you know, especially
when you work in social media or some sort of
like media. These things like mistakes are gonna happen, right Like,
if you are you think you're logged into your personal
Twitter and you know you're out and you are accidentally
lugged into the brand Twitter, these things happen. And so

(09:06):
when I was there, it seemed like we never talked
about the times where people tweeted the wrong thing, even
if it was a low stakes, you know, a low
stakes error. We just didn't like. It seemed like it
was an environment where mistakes did not happen or or
could not happen. And so when inevitably you tweet the

(09:26):
wrong thing, it just seemed like like the world was
ending because there was no protocol. And what would have
been better is if you know, on day one we say,
here's what happens if you if you make a mistake
or if you tweet the wrong thing, do the wrong thing,
here's how we handle it. Here's what it looks like.
Here are the fail safes that we have in place
to avoid it. And when it did happen, because inevitably
it's going to happen, it just felt, you know, you

(09:47):
just felt so bad and so guilty and so incompetent.
But what's worse is that you felt like you had
done something that should never happen, no one has ever
done before exactly. It felt like a you felt like
a total anomaly. And I think, particularly as a woman
of color, and I think as women in fields that
are male dominated, you can start to feel like your

(10:08):
boss is thinking, oh, well, this is why, why why
we don't hire people like that? Right? Because women or
women of color or whatever, like, they make these mistakes,
and you really feel like you become your mistake and
it becomes so hard to overcome. I think that's such
a great point, and it's something that's grounded in research
that we're gonna We're gonna cover all in a minute.
But I also want to add that I have seen

(10:31):
this done better elsewhere, UM, and I've learned from companies
who have fail safes in place. So when I started
my own company, now, as we've learned and grown through
our own mistakes, through the many wonderful mistakes we've made. UM,
what I now have is a part of our onboarding process,
is one of our how we do what we do

(10:52):
kind of norms that we cover with our staff. We
have a rule, UM, that's known as bad news doesn't
age well. So when you do make a mistake, the
thing that is most important is that you tell someone
about it asap. That could have I mean, and just
lifting that as a thing is so important. Just having
like having a boss who says, here's what happens when

(11:17):
things don't go well, or models that behavior when things
are not going well. Um to me has been so
refreshing and humanizing in the past that I really wanted
to be that boss for other people. And nobody's perfect,
whether you're managing people or being managed by someone or neither,
but just having a uh sort of institute of protocol

(11:38):
that says, when something bad goes down, the last thing
I want you to do is feel shame and be
quiet about it, because you know it doesn't It doesn't
get better when you're dealing with it alone, and it
certainly doesn't get better when you try to cover up
your mistakes, which then becomes a whole other mistake in
and of itself, as we've seen play out in the
political arena a million times over. So you know, I

(11:59):
think it's I would love to hear from our listeners
on have you seen or been a party to uh
an organization who handles mistake making well or have you
been you know, have you ever had a protocol in
your office that makes it feel okay um to talk
about when things are not going so well, because you know,

(12:20):
nobody feels great when they screw up. And you also,
I'm not saying like women should go out there bragging
about all the ways they messed up. Right, We don't
need to dwell on our mistakes, but we do need
to feel um comfortable talking about our career performance separately
from our self worth. You you know, your success is
not equivalent to your self worth. And the more we

(12:42):
can actually embrace that in a country that's so fixated
here in the United States on our identity being wrapped
up in our careers, I think the better. I think
that's so so true, and I think, you know, I
was really lucky to spend a couple of months working
for a Silicon Valley like startup in environment, and that
was the whole thing, was a learning environment or learning

(13:02):
experience for me because I had never worked in Silicon
Valley before, I had never worked in a tech space before.
But something that I really took away from that was
that they really did, and I don't know if this
is like a Silicon Valley thing or right where if
you mess something up, they kind of embraced that in
a way I had never seen before. And honestly, I
I only worked at this company for a while and

(13:22):
it was great, but um, you know this idea that
they really wanted you to try things, and that failing
at things it's part of trying things, and they'd rather
have you out there, you know, taking risks and trying
new things and have it pay off, and also have
it not pay off then have you play it safe learned.
Learning to embrace that was very uncomfortable for me, But

(13:44):
once I did, I did some of my best work,
Like the work I did that I'm most proud of
came from that environment where they were like, yeah, if
you mess this up, well it happens, try again, right,
and what can we learn from what didn't work? Right?
Throwing everything against the will feeling innovative. It's part of
the um the lean startup mentality, which is an organization
and a book by Eric Reese, and in it that's

(14:06):
where the mantra like fail fast came from. And this
idea of failing fast really embraces the innovative power of
trying things to test your assumption assumptions. So when I
started Bossed Up, I had recently read that book and
set off to test my assumptions and see what worked
and what didn't, so you could actually lean into that failure,

(14:27):
to be cliche about it and see, Okay, the data
says that, uh, one on one coaching through bossed Up
was not selling, and you know boot camps, these events
were selling. So guess what. I pivoted away from what
was an early failure and focused on doubling down and
what was an early success. And that's proven to be

(14:47):
very helpful. And and continuously challenging your assumptions in a
business model is one thing, but being comfortable with your
personal career failings is can be way more challenging, because well,
what if you had said, you know, I'm I'm doing
one on one coaching. It's not working out, but this
was my plan and I'm doing Like what if you
had not pivoted, You know, when you being able to

(15:09):
take a step back and say, maybe I got it
wrong on this and maybe there's a way to you know,
make this more successful, that's so important. Yeah, and there's
also a case for persevering, so that the challenge always
comes down to pivot or persevere. And I think of
famous failures like Michael Jordan, who was cut from his
high school basketball team. Had he not persevered, we wouldn't

(15:30):
have had Michael Jordan's. So you have to make that
decision for yourself of UM, what do I want to
focus on for growth? And what do I want to
pivot away from UM? And that's okay, right, Like, only
you can really make that decision. Should we take a
quick break, let's a quick break. Let's take a quick break.
When we come back, We've got a lot more to

(15:50):
talk about, including some of the research around why women
in particular can struggle with perfectionism. The dirty P word
in this Yes, it's not the effort, the dirty P
maybe maybe the effort. I'm gonna stop saying that. Let's
not say that. All right, we'll be right back. I'm
gonna get it together, and we're back. And I didn't

(16:19):
get it together because I still want to say the
dirty P word. But I think it's important that we
acknowledge how gender plays a role in failure, in making
it hard to own our failures or in another way
of looking at sort of on the flip side. Uh,
girls and women and perfectionism, which is so personal to
me because I've totally struggled with perfectionism of my whole life. Yeah,

(16:41):
and you're You're very clearly not alone. According to the research,
and so, women are much more likely than men to
be perfectionists in both their family lives, personal lives, and
in their work lives. A study by the Journal of
Occupational and Organizational Psychology I found that women, you know,
higher percentage of women feel if they don't meet their
own very high standards when it comes to family or

(17:03):
workplace commitments. And so women are putting very high standards
on themselves and then really being very hard on them
when they're unable to meet these impossibly hard standards. Is
sound familiar to you, so familiar in fact, I'm just
thinking of a recent attende at this past weekend's Boston
boot Camp. In her application, she said to me, listen,
I honestly, I am coming to this boot camp because
I feel like I'm doing mediocre in all aspects of

(17:26):
my life right now, and I'm just thinking, of course,
women need to be perfect in all aspects of our
lives at every time. Right. Of course, that kind of
role overload is what we're dealing with. But her underlying
assumption there is that she shouldn't be mediocre in all
aspects of her life at any time when I'm thinking,
maybe kill it in one area of your life, right right,
And I've I've learned over the years, and still I'm

(17:48):
trying to embrace being mediocre at some things so as
to be great at one thing, but only one thing
to die you can't be I mean maybe some people
are not me, but it's I would a man shouldn't
be hard to be killing it at all aspects, you know,
your romantic life, your professional life, your educational life, or
family life, like your fitness life, all the things. Who

(18:08):
does that or who can't? I can't. Well, the Internet
makes it seem like everybody does that, And I think
that's such a You hit on something that I think
is so important is that social media I think plays
a huge role in this where you know, I that's
something that I've struggled with a little bit where it
seems like all my friends, you know, they post about
their big promotion or killing it at work. Nobody posts

(18:29):
about the time when they cried in the bathroom at work.
But we've done it. You know. No one posts about
the time where they you know, had to you know,
call their dad, you know, asking for advice on basic
stuff they should know, Like, nobody posts about that. And
I think that it's very easy to think everyone's crushing
it because that's what it looks like. And so if
you're not crushing it, you're alone and something's wrong with

(18:50):
you and you're bad. Um. And I think, you know, yeah,
And I think the research really does show that one,
this is something that women deal with especially and then too,
the arrived to be perfect starts from a very young age,
which I found really sad. I mean, according to this
study by Girl Guiding UK, a quarter of women or
young girls from age seven to ten felt the need

(19:12):
to be perfect. And I just think that that word
perfection that just you know, it kind of broke my
heart a little bit that these very young girls, school
aged girls already feel that that dry that they have
to have everything together all the time. Yeah. I think
the idea of good girl culture is very very real.
And there was a great article about this in the

(19:34):
New York Times um that was titled for Girls it's
be yourself and be perfect too. So there's this idea
of saying, you know, little girls are expected to be
the um embodiment of perfection and innocence and poise and
sweetness and smarts and this and and it's all getting
leveled on top of women's changing roles speaking. But historically

(19:59):
we thought, you know, to be a good woman has
meant very different things over the decades and over the
millennia of time. But instead of saying now women should
just be one way or just be another, all of
our changing roles that we've been balancing from bread winner
to homemaker and everything in between have been added on top.

(20:20):
That's impossible. And that's part of the overwhelmed and the
discussion of overwhelming today's society, which I find really fascinating.
It definitely hits women differently than how we condition boys
to be and men to be. Yeah, and I think, um,
one of the places I saw this really expertly broken
down is in this book by Jessicaple Hall Mistakes I

(20:41):
Made at Work and really this is the title is
exactly what it sounds like. It's her and she talks
to very influential women in media, health, science, tech all
across these industries, and they're just talking about these big
screwups at work and what they learned from them, how
they handled them. And I really think that it's it's
that kind of work changes that can help change this

(21:02):
perception for women that you have to be perfect and
killing it on all cylinders all the time, otherwise you're
falling behind. And it just really allows for a more
a more realistic version a view of how we think
about women at work. Yeah. I love it because it's
really an anthology of short stories that she edited, and
she sort of sets up for for each different chapter.

(21:22):
So if you're looking for a quick read, you know,
this is a great one because it's one of those
books you can pick up and put down whatever you want.
And I loved hearing from famous women who have historically
been known for their success, is getting very real and
very specific about how they dealt with their challenges. Who
is the author of um that? You know? She was

(21:43):
played by Reese Witherspoon in the hiking movie The Cheryl
Cheryl Straight Yeah, so Cheryl Strade rights in there. And
I had just finished and loved Wild Cheryl Strade's book,
Uh and in in Jessica Macalls book mistakes I make
at work. Carrol's told this very beautiful story of how
an editor had once sent her a short story back.

(22:06):
And as a writer, you've got to get used to failure.
It's like part of how you dealing. You know. The
most famous books of all times were rejected by twenty
five publishers, like J. K. Rowling was rejected time and
time and time. And such a good example she is
because the first I think the first Harry Potter book
she sold for pennies and it's just such a great
you know, overcoming that is where resilience comes from. But um,

(22:26):
to go back to Cheryl, she wrote about how a publication,
I think it was a big magazine came back to
her and said, sure, we love it, but you need
to cut it in half. You need to cut the
word count down. And this is someone who as an artiste,
as a writer, you know, there's this idea that you've
polished your work to perfection, and she had. She had
labored over this thing until it's been edited down to

(22:48):
every point of it was like the essence of what
the short story needed to be. And she thought to herself,
I'm an artist I can't butcher my work for the
dollar that this person is offering me. And and she said,
you know what, I'm an artist and I need not
only do I need the money, but as an artist,
it's part of my craft to be able to reshape

(23:10):
the work. And so she got out of her creative head.
Maybe I'm also drawing the story from her other book
on shoot actually visit I think this my am I kidding?
This mixed up with Elizabeth Gilbert? Is this an on
air you guys, um listeners, Let me level with your
for a second. I think I just made an error myself.

(23:32):
I'm not even kidding. I misremembering. I don't remember. This
is Elizabeth Gilbert in her great book Big Magic, which
is about the writing process and creativity in creative fields altogether,
or Cheryl Strait, the author of Wild in Jet couple
call books. But regardless, the point stands whichever brilliant writer
this was. She told a really wonderful and relatable story

(23:53):
about having to edit down which felt was a masterpiece already,
just to get it published and get that get that money,
get that dollars. So here, I am trying to walk
the walk in mid air, midtime mid podcast regarding be
kind to me Twitter about you? I mean, is you
don't want to get caught at a trap of profession.
I'm like, oh my god, I'm flushed right now. Are Yeah,
you can see where you can see her she is.

(24:16):
I am sweating. You're really illustrating the point of like mistakes.
You want to be perfect, and it doesn't always happen,
and even in a setting like this, you know what happens.
I'm cringing because I feel like this is going to
read like a setup. We did not plan this, listeners,
we did not play this, although we're not going to
be brilliant. If you did, like that would have been
so smart. Actually sweating now, I can't handle this. So

(24:36):
here's you know why I'm now that I'm basking in
failure right now. You know why I get so flushed.
You know why it feels so lousy because I feel
like this is my thing, Like I want to be
able to talk about this and have your credibility, and
this is part of you know, I want to have
your credibility because I take my work seriously, because I

(24:57):
take my profession seriously. And that's when it hurts the
most when you care yeah, I really care. You pour
yourself into it and you know that other people's judgment
does matter totally. This is really is like a playing
out like a case study. Is that because you couldn't
remember if you read this you know fascinating tip factoid
in this book or that book. If it doesn't mean
that you you know, are doing a bad job because

(25:19):
because you're not your mistake, right, like you feel better?
Bridget Yeah, I should offer someone on one coaching. I
like what you've just said, I think is so resonates
so much for me. So one of the stories in
the Book of Failure, it's not the name of the book,
but book the big um is a medical doctor, which
again I mean I think medical doctors I can't even imagine,

(25:43):
or people who are in the medical profession. I can't
even imagine the level of um anxiety they must have
around mistakes because you could kill someone. Right if I
tweet a swear word from an account I shouldn't do.
No one's gonna die. But if you're a doctor and
you make a mistake, or a nurse and you make
a mistake, or you know a caregiver and you make
a mistake, someone's life is in your hands. And there

(26:04):
was a wildly popular ted talk that people watched and
shared with millions of times about doctors and mistakes. And
I think, you know, even someone in that high stakes,
high pressure field talking about their mistakes, I think is
valuable and it maybe even seems scary, right, the idea that, yeah,
your doctor could make a mistake, because guess what, we
all make mistakes, and yeah, we need to accept that

(26:26):
that doctors aren't you know, robots to someone whose family
umber died on the table, Yeah, it's it's it's like,
how do you even it's so heavy. So this doctor
talks a little bit about how she almost missed a
very very obvious, um, you know, warning sign uh someone.
This was at the height of the eighth epidemic, and
she was overwhelmed with patients and just sort of tired
and frazzled, and she thought one of her patients was

(26:48):
just a little bit out of it, and that it
turns out that later she had missed a massive brain
bleed which could have killed him if he had been
sent home. And so what she says that she learned
from this mistake was mistakes, aren't this external thing, this
verse event we make a mistake, but we are not
the mistake. And then she also talks a little bit
about guilt and shame. You know, um, when you make
a mistake, the distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt, she says,

(27:11):
is regret for a certain action, but shame is deeper
and more painful. It's the realization that you're not the
person you thought you were. The point is that it's
okay to feel guilty about making a mistake, but we
shouldn't be ashamed. That's such a great point and Burnet
Brown is known for her research on shame, and she
also hammered that home. It's the distinction between externalizing and
internalizing failure. So as best as we can when we're

(27:34):
in the heat of that, I'm ashamed for not being
as you know, as well researched as I thought I was,
or as smart as I thought I was where I
thought I was. Uh. I thought I was someone who
had a good memory. I thought I was someone who
really knows my stuff. Like instead of saying, wow, I'm
not the boss I thought I was, or I'm not
as good as I thought I was saying, you know this,

(27:56):
these two things are really similar. Here's what happened. Here's
the ex a nation. Here's the story I'm going to
tell myself that externalizes the um the mistake and doesn't
say that you are a human being who is mistaken.
I think Brene talked about it by saying, it's the
difference between saying I'm not good at math versus I

(28:19):
didn't study enough for the right where you know, it's
okay to feel, you know, I wish I would have studied,
but internalizing it is I am not the person I
thought I was. I thought I was good and I
am bad. And you know whose research really hit home
on that particular distinction is Carol Dweck. That's d W E.
C K. Carol Dwex. Book Mindset came out way back,

(28:41):
I think in the nineties seventies, I want to say,
and it was revolutionary because she distinguished between what she
calls a growth mindset and a fixed trait mindset. And
this was revolutionary for me. The book holds up, you know,
through the ages, so I highly recommend it um to
anyone who's listening. But the growth set mindset, what did

(29:02):
I just say? No, the growth mindset, I'm really like
demonstrating failure, really well today, I'm just doing you all
my I'm just trying to do my due diligence here
to show you what it looks like to screw up
on air. No mag deal. But growth mindset is the
ability to um learn from your mistakes by seeing errors, missteps,

(29:23):
mistakes as an opportunity for growth, and to see all people,
everyone as having the potential to grow and learn and improve.
A fixed traite mindset is I'm just not good at math,
or I'm not a great public speaker, or I was
born with certain traits and without certain other traits, and
no matter what I do, no matter how much effort

(29:45):
I put into it, I cannot improve. And you'd be
surprised how many of us were raised one way or
the other and how much that impacts your risk tolerance.
Movie Forward. That is such a good point. I see
that so much in my personal life. I mean, my
my own personal um, you know, growth with failure. I
hear a lot about young women growing up who feel

(30:06):
like they're not allowed to fail, they have to be perfect.
That's so far from where I was growing up. I mean,
I was sort of um, I mean, this is making
me sound awful, but I was just the girl who
was like, you know, I lived really close to school
when I was late every day, Right, I was the
girl who was like I became very comfortable with failure
and mistakes pretty early on, and it almost was kind

(30:26):
of freeing, Like I I never I never feel like
I got down on myself about it. I in fact
kind of enjoyed a level of freedom to try things
and abandoned things and scrupp at things and you know,
do things and not really internalize it because I I
kind of got this people just it's just sort of
was like, Oh, that's how she is, Like she will

(30:48):
try things and then be like, oh it didn't work, clops,
and you know, not, you know, and just move on
to the next thing. And I saw my you know,
my friends who struggled so badly trying you know, whether
it was sports and things like that, Like I just
never I was just sort of known as the girl who,
you know, I was pretty easy going about my failure,
and I watched a lot of my classmates really not

(31:10):
be that way and really have a hard time with it. Yeah,
you're just grab Yeah, I think that's part of the
the appeal to you and I, by the way, that
I think that's that. Not that we're all exactly who
we were in fifth grade hoever, but you're easy going nature.
Might I call it type B Yeah, I am. I
am so sadly I might be type I'm so Sobibly,

(31:32):
I think Mesh is beautifully with my sometimes overwhelmingly uptight
type ANUS that I think. I think we've both got
our stuff together. But I also think that we come
to this project, that we come to this podcast with
very different strengths, And one thing I love about working
with you is how we balance each other out in
that way. I think that's I think that's so true.

(31:54):
I remember being in school and getting some sort of
art project assignment where the teacher was like, oh, don't
if you don't, don't do it this way, because if
you do, it's gonna mess up. And the girl sitting
next to me did exactly the wrong thing, and like
he had clearly like hidden her paper so no one
saw it. Art. I'm sorry, what topic is. I think
we're making like snowflakes or something where if you cut

(32:16):
along the wrong side of the paper, your snowflake would
be destroyed. Snowlake was gonna hang that on their tree.
I hate your snowflake kids. And I saw so many
of my classmates do it wrong and be really stressed
out about it. But then others do it wrong and
they're like, I did it wrong, you know, And you
can really see how these things present themselves early on.
Oh my gosh, so true, Carol d I tested this

(32:37):
with children. One of her groundbreaking studies with was with
grade school aged children giving them puzzles, and it was
fascinating to see they would give you incrementally more difficult puzzles,
and once you would start to struggle with the challenging puzzles,
they would give you an option, do you want to
go back and do the same easier puzzle over again

(32:59):
that you just did, or would you like another puzzle?
And some of the kids would say, Oh, I love
a challenge, bring it on and relish the opportunity. One
kid even said, I hoped I was going to learn
something today. A lot of the kids, like type a
little fifth grade Emily would have said said, I'll just
do the other puzzle over again so I can feel

(33:21):
like I'm good at Oh that's fascinating. I mean I
would have been like, do you have any boring Yeah,
that's so fascinating, I mean, and it just shows you
how you missed the opportunity to learn when you want
to play it safe. And I've seen this play out
in my adult life too, and you've wanted to stay
away from the potential for failure, and therefore you stay

(33:43):
in the lane. You think you know the domain, you
feel comfortable and already, and you never grow and it
validates here, I'm a good girl, you know response, because
you want that gold stick, you want that validation. But
what we need to do, and this is pare jects
like research applied in the form of parenting and teaching,
and the whole mindset space is pretty huge, is reinforce

(34:07):
and reward learning, even if it's through failure or success.
So what did you learn? Not like you get? You
got me a's all. I'm gonna reward your A, which
is definitely how my household was run. And you know,
no no shade out there for the parents. And because
there's I feel like there's enough pressure want to be
a perfect parent that this becomes very meta. But I

(34:29):
just found that growth mindset stuff fascinating and its applications
across shame and personal life, professional life and beyond. So
I think you hit on something really important, which is
how we should be responding when folks, if you, if
you're a manager or if you, you know, are managing folks,
how you should be responding, um, you know, when they
make mistakes, and how how you can sort of help normalize,

(34:50):
you know, culture of mistake making as loading processes, UM.
And I think we should talk about those after we
take a quick break and we're back. We're just getting
worked up talking about our mistakes and failure and really
how a lot of it, like many things in life,

(35:12):
tend to be a bit gendered, and so women are
really getting the short into the stick and when it
comes to um being allowed and given the space to
fail and fail gracefully in work scenarios. And what's interesting
about this is I think it really is important to
talk about how gender makes a difference. And so as
we were just saying, women are sort of, you know,

(35:32):
more likely to be perfectionists, and part of that, I
think is this idea of the glass cliff. And so
the glass cliff is this idea that women they feel
like their mistakes are sort of magnified and so they're
not sort of given room to make these kinds of
mistakes in a way that is fair. Right, Like, if
you're a woman, especially in a male dominated space, or
a woman of color, if you make a mistake, it

(35:52):
feels like that mistake is heightened and magnified, and it
kind of you can kind of get this anxiety around
being seen as one that's you know, constantly making mistakes,
are incompetent or anything like that. Yeah, the glass cliff
is it's also grounded in social science around minority versus
majority environments. So anyone who's a minority in a majority

(36:14):
environment and might be men in the occupation of the O, B,
G U, I. N Field for instance, or women in
leadership anywhere, really and especially women of color because of
your heightened visibility. Um. This also is similarly, it's actually
related to something in the research called stereotype threat. So

(36:36):
when you have heightened visibility based on your minority status
in any group, when you make a mistake, you feel
like you are often you know, and you have this
fear rightly, so because people often do this, people are
seeing your mistakes as emblematic of your race, or your gender,
or your the entire minority group you're representing. So when

(36:59):
you're the only black woman, let's say, at the in
the boardroom, and god forbid you make a mistake in
such a publicly visible arena, you are uh, not only
more likely to be seen as you know, oh here
goes another you know, insert whatever racial stereotype or gender
stereotype you want. They're making mistakes, but you're also given

(37:22):
less Uh what is the word less benefit of the
doubt less freedom to make mistakes because you're not only
more visible, but you're also you know, just it's not
seen as another white dude who's making an average, every
day mistake. Totally, And I've seen that play out so
many times, like time and time and time again, and
I think part of it is this idea that I

(37:44):
believe that for white male employees, there's a lot of
us like giving them the benefit of the doubt and
not assuming male intent. And I think that women people
of color do not get that same that same you know,
that same leeway. Men are often promoted based on their
potential loans, whereas women and minority folks or people of

(38:04):
color really more more largely are promoted on their past experience.
And I even think, I know I mentioned before, you know,
being in a Silicon Valley startup that I felt like
I got this leeway to fail all that, But even
that can be kind of gendered in those environments, and
that like, who is it that gets that freedom? It's
usually white men and white men pretty much, you know,
run to look on valley, And so being invited into

(38:25):
that space as a woman or a person of color
can being incredibly tricky to navigate. Yeah, it can be
anxiety provoking. So what let's talk about what women, you know,
the average women at work can do in light of
you know, we're telling we're telling you some mixed messages here,
aren't We were saying, don't be afraid, let's normalize failure.
Let's let's lean into the discomfort of failing. Let's not

(38:48):
internalize our work mistakes. But at the same time, we're
operating in an environment that doesn't treat women's mistakes with
the same amount of empathy. And you know, understanding as
always is give into uh, non women, you know what
I mean? So all we really want is to be
seen as individuals, not be seen as, oh, she's making
a mistake. There goes another woman making a mistake on

(39:10):
behalf of her entire gender and that's being seen as
something indicative of my race or gender. Right, So what
can we women do in light of this tough situation. Well,
one thing is, um, don't obsess over your mistake. I
think that really goes back to this idea of guilt
versus shame. Right, if you make a mistake, it's okay.
It's natural to feel guilty, to feel bad about it.
You know, you shouldn't be thrilled with yourself, but you shouldn't,

(39:33):
you know, go over and over and over it in
your head, play it out for years and years. I mean,
some of the stories that are in UMS book are
mistakes that people made when they were young and that
they that stuck with them. They you know, they still
mull it over years and years and years. It's like
when you say the wrong thing at a party back
in and you're still replaying that cringeing conversation in which

(39:55):
I do setting again. The cringe is real. The cringe
is real. So don't know, don't obsess over it. At
a certain point, you know, you gotta let it go.
You gotta move on. And I think one of one
of uh Carol Dwex pieces of advice is it's really
about changing the voice in your head. It's hard to

(40:15):
silence the voice in your head. It's hard to say,
stop beating yourself up about this, you know, it's hard
to say, mute yourself. Mute your voice in your head,
because we all have the inner critic. Instead, talk back,
talk back to your inner critic. When your inner critic
is saying, Emily, you're the worst. What made you think
you were able to sing the national anthem without forgetting
all the words that your senior night volleyball? Did that

(40:39):
really happen? It's so really happened that I'm sweating about
it metic and I feel like a bad patriot. But
it really it was just stage right, And there's like
twenty people in the whole world who might know what
I'm talking about if they listen to But you know
how awkward that was, if you know, please right into
the show let us know. You know, No, I don't
want to relive it anymore, because we're not obsessing on
forgetting the words from national anthem anyway, which is why

(41:02):
I've had so much empathy for every artist who's ever
gone up there and kind of messed up the words.
Oh you're like, oh, give her a break. You're like.
It happens even to the most devoted patriots out there.
I love this country anyway. Uh. The moral of the
story here, I'm sweating, Okay. The moral of the story
here is to talk back to that voice and instead
of saying you're a bad singer or you're a bad patriot,

(41:23):
say you just didn't practice the words often enough. You
didn't have the words in front of you. Tell yourself
a story that explains what you could have done differently.
What you could have done differently is learning. That's what
that's the process of learning. Identifying what led to the
mistake is where you actually glean some knowledge through the mistake.
Instead of I'm a bad person, I'm a bad this,

(41:46):
I I'm just bad at math, or I'm just bad
at writing or whatever it might be, identify what you
could do differently next time. And that is what I
learned from organizing through the form of what you probably
know pluses and deltas, or at least tell us about that.
So basically, at the end of a training, you know
you The way that we would do it in in

(42:06):
the organizing context is you get a big piece of
butcher paper and you lift up roses or pluses, these
are things that went great, and then you lift up
thorns or deltas, things that could have been better, could
have been you know, things that were not so great.
And really that has been a really helpful tool in
my my political work because there when you have a training,

(42:26):
things are gonna go badly, things are going to be
not be great any kind of event that you're putting together.
And honestly, sometimes sometimes you know, I used to live
in fear for the roses and delta, the plusses, and
I'm already messing enough that the roses and thorns, pluses
and delta is part of a training. I used to
like live in fear of this, but by the end
I would say like, yeah, that did happen, or yeah
that would have been great, or yeah I am bad

(42:47):
at this aspect of training and could get better at it.
You know. Well, what I love about the word delta too,
or the process of pluses and deltas, is that a
it's communal. You're not doing this alone, You're doing in community.
So there's alway a conversation. I think when we bring
solitude or silence to our mistakes, we bring shame to them.
So when we're actually able to have an audible, out

(43:08):
loud conversation about mistakes. It feels relieving and and comforting.
So there's lots of uses of of Delta's but it
felt little triangle, which in mathematics stands for variation or variable.
And so what we're actually talking about is change. What
would we change next time? What might we do differently?
Not what sucked and not what did you fail at?

(43:29):
And not what are you terrible at? But it's next time,
what might we try differently? And because it's communal, because
it's framed in that way, it feels like there's some
actionable learning there. Yeah, I'll never forget doing a training where,
by no fault with my own the training space air
conditioner wasn't working. And this was in d C in
the middle of July, so it was very hot and

(43:50):
we had to move. We had one day in there,
and you know, we're in this room all day and
it's hot and it's muggy, and eventually like someone passed out.
It was really bad. I don't know. We were doing
plus pluses and Delta's one of the ductas was it
would be nice to not have participants passing out and
I was like, yeah, I would change that next time,
I would change that. We'll see what you're saying if
you're talking about an outcome, right, so this was a

(44:12):
bad outcome, but really I would you know, I hope
someone pushed you further to be like, well, what might
we do differently to make sure no one passes out?
Because focusing on the bad outcome. While so natural of
our brands to say here's what the bad outcome was,
we really have to think about what did we how
did we what effort did we not put in enough? Right?
You know what, I'm I'm not being very articulate. I

(44:34):
really like stuck in my failure brain today apparently, But
I'm just trying to your back on the volleyball field
in like I'm just trying to live the podcast. Yeah.
Another way is I think I said this before. Just
know that you're not your mistake, right, don't internalize it.
You you know, it's easy to think, oh, I'm I'm

(44:56):
not the person I thought I was, or I'm not
good at this, not good at that. You don't you
know again, tell yourself that story that you maybe you
are good at math, or you have the potential to
be good at math. You just didn't study for that
one test or whatever, And honestly, I almost want to
sign Mindset by Carol Dwyke has required reading for every
like greater out there or every definitely every educator out there.

(45:18):
Because if you're in a position also as someone's supervisor
or parent or sister or whatever who's messing up, when
you witness someone else's mistake, you can tell them one
of two stories. You know, Michael little Michael Jordan's maybe
basketball's not your sport, you know, as his high school

(45:38):
coach must have probably thought, and when he got cut
from the team, you might want to just say, maybe
you should focus on something different because this is painful
and scary and I don't want to talk about it,
and failure brings up failure, like failure in you brings
up failure in me, and I can't handle it. Or
you might say, well, you know, do you want to continue?
What might you do differently next time? Like how did
you prayer? Do you want to talk about this? Like

(45:58):
do you want to process this? Because I'm here if
you want to talk about it, and you know, pointing
to pass successes is another good strategy for dealing with
someone else's mistake, if they're if they're screwing up, whether
this is you or someone that works for you, perhaps
you know, pointing to a time when they were successful
in the past, and then leaning in with curiosity to discuss,

(46:20):
you know, what led to this mistake, not why are
you such an idiot? Yeah, and I think to go
back to my my example of my my, you know,
social media mess up at in a media company. That's
what I thought was so glaringly wrong in that situation.
So we you know, we did happen. I mean I

(46:40):
I tweeted something that was meant from terrible. What happened
after the mistake? Oh, I mean I got I got
chewed out by my boss um and she made me
feel I mean, no, no, she probably not listening to this.
This wasn't even that long ago, but she I got
shooed out by my boss and there was no I
mean I felt horrible about it. I felt terrible, and
I there was no sense of the fact that it

(47:00):
wasn't just my mess up, that there were there should
have been fail safe in place, and there was no
sense of the fact that like, yeah, I'm one person,
I've been working, I've been on for a very long time.
I'm doing this at one am I have. I'm not
being supported or set up to do my best work.
Not that it was at my fault, because it totally was,
but there was no It just seemed like we treated

(47:21):
it like this anomaly that I did, and that it
meant like, oh, you're not cut out to work in
news or media. And I think about that moment a
lot because I think that if if it had been
you know, working in a social media environment, mistakes are
going to happen. Here's what we do when they when
they happen, that would have been better. Because all my
teammates were like, oh, yeah, the same thing happened to me.
I did the same thing. And that was the first

(47:42):
time I was like, Oh, everyone's messing up at this job.
Everyone has made a mistake at this job. And before
that conversation, I was like, Oh, it just happened to me.
I was I was a person that was messed up.
I you know, I was broken or not cut out
or this and that. And that's such a good reminder.
When you are dealing with someone else who's made a mistake,
one of the ways you can make them feel better
is to talk about your the mistakes you've made in

(48:04):
the past and how you've overcome them. You can actually say, listen,
this happens. I just did this a year ago and
it was the worst feeling in the world. You're probably
feeling terrible right now, and I want you to know
this is not you know, this is We're all human.
We all make mistakes, and I think the fact that
we've made this mistake a few times now indicates that
we got to do to do some things differently. So
let's focus on what we can do differently. That's so

(48:25):
that's you dis nailed it, because it's about making it
not about the individual and saying like, well, clearly, this
is something that happens, and how can we learn from
this that this keeps happening, and not being like, oh,
what's wrong with you that you did this? And making
it so internal. The last thing I want to say
on this podcast, however, And I know we're like flipping
back and forth here and in advice, but I I

(48:47):
don't wanna. I don't want anyone to be confused about
owning your mistakes in in a place of owning your achievement.
I don't think we should judge women who own their
achievements vocally and out loud. And I don't think we
should downplay our our achievements and only talk about our

(49:07):
mistakes in a self deprecating way. I think, yes, it's
okay to be human. We should be acknowledged that we're
all human and we make mistakes. But as women especially
we should We shouldn't judge each other or feel like
we can't express when we're killing it as well. Like
I don't want your mistakes on your resume, ladies, I
think we all know that totally, and I think it's

(49:28):
for me. I think it's two sides of the same coin.
Like you should be if a woman is talking about
a failure publicly, you should not be like, oh, well,
women are terrible at this. And if a woman is
talking about her successes, you shouldn't be like, oh well, women,
this woman is full of herself, right. I think it's
as women and as feminists, I think it's always about
being able to give, to be given that space to

(49:51):
be full authentic or full authentic selves, and whether that
means killing it or whether that means crying in the bathroom,
we are full, multifaceted people being given the space to
be those people, human beings and human beings. I mean
it goes without saying, but obviously we want to give
people of all genders that freedom because men can't miss

(50:11):
maybe things, but but it's true, like the whole spectrum
of gender, we all just want to be seen as
human beings who are fallible and and still worthy. Completely.
I love it, And for lots of famous failures and
women's brilliant stories. Who really provides some inspiring insights to
I'm thinking about Vera Wang, how she became a successful,

(50:34):
insanely successful designer after being a figure skater who failed
to make it to the Olympics. Yeah, oh yeah, there's
some really fascinating like the j. K. Rowling story, Arianna Huffington's.
You look into these women's backgrounds and you'll realize, and
Jessica Baccall's book is a great place to get started.

(50:55):
You'll realize rather quickly that the overnight success story that
America seems to be so obsessed with is far from,
in my opinion, the most worthwhile story to read like
that narrative of triumphing in the face of challenge is
much more interesting to me and motivating. So yeah, I
think we beat failure. I think we kicked it and

(51:18):
I done hopefully, listeners, you tell us what do you think?
I'm sure you'll help us point out our failures on occasion.
I have to tell you starting being a podcast co
host has been a very humbling Oh, if you want to,
if you want people to help you lovingly discover places
where you need health and improvement, become a podcaster and

(51:38):
so we really I mean, I clearly love talking failures.
So you want to hear about your your failures. You can,
you know, send us an email or tell us about
a time where things didn't go well or how you
handled it when someone on your team that you manage failed.
You know, I want to hear about all of your
relationships to failure. What does that relationship look like for you?
So you can reach out to us on Instagram if
you want to take a picture of maybe a you're

(52:00):
a baker and your cake turned out crappy? I don't know. Yeah,
instead of the highlight reel, let's put some low lights. Yeah,
Blooper is real. I like it. So you can hit
us up on Instagram at stuff mom never told you.
You can hit us up on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast,
or send us a good old fashion email at mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com