Building Cultures That Learn from Failure

Part 4 of our 4-part conversation on turning adversity into opportunity.

Organizations often say they embrace failure — but do they really? Executive coach Whitney Faires and host Russel Lolacher dive into how leadership accountability and honest feedback shape a healthier workplace culture. From avoiding toxic positivity to taking extreme ownership, Whitney shares why cultures that accept setbacks as learning opportunities unlock trust, loyalty, and long-term success.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: Sounds great, Whitney, but we don't work in a bubble.

Leaders can control what they can control, but we will sometimes work in organizations that say we embrace failure, which is crap because they say it, but don't follow it. So when we are, we've got our team, the team's working well, we're doing all the work that we've talked about already, but then the culture around it might have a very different perspective of adversity and failure, and how do you get through that?

Because that's hard to ignore.

Whitney Faires: Yeah, it, it is definitely hard to ignore, ignore. Which is why I think company culture and where you choose to work, there's some limitation as to how that's gonna go based on where you are. I'll tell you my belief as as our role as leaders, which is we are ultimately accountable for everything that happens on our team.

So that means if someone on my team makes a mistake, it's not their fault, it's my fault. And I think too often we as leaders have this mindset like, well, when they call me, I'll be like, that person, they, they, they did a really great job at all these things. They kind of had a couple mistakes. I got 'em course corrected for the future. Don't worry about them. That's not my message. My message is, listen, this is on me. Here's where I coached them. Well, here's where I was able to oversee what was happening. Make sure we're on time. Here's where I missed. Here's what I'm gonna do differently next time. Blame me. And so I, I try to take that pressure off my team because ultimately I'm accountable for everything that happens in any business that I own. So I, I make sure that I demonstrate that to my team and that they know that their failures kind of stay at my level and not go up. And then it's my job to create the change that needs to happen for my team to be successful.

And so, yes, you're gonna take some heat at times and there there's going to be situations where you should have done better. But I'll tell you what, like when I've had those instances where my team has missed and, and I, it's sat on my shoulders, it's either I'm gonna get better. Or I'm gonna be be moved out, so I'm gonna find a way to get better.

And that's truly to me, a sense of motivation.

Russel Lolacher: What are you communicating to executive who may not see it that way?

Whitney Faires: Well, ultimately, if, if they're firm in their position, I will tell 'em, listen, I, I respectfully disagree that the, the failure is on this person. Yes. Like they carried out the plan. They own part of the responsibility in it, but you hired me to run the business. So, it, it's, it ultimately falls on me to ensure that person is prepared to execute what needs to happen to derive the result.

So it's, there's shared ownership. I'm not saying that the person was perfect and, and I just messed everything up, but, I'm the person that's accountable just like that executive is a person that's ultimately accountable for hiring the right people and training them to, to drive the results of the organization.

Russel Lolacher: And I don't think a lot of leaders understand the benefits as well of doing that and of having a high functioning team that embraces, embraces that failure and moves on from it, and then has that next success, navigate or, or to varying degrees sort of thing. Because if you're doing this well, if you're modeling this, well, there's other business areas going, what are they doing right? Why, why is that... I wanna be on that team as opposed to getting regularly punished for every little thing micromanagement over here. It is, it's showing how work can be, and I don't think we see that enough. We just see it of going, it's an other situation as opposed to the ideal.

Whitney Faires: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that it. I tell people all the time when you go into people leadership, a lot of people think oh, I'm moving up in my career. It's more money. It's this. It is, it is a complete change in what you're doing in the, the amount of responsibility and accountability that falls on your shoulders.

You're dealing with people, that means all of their issues personally and professionally. That means all of the wins go to them and the losses go to you. And if you do that. If you take extreme ownership of your team and their results, then you will have a team that will run through walls for you.

And when I said leadership isn't that hard at the beginning, I mean, it's hard of course, but it, it's, we overcomplicate it. It's like just be a human being, right? Be there to support people, get to know people, take ownership for, for putting them in a place to be successful with their plan, with their skills, and then, protect them to the extent that they need protection when things go wrong. When they've done things into your guidance and it goes wrong, then you know, stand in front of them, take the heat, help them grow, and guess what? They are going to run through a wall for you. They're gonna have more trust, more loyalty. They're gonna have increased motivation, and that's what creates that environment where people are like, gosh, like I wanna go work on that team. And I say that from a place where I definitely did it wrong as a 20 something year old leader. And 20 years later I'm going, gosh, like why did I overcomplicate this? But a lot of times it's, you gotta learn through experience and that's how it works.

Russel Lolacher: On the flip side of this, I, I mean, I talked about organizations not treating failure as well as they should, or at least as well as they say. But then there's the flip side of it where we get into toxic positivity where everything's great, all time and, oh, these aren't failures, these are butterflies in the wind.

It's just sort of these things that we minimize. I feel like how can we address that while encouraging some sort of perseverance?

Whitney Faires: Yes, I, I, you hit a, a nerve that drives me insane, which is we do nobody any good if we pretend that everything is great all the time. And so I, one of the things I teach in my leadership courses is how do we give feedback in a way that is constructive, actionable, and does not feel personal? Because otherwise we don't wanna hurt people's feelings and we, we don't wanna discourage them because they're trying really hard, despite they're not getting the result. So we're just like, Hey, good job. Maybe try this. And then they think, oh, I did great. They didn't even hear the try this part. They just heard it was great. I'm gonna keep doing it like that. And then it bubbles up and it gets really bad eventually. Right? That's how it usually goes.

So I think it's, first of all, you have to have, you have to build trust with people. I like when, when I have teammates that are, that are maybe, I can tell they had that toxic positivity, but then they're telling me something behind the scenes. I'm like either you can handle this or I can, you don't want me to step in because they're gonna know you came to me and said, they really frustrate me when they do things like this, so how can I help you have that conversation? And as leaders, we have to teach how to give the feedback. We have to set the standard of excellence, and we have to drive accountability to it. Which means, you've gotta go handle it yourself before you elevate it to me.

If you don't, I'm gonna ask you why not in a very nice way out of, in spirit of wanting you to be at your best and help others be at their best. So part of it's kind of that tone that you set up front of this is who we're gonna be as a team, whether it's with me and my peer group, me and those report to me, my leader and I, my business partner and I. Expectation setting starts that foundation of, of how we're gonna operate together.

Russel Lolacher: You touched earlier in our conversation about you wanna work in the right environment, the right culture, so make sure you're working in the right place to begin with. Before you get into any of this. What should we be looking for? What should HR and executive be doing to put guardrails up that embraces fail failure, that embraces adversary adversity for somebody on the outside looking in that may not know what to look for.

Whitney Faires: Yeah. Well, I, I would say from the outside looking in, first of all just like you show up at your best when you're interviewing, I mean, you, you have all the preparation done, you're, you're saying the right things. Probably the company is as well, and those that are representing the organization. So I think the questions that you ask are really critical.

You can't, you can't be afraid to ask the question if your gut is wow, this is a really intense results driven place, which may mean there's no tolerance for missing a number, missing a goal. Ask the question, and you can ask it in a way that's not like what happens if I miss my quota?

I mean, that's kind of a red flag. But to say, listen, like I know you have big goals. How do you empower people to be successful? Well, what would happen if that person actually missed?

Russel Lolacher: Mm-hmm.

Whitney Faires: What's the process for how you, you help them from there? Read between the lines. It's not always what they say, it's how they say it.

It's what they don't say but their, their body language and tone communicate that. And then just know what you're stepping into. You're not gonna know until you're in it, truthfully, but you can ask the questions to understand and if, if leaders are too busy to meet with you, if you said, Hey, I, I'd love to meet with your leaders for 20 minutes to kind of get a feel for how they lead in the company culture, that that tells you a lot right there. As an organization, I think that. What tends to happen is as you go up the ranks from not your frontline people leaders, but let's maybe your directors, your senior directors, your VPs, like that higher level leader the tendency is we assume they got to that role because they were excellent frontline leaders.

Not true. That's a misconception right there that I should have listed earlier, right? Not true. So whether you're a C-level person or SVP or a VP, those in your ranks, you have to validate how they're handling these situations, right? And a lot of times it's super easy because when it comes to you, you can see how they're reacting, how they're representing the situation, and, and then just ask them like, well, tell me how are you leading your person through this? And so it's not like HR. I love HR. They can put all the guardrails around it as possible. You have to know how your people, and their people are doing this in their, in their teams. And ask the questions, sit in on a debrief and make sure that you have confidence that they're doing in a way that makes you feel as productive.

Russel Lolacher: So anybody listening to this, they want that curiosity. They want that self-awareness. They want that understanding of control. Where do they start tomorrow? What's that baby step in the right direction?

Whitney Faires: Yeah. I would say, first of all, you have to do some deep reflection. What are the areas within myself that are my weak spots? Like I don't have to tell anybody about it, but when adversity hits, how do I feel about that? What, what do I associate that with? Does it make me feel like, oh man, I'm not good, or I'm, I'm not gonna make it.

When I'm in a room with higher level leaders, how do, how do I show up? What am I feeling? First, start with knowing yourself because you, you can't fix all the other stuff until you know what's happening in your head and in your heart. And then from there you can put a plan together, mentors, or work with your leader on development plans to start to build the skills that you need, but I think that reflection is work only you can do, and it's so important that internal self-awareness.

Russel Lolacher: That is Whitney Faires, an executive coach, keynote speaker, and leadership expert, and she's the founder of Whitney Faires Coaching, Speaking, and Development. Thank you so much for being here, Whitney. Really appreciate it.

Whitney Faires: Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.