The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 199 - Mistakes vs. Failures

Transcript:

Jen: Hello there, listeners. We are coming up quickly on Episode 200 of The Long and The Short Of It, and Pete and I have decided to do something a little different for that episode. We are doing an Ask Me Anything episode...well, actually an Ask Us Anything episode. So if you have a question you'd like to ask me or Pete or both of us, head on over to thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/ama and ask us your questions. Enjoy this week's episode.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: So, I'm back from three weeks galavanting around Europe, and-

Jen: Must be nice.

Pete: I mean, it was. And now that I'm back, I find myself looking at various things that we did on our trip and trying to take lessons from them that we might be able to unpack on this podcast. And I think I've got one.

Jen: Okay. Let's hear it, lessons learned while honeymooning in paradise by Pete Shepherd. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: ...and I feel like we lost all our listeners, because they're like, "Screw you."

Jen: "Bye."

Pete: "I don't want to listen to this guy talking about his trip." No, I think...so the topic I have in mind, the idea that I've been thinking about and noodling on which came out of this trip is the difference between mistakes and failures, and what we might learn from said distinction. And so I guess, to start, when we were in a foreign country...so we spent some time in France and we spent some time in Italy, my wife and I. And-

Jen: Wait, what? Your what? Your what?

Pete: My wife, yeah. We also eloped, that's a whole separate conversation, perhaps.

Jen: Future episode.

Pete: Anyway, stay tuned. The thing that happens when you're in a foreign country that is not English-speaking as a first language is you make a bunch of mistakes. I made a bunch of mistakes, Tracey made a bunch of mistakes in trying to communicate to someone working in a cafe, someone working in a bar, someone working in a restaurant, whatever. We were trying our best to speak French or Italian to the relevant people and inevitably, you make all kinds of mistakes, and trip up, and it's awkward, and it's funny, and it's uncomfortable. And in a few cases, like in one case, Tracey attempted to order a Diet Coke and was given a glass of red wine, which amused me greatly. And then in another case, in Italy, we tried to order two espressos and we ended up with two cappuccinos. Like, these little ridiculous mistakes happened almost every day. And the reason I've been thinking about it is making those mistakes felt quite comical, felt quite light, felt quite easy. And yet, when I think about perhaps making a mistake but maybe more towards like a failure when I'm back home working on a project, the idea of a mistake feels more like a failure, which feels more high stakes. And so I guess I have all of this intro to say, what can we learn from low stakes mistakes? ("Low stakes mistakes", there's a fun thing to say.) And how might we take some of that levity from ordering the wrong coffee accidentally into our lives when we think about failures? Does that make sense?

Jen: Yeah. It's such an interesting distinction. And I don't know that I've ever separated, intentionally separated these two ideas to look at them at the same time before. So, I'm just even starting by trying to wrap my head around my own idea of what is a mistake and what is a failure. Like a mistake feels like, feels recoverable, feels like there's something that could be like quick learning, where it's like, "Ooh, I made a mistake. What's the learning from that? Let me get back on the horse and keep riding." Whereas a failure, the word "failure" has a finality to it in my mind, where I'm like, "Okay. That's over. It's behind me. And the learning is for the new thing." I don't know if you think of it the same way, but that's immediately where my brain is going, is wanting to define these words for myself.

Pete: Yes. Okay. I'm obsessed with this idea of recoverable versus final, yeah, because I tend to agree. Like a "mistake", when I hear that word, I don't groan. I don't feel a bunch of baggage or weight on my shoulders about not wanting to make them. Whereas when I hear "failure", I'm kind of like, "Oh dear. I want to avoid those as much as possible."

Jen: Right.

Pete: Which is interesting because, I mean, we've done an episode before on failure where we talked about this idea that all the people that you might admire, whether they be authors or thought leaders or entrepreneurs or business owners or whoever, they are often standing on a pile of like failures or mistakes, or both. And we were trying to reframe, for ourselves, the fact that failure is a necessary part of getting to where you need to go to be atop said mountain. So, I don't know. But even having said that, I tend to agree that "failure" feels like it has a finality to it that "mistakes" doesn't. And I'm wondering in this moment, is that just because of the story we tell ourselves? Like do we overrate the finality of a failure, as opposed to the recoverability of a mistake?

Jen: My mind is being blown as we're having this conversation, because I really have never thought about these words this way before. And we've spent a lot of time, on this show, encouraging ourselves and others to welcome failure as a learning opportunity. And all of that time, I didn't realize how I was holding that word in my mind, like all of the baggage, as you mentioned, that came along with it. And I'm wondering if it might be helpful to try to change the language around it. So, instead of calling something a "failure"...since we get to label our experiences with whatever words we want, instead of choosing to label something a "failure", does it help to enter the learning process by instead reframing it as a "mistake", as something that feels more recoverable just because of the word you choose to describe the experience. And that's what is causing my brain to malfunction right now, because it's exploding into a million pieces. I'm such a fan of getting messy and making mistakes. I feel like that is at the core of the work I'm trying to do with my clients every day. "Let's make mistakes. Let's make big mistakes. Let's learn from these mistakes. Let's get messy with it. Let's try things as an experiment. If it doesn't work, we'll learn, we'll move on."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And that way of thinking is so helpful. And it's invigorating. Like, it's exciting to make mistakes in that context. But when I try to put the same level of energy around like, "Let's fail. Let's have a failure," I don't get the lightness that I'm getting when I'm encouraging like, "Let's make mistakes. Let's have fun. Let's try it."

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I tend to agree. There's so much more levity in mistakes, and I love levity.

Jen: Yes, Rule #6.

Pete: Right.

Jen: "Don't take yourself so goddamn seriously."

Pete: Yes. Thank you, Benjamin Zander. So, I also feel like my brain is exploding. I don't know if I'd quite realized the kind of wounds I was opening with this episode.

Jen: Yeah, the can of diet coke you were opening with this episode.

Pete: Or the glass of red wine, as it were. Which also, sidebar, created a whole separate conversation amongst Tracey and I (and since, many others), which is, if that happens to you, do you say anything and try and amend the mistake? Or do you just go, "Oh well, looks like I'm having a glass of wine today." Because if it was me and I was on my own, I would have been like, "Well, I guess I'm having a wine." Whereas Tracey, you know like absolutely within her right, said, "Oh," and you know, tried to explain in French, "I meant a Diet Coke." And in the end, she got the Diet Coke and she was happy. So that was a whole like sidebar of, how do you react when someone gives you the wrong thing and makes a mistake? In any case, the thing I'm really trying to wrap my head around is, I think there's a rhyme here or a linkage here to how Tim Ferriss talks about fear setting.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: And I can put the link to his TED talk in the Box O' Goodies. But one of the things that he articulates in his exercise is, "Write down the worst-case scenario of a decision or a project or an idea that you're noodling on. And then, write down how you would get back to where you are before you made that decision or started that project." And ultimately, what I took away from that is, things are usually more recoverable than we give them credit for. So we tell ourselves a story that, "The world will end if I record a bad podcast," but what you realize pretty quickly is, "Oh, it's actually really recoverable. We'll just record another one." And so, the reason I bring that up is I feel like I, and many others, are so afraid of failure because we think and we tell ourselves a story that it's not recoverable. But actually, it probably is more recoverable than we realize. And so in your distinction, in this distinction that we're making, it's actually probably more of a mistake, which feels not like something I need to like run away from and avoid.

Jen: Yes. Oh my gosh, I'm so enjoying this conversation. Just two weeks ago, I sent the Tim Ferriss Fear Setting exercise to a bunch of my clients, because they were in the process of setting some summer goals. And I wanted to uncover some of the things that you're talking about, which is, we put so much stake in what we're aiming for that we assume that it would be impossible to recover if it didn't turn out the way we wanted it to. And that exercise is so great at helping you to see how recoverable things are.

Pete: Yeah. So I feel like the conversation, so far, is really helpful to think about around our own relationship with mistakes/failures. And then the other direction I've been noodling on this is, in the context of say leadership or collaborating, is, can we also give others the space and the permission to make mistakes? Then, being the leader, can we reframe a member of your team accidentally sending the wrong email not as a complete failure that is unrecoverable from, but actually just as a human mistake that we all make, that they didn't intend to but is very recoverable from? So I feel like there's a leadership learning here, in how you, I guess, give your teams permission to make recoverable mistakes and realize that most things are recoverable.

Jen: Oh, I think that is so important. First of all, it feels like offering someone else grace, which is always a lovely thing to do.

Pete: "Grace", that's the word.

Jen: Right?

Pete: Mmm-hmm.

Jen: But it's also the reality check that it can be so easy to quickly get triggered into doomsday mode and to over-dramatize something that is actually recoverable. And I wonder...well, it's just like the pre-mortems that we talk about all the time. That doing the Fear Setting exercise, and getting ahead of that and going, "Okay. If this doesn't go according to plan, what do we stand to lose? And what would it take for us to recover from that loss," helps you have some foresight, which I think makes it easier to extend grace, like you're prepared for it.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: The other thing it's making me think about is how much ownership and accountability is in the word "mistake", which I really like. That it's like, "I made a mistake." There's ownership there, which I think also requires owning the possibility for growth and learning, as opposed to, "That project was a failure."

Pete: Right.

Jen: "Too bad."

Pete: Right.

Jen: But, "I made a mistake," means, "I'm taking myself on and observing how I contributed, and then I have a chance to course correct for the future."

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, I like that. It's a level of humility in being willing to accept and acknowledge and say out loud that, "I made a mistake."

Jen: Right.

Pete: Yeah. As opposed to, it almost feels...you know, if you were to say, "The project was a failure," it almost feels a little like passing the buck,-

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: -as opposed to, "I made a mistake. And this is the thing that I mucked up."

Jen: This feels like it might be the right time for a confession to our listeners, Pete.

Pete: Oh, I thought you were going to say a confession to me, "I no longer want to do this podcast with you."

Jen: No, no, no. But it just feels like a meta confession, which is, we've already tried to record this episode once. And we made some pretty egregious mistakes in how we set it up, so it went straight to the cutting room floor. And then before we started recording this, we had a conversation about what mistakes we had made, and decided to set up the structure for the top of the episode a little differently to see if it would lead somewhere else. And guess what? It did.

Pete: Here we are.

Jen: And I think this one's going to get published.

Pete: Oh, I love that. I love that. I also think there's a relatability to acknowledging mistakes that I find really refreshing. I actually think that, you know, if we continue the theme of this podcast being an example, our incredible editor, Sarah Nichols, (I think I've shared this before) when she took over the editing from me and did a far better job than me...she actually was so good at cleaning up the audio that when she shared it with us, you and I were both like, "Oh, something sounds too polished. Like, we sound too, almost, scripted," because she does such a good job of taking out "ums" and "ahs" and essentially mistakes, little pauses or like me interrupting you and you interrupting me. And we had to almost like encourage her to include a few of the mistakes because it felt more human and relatable and more like a conversation. Which is what this podcast is, a conversation.

Jen: Yeah, it turns out humans make mistakes. And perhaps talking about mistakes, owning our mistakes, identifying opportunities for growth and sharing that becomes yet another tool in the empathy toolbox. Mistakes are connectors.

Pete: Hmm. Mistakes as connectors. And obviously, the tie in to empathy, so naturally, I really like that. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.