John Maxwell: Getting a Return on Your Failures

23:18I don't think it causes you to maybe make poor decisions if you think it's going to end. You might cut corners or do things like that instead of being in a pursuit of something. Do you agree with that? Well, totally. I'll tell you what disappointment is. Disappointment is thinking that there's a place where there's happiness. It's not a destination. It's not a place. It's not a place. It's not something I did. It's not some place I arrived. It's what I'm doing. I mean, is there anything more boring than a person that has that been there, done that mindset? Oh, I've been there, done that. You just look and say, dear God, let me leave you as quick as I can.

23:57Because immediately, it's like expert. It's like expert. I mean, when people talk to me about your leadership expert, I say, I'm not an expert. The more you know, the more you know you don't know. And the more you know you don't know, the more you know you need to know. And no matter how much you know, there's more out there. And I remember when I wrote my first leadership book, I thought, I'll write a very good leadership book and I'll have done leadership. Well, I wrote that leadership book. It wasn't that good, to be honest with you. And I thought, oh, man, there's more that I could write about leadership.

24:31Again, once you keep that mindset of learning and growing, it's kind of like you think you're going to figure it out and you think you're going to get to the end, but you're not going to figure it out and you're not going to get the end. And then one day you wake up and say, I never want to figure it out. I never want to get to the end because it's in the chase. A million percent, this is right, by the way. I've just lived it. But you were the first person that came along. You guys, I think everyone in my audience thinks I work very hard. I think I do. You're another level. You're another level.

25:06We've flown around together. I've been fortunate to fly with him. The way he flies is very nice. But when you get on the plane with him and there's other people around, it's like, okay, what are you working on? What do you need help with? This is what I'm working on. These are my questions. And he and I are the two weirdos because at some point, inevitably, everybody else eventually crashes out and it's John and I together going back and forth, and I'm just learning. But I guess the thing that, I think on failure, maybe you cover it in the book, so I'd like you to talk about this. How do you, because not all failure is good, is it?

25:37So how do you know, or is all good? Meaning you have this chapter in the book, challenge my thinking on this, or explain it to me. You say, know the difference in a good miss and a bad miss. Huge. What's that mean? Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you brought it up, Ed. Again, just like keeping failure and success together, I never heard anybody talk about or read about until I wrote it. Yeah, I have not either. I'm going to tell you something. I've never heard anybody talk about this. Okay. But there is a difference between a good miss and a bad miss. All right. A good miss is still a miss, but you got a little closer.

26:09A bad miss, you got a little farther. It's like this. A good miss is when I have a failure. And by the way, you never know whether you have a good miss or a bad miss based on what the failure is. It's your response to the failure that determines the good myths and bad myths. Nobody talks about this, but watch this. Watch this. So let's say I messed something up. So what do I do? I say, wow, that didn't work. I got to make adjustments. Good myths. Now I'm saying, oh, I've learned that. Don't do that anymore. Change here. I make adjustments. That's a good myths. A bad myths. I make excuses. That's a bad myths.

26:46What do you do with excuses except make more excuses? I've never known anybody go from excuse to success. I've never had. Me either. I know they go from failure to success, but not because excuses takes awareness. When I make excuses, I personally say I don't want to be aware of what could be out there. And you can't fix what you don't know needs to be fixed. And so, therefore, we muddle in. That's a bad miss. We're staying that. We stay in that. But it's the response to the failure that determines whether the miss is a good one or a bad one. So when people say, I failed, okay, I got it. I failed a lot of times.

27:30Let's talk about your response. What's your response? Because when these guys are saying the greatest lesson I ever learned had failure in it, it's because they had good misses. Outstanding. When people say, I'm done, it's over, it's terrible, it's because they had bad misses. Outstanding. Doesn't that make sense? Yes. There's a part of the book, which I'm going to let you guys read in the book, about kind of the victim identity that we take on that goes down this road also. Totally. It's earlier in the book than this part. Yeah, I've had some bad misses too. Yeah. I've had some bad misses where I pointed fingers and didn't learn from it.

28:07Of course. And a lot of times you end up repeating that mistake in another form if you don't take something from it. You either learn from the failure, which is a good miss, or you leave the failure, which is a bad miss. And most people, they want to leave the scene as quick as they say, oh, my gosh, what happened? It wasn't me. But the moment you leave, you learn nothing. Leaving is a bad miss because it doesn't let you – you didn't stay around long enough to learn. That's so good. And you just have to – I tell people all the time, you've got to hang with your failure a while. This is good. There's a lot to learn here.

28:38Don't get off the operating table too quickly. Let the surgeon do the work. The other thing you don't do, at least in my observation, I need to do better at this, but I want to talk about leading other people through failure. Meaning, one thing I've watched, I'll just leave it at that, but I don't see you, when you course correct or coach, my observation of you, you don't seem to be judging the person's failure. And even when some of them have been some failures, judgment failures, we'll say, right? So how do you lead somebody, whether that be business or a child of yours? And maybe it's different in those two and take your time on either one.

29:16But what's your philosophy on leading others through a failure? Well, first of all, all I have to do is look at my failures. And it takes me off the judgment roll real quick. I mean, my gosh, I have had. In fact, I think highly successful people probably fail more than unsuccessful. I agree with that. Because they keep trying it. They're out there attempting. And so if you're, hey, if you attempt a thousand times, you're going to have several hundred misses. If you attempt 10, you may only have six or seven. So I think the effort creates a lot of possibilities for failure. But when I look at that failure, what I understand is, and trying to help other people through it is two things.

29:58One is nothing helps people handle failure more than me to talk to them about my failures. Okay. I mean, Ed, I've heard you talk. When you do some of your teaching, you're a master at talking about the hard lessons that you learned in that process. So you do, to tell people you have failed and then them to look at you and see where you are. Yes, that's right. Now, here's what I tell you. When successful people talk about their failures, then failure gets tagged with successful people. This guy. It's just crazy good. It's so good. But when you watch people that have failed talk about their failures, you say, oh, my God, don't want to do that.

30:43That's a loser for sure. And so what I say is when you're successful, the more you talk about failure, the more you help people see it from a perspective of positivity. And so you do a great – because here's what happens. Okay. Ed, I join your team. And you're highly successful. And I'm just starting out. I'm a newbie. And I hope I do it right. You're talking about all your successes. And then I go out. And of course, I don't do it right. You're never good the first time. You're never good the second time. It's like your daughter. What happens when you have five calls and they're all no's? So you're not good.

31:16Well, immediately I look at you and I thought, well, look at Ed. Oh, my gosh. He's so good. And then what do I do? I disqualify myself. Amen. I just said, well, I don't have his gifts. I don't get his opportunity. And so what happens is when you talk about the success, you discourage people. When you talk about failure, you encourage people, especially when you're a successful failure. Gosh, that's so true. It's so encouraging. It just, it lifts because, guess what? When you talk about your failures, but I see that you've overcome them. So when I fail, I say, well, Ed did that. But look, he overcome it.

31:52I can overcome them too. It's a whole different mindset. And I wish that successful people, I wish they would talk about their failures more. So do I. because that's where the learning and the growing is. And I'll tell you what else. I'm 78, and people see me kind of like the highlight of my life. I wish they could see me at 28. If I could have one genie wish, it would be, I wish you could have seen me communicate at 28. I wasn't that good. I wish you could have. Because they would be greatly encouraged. What they're doing is they're seeing a man who has done 50-plus years of personal daily growth every day.

32:27And so, yes, it's kind of like in the beginning, you're not as bad as people think you are, but in the end, you're really not as good as people think you are either. And I have this great desire to let everybody know, I wasn't really that good. You just have to understand, I made a commitment to intentionally grow and develop myself, but I wasn't that good. I wasn't. And if they would have seen me, they would have seen, then they would see not the end result, but they would see what growth will do for a person. John, I've watched it in the last 10 years that I've been your friend. I've actually watched it at this stage of your life.

33:01I'm getting better. You are getting better. I'm getting better. I am. Is there, in those 50 years, is there a particular situation where you failed that you could maybe share that did cause you to grow or make a pivot or look at failure differently? Do you think of one? I mean, I'm sure there's a lot, but I mean, is there one that stands out? When I was 40, I did inventory, kind of that midlife kind of, a halftime thing. And I got a little discouraged because I thought, I'm not quite as far as I thought I would get. And so I did the personal inventory. Why am I not as far as I got? And I came to a conclusion about three days later that I really, I had spent a lot of time on my personal growth and development, but I hadn't spent enough time on developing my team.

33:40And I said, Maxwell, if you don't grow your team, they can't go with you. So good, so good, so good. New spring arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to 60 % off Rag & Bone, Marc Jacobs, Free People, and more. How did I not know Rack has Adidas? Because there's always something new. Join the Nordic Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney+. Let's go! Get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time!

34:22New friends. Gary Death Snake. And your last name? Death Snake. Dream Team. And new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus Rated PG. And right now you can get Disney Plus and Hulu for just$4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th. After three months, plan auto-renews and$12.99 a month terms apply. And so I made a pivot and I said, I'm going to really work on growing and developing my team. And that was one of the best decisions I ever made. But it was one of those times at halftime where I had to come and ask myself, am I willing to now make this big transition?

35:03Right. And it goes back to the law of the inner circle, the 21 laws, those closest to you determine the level of your success. And it was at that moment I thought, I will never hit my level of success unless I have great people around me. So I had better. We can only grow so much in personal capacity, but we can grow a lot more in team capacity. And so the idea of partnershiping and teamwork, there's something really beautiful about developing a great team until that one-on-one doesn't really, after a while, equal two, it equals three. There's a compounding there of that. Do you wish – your last book, we're talking about more like public leaders and stuff.

35:45And do you feel like if I'm a leader, I want you to give advice to leaders out there, and you have had a failure or a setback or a mistake. One of the things I wish for like in our public discourse, like our politicians, is for a leader to say, made a mistake. I got this one wrong. I apologize. I'm going to course correct this. My intent wasn't to do this, but I blew it. I missed the call there and we're going to get it right next time. It's almost like it seems like in our culture today, failure is such a bad thing that if you even admit one, you're somehow disqualified forever. I wish – do you feel that way too?

36:21I wish more of a – and so if you're speaking to someone who runs a company or leads a family, which is a leader, a mother that's listening to this, it's okay to acknowledge you've had a failure or a setback or made a mistake. And that's a redemptive thing to do, an important thing to do. For both you and the person who's hearing you. It's a two-way redemptive thing. When I admit my failures, I get in touch with my humanity, which allows me now to be able to really grow. So it's good for me, but it's also good for the other person. You know, it's funny because I remember last year when we had a couple candidates running for president.

36:59I told Margaret before the first presidential debate, I said, I know who I'm going to vote on. And she said, well, who are you going to vote on for? I said, the first person in the debate that looks in the camera and said, I made a mistake. Yeah. I didn't do that right. Oh, I wish I could have that. I wish I could do that decision over again. I said, the first person that shows any kind of authenticity, any kind of in touch with who they are, that doesn't blame the other person for all the problems in the world. I said, I'm just going to. And I just sat there and I thought, that'd be a long wait.

37:31All right. I'm voting for you. Just one time, just tell me one time. Of course, there was no, there was no. And you and I both know that is, first of all, untrue. We're all human. And number two, it's unhealthy. It's unhealthy because we set a standard that is not livable by anybody. And now we're, instead of us having freedom, we're under incredible bondage and stress. And it does all kinds of emotional things that people don't want. That is such an important thing because it's not modeled. You're not seeing that from most public leadership right now. Yet the leaders that I've worked with in my life that I admire the most have done exactly what you say to do.

38:10I messed that up. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. I'm going to get it right next time. And people just can hardly wait to forgive you. I actually think, ironically, kind of like what you said about overall failure, I actually got much closer to that person as a leader. It almost is if that setback or mistake, the decision they made that didn't go the right way was actually an odd blessing long term because their acknowledgement of it built a level of trust that didn't exist when everything was perfect. My inner circle, they know my strengths and they know my weaknesses. They know my best victories and they know my biggest losses.

38:45And I want to tell you, they're close to me because they know my biggest losses. Yep. You also told me when I got to know you better, which just for what it's worth, I just want to say this back to you, which I am listening. You told me, hey, Ed, you know, reveal your imperfections to people. You'll become much closer to them if you try to appear to be perfect all the time. And I really have, I've really heeded that advice that, by the way, it's so freeing to not try to have to live up to some standard that I know is not accurate, right? I know that it is. I've got a hard question for you on failure.

39:16So we're talking about this whole failure thing. Sometimes do you worry at all that as we embrace failure that, and I think you'll know what I mean when I say this. I want you to speak to it. There's this whole book you've written. It's gold. And obviously just even the nuggets that we've talked about today, but can you go a little too far on that where you accept failures in your life? Do you know what I'm saying? Where, you know what I mean? Like I want to have the, I want to have a guard rail on this to some extent, because some people take this and just go, well, then I don't have to have any successes.

39:44I don't have to have any breakthroughs. You know what I'm saying? That does become part of a culture. So speak to that. Well, what I say all the time is failure should move you. And when we become comfortable with failure, we're in trouble. So failure should move you. Failure is your friend, not because you had the failure. It's your friend because it says you better change something. And people change when they hurt enough, they have to. When they learn enough, they know how to. And when they receive enough, they're able to. And so that's the change pattern of people. So when I fail, I am embracing failure as a friend because it raised its hand and said, John, wrong way.

40:34You don't want to go here. And now it creates awareness. Failure treated correctly makes me aware of changes I need to make. Failure prospectively, incorrectly, is when I look at it and instead of saying I'm aware and I must change, I look at it and I say, I just can't do any better and make excuses. But it's a catalyst. Failure is a catalyst to either have a person change for the better or it's a catalyst for a person to say, I'm a victim and that's the way it's going to be and that's my life and I can't help it. What's the Bible say about failure? Well, the Bible's beautiful about failure. I mean, think about it.

41:12First of all, the Bible never hid failures. There are only two people in the Bible that there's nothing about their life in failure. There's only two great ones. And that's Joseph and Nehemiah. They're the only two biblical characters where you look at their life and And every other biblical character, David, well, there's some murder and adultery going on there. That's an obvious one. And remember this, God looked at David and said, you're a man after my own heart. Now, David's frontline people in his kingdom didn't say that. God said that. God looked at a guy that we would look and say, he's not even fit to be in this thing.

41:56And he said, you're a man after my own heart. I mean, look at Moses. and the great men and women of leaders, honestly, they all had failure in their life. The Bible doesn't try to cover that. The Bible's, you know, one of the things that's beautiful about God's word and God is he's not transactional at all. I love about, I mean, God doesn't say, Maxwell, measure up, but guess, eh, I think I'm going to let you in. He's transformational. He doesn't work on a transaction. I don't earn anything. The very fact of forgiveness is a fact that God knows how to handle failure well. Come on, you guys. This is so good.

42:39In our lives. Oh, my God. And it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. That's very comforting to me. Same here, brother. It makes me emotional as you're saying it. Yeah, me too. I know. It's because we have a wonderful God. That's why it makes me emotional. Thank God for God's grace. Hey. somebody says if I don't have God's grace I don't think I can make it if you don't have God's grace you don't make it you do not I thought for a moment you were entertaining a possibility remove that remove that possibility out of your life it isn't going to happen you you're just such a treasure in my life something happens when we do this I don't know what it is Ed?

43:25I do interviews you do interviews we all do interviews You're the best interviewer. Oh, my God. Now, listen to me. The first time, I remember the first time we did it out in Los Angeles, we sat down and it clicked. Yes. And I walked away and I said, it clicked because this man, you have a great gift of intuition and discernment. And when you're with people, you see the person, but you see what's behind. And you are a great interviewer because you don't say the obvious. you go behind the curtain and you pull out the best in people. And I think the better people that you interview, the better interviews you get because it's all inside, but you have the ability to dig for that gold and get it.

44:07You're a great interviewer. You know, I don't mean to say this because we're going back and forth. You do that to me. You do that for me myself. You know one thing about leadership, you guys, is when you know someone truly believes in you. Oh, totally. It's so, like, I feel that from you. It's a game changer. Right? It's one of those elements. It's different. I even think with our children, loving our children is obviously, it's entry into the game. I mean, you're supposed to love your children, but believing in them and them knowing you believe in them or as a leader in a company, that's a different thing.

44:40Oh, it's the greatest gift we could ever give anyone is the same gift that God gave us, unconditional love. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. While we were yet sinners. Yeah. God loved us. Not when we got our act together. Not when we all of a sudden made a better presentation. While we were yet sinners. While we were already screwed up. While we were already. You see, God doesn't fix us to change us. He changes us to fix us. There's a lot of difference between those two. You know when you have the camera guys going, hey, man, they're nodding. You know, you're spitting truth. Can I ask you one more thing because we're going to wrap it up?

45:26I just want to ask you about this one thing that is another thing you have. It's not in the book. Yeah, okay.

45:34You want others to succeed. Were you this way when you were young? Let me tell you what I mean. I want everyone to understand this. One time he gave a speech that I thought was just incredible every time he speaks. But I was with him afterwards. I said, that was just mind-blowing. And he goes, oh, here's a note. you should give this speech. You do it better than I would. Oh, I remember that. And you did it better than me too. Absolutely untrue that I did it better than you. However, there's a lot of this kind of protection thing with leaders or just people in life, because I think they think if you succeed, I'm going to fail.

46:05So I want to wrap this part at the end around failure. You look at it completely differently than that. How do you look at it? I want more for you than I want from you. And when I remember, in fact, we were in Nashville. Yes. And I just finished talking, and we had me sit beside. And I just kind of put the speech together. And really. It's unreal that you did that. Well, and I think I looked at you, and I thought, here, you have it. You'll make it better. And can I tell you, I know you will make it better, and here's why. If you gave me one of your speeches, I could make it better. And it's not because I'm better.

46:36It's because you already gave me a foundation. I already got what you got. Now if I get one little, one more thing, it just got better. but I wouldn't have had that one little thing if you wouldn't have given me the foundation. And so when I was young, Ed, I played ball and I was very competitive. And I think there's a lot of things about competitive people that's a real advantage to them. So I'm not anti-competitiveness, but here's what I want to say. In my own heart, I had a major life change when I lost that competitiveness and decided I would rather help other people succeed. Because if I win, it's only one.

47:20If they win, it's a whole bunch. Very good. And I just, at this stage of my life, yeah, I get more joy out of someone else's success. You do. I mean, I've got stuff out of my mouth. I'm okay. But I just, I like to see people do well. I know you do. And I love you for it. By the way, the lesson there is that if someone else is succeeding, it doesn't mean you're failing. And that's one of the topics of failure that I wanted to make sure we covered. I just want to thank you. This is such a tremendous conversation. And real rare when I do the show that as we're doing it, I'm thinking of people that I want to share the episode with.

48:00I always tell the audience, make sure you share this with someone you care about. I'm thinking right now of the people that I want to share this with, beginning with my daughter who we talked about in the very beginning. So I love you. Love you. God bless you. By the way, the book, you guys, is How to Get a Return on Failure. You know you're getting it now. Fail smarter, return stronger. It is tremendous. He's just the best. Thank you. God bless you, everybody. Share this episode. Max out. This is the Ed Myron Show.

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