In episode 62 of the Potential Leader Lab Podcast, I challenge you to shift your perspective and talk about failure as a verb, rather than a noun.

Our Discussion

Our discussion will begin by deconstructing the difference between "illusions" and "delusions". Why? Because in today’s cultural climate, there is such a strong emphasis on success that it's crucial for leaders to step back and better understand why we desire success in the first place, and how we might measure it differently. As always, I will leave you with some practical tips and additional learning resources that you can put into immediate action.

★ Key Topics ★

05:40 Concern Over Perception of Failure

08:40 Growth Through Failure

12:27 Embrace Failure to Overcome Fear

15:31 "Embracing Failure with Humility"

18:34 Innovation Requires Embracing Failure

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Perry Maughmer believes the world deserves better leadership; that in every human interaction there is the opportunity to either build others up or tear them down; and that leadership is the choice we make in those moments.

These beliefs led Perry to create the Potential Leader Lab. He wanted to offer those who share his beliefs the space and safety to explore transformative ideas, experiment with new behaviors, and evolve into the leaders they were meant to be and that the world needs.

This is a framework he has used again and again with his Vistage peer advisory groups and companies like Turn-Key Tunneling, Convergint, Haughn &  Associates, I Am Boundless, Ketchum & Walton, LSP Technologies, and Ahlum & Arbor.

Perry lives and works on the shores of Buckeye Lake in Ohio, in the mountains of northwest Georgia, and on the beach in Anna Maria, Florida with his amazingly creative wife Lisa. They have 2 rescue dogs and are intermittently visited by their 3 wonderful children throughout the year. Perry & Lisa are living life in crescendo and focused on exploring, experimenting, and evolving their vision of a life they have no desire to retire from.

Copyright 2025 Perry Maughmer

Welcome to the Potential Leader Lab where we explore how to create a better world for those we care deeply about by dismantling our delusions and acting our way into a different way of being. Now, today oh, and I'll back up a minute. I'm Perry Maughmer, your host. And before I introduce the topic for today, I just wanna talk about a word I used in the intro for delusions and I wanna make sure that we're clear that delusions and illusions are different things. And so, an illusion is a misinterpretation of sensory info, like when you see if you're in somewhere hot and you see, waves coming up that look like water, that's an illusion because that's a misinterpretation of our sensory information. A delusion is an incorrect belief not grounded in reality or a false belief that persists in spite of evidence. And I think that's the real danger we have to worry about because our own delusions are the things that probably the only things or or most likely, at least the most significant thing that prevents us from really self actualization and self transcendence. So with that said, we're gonna lean into episode 62, Leading Through Failure.

It is the relentless way. So we're gonna talk about what I'll term relentless failure, and it's gonna kinda fly in the face of our cultural obsession with success. Now, we we seem to like success. We have a we have a strong emotional attachment to being successful and to be thought of as a success, when in fact, I would say that's all kind of a a lie. And and it isn't it isn't to the point where we don't we don't wanna be successful, but I think we have to go back to 2 things. Why we want that? And then second of all, how we measure it? Because I think those two things are really, really important. And I'll go back to Doctor. James Karst and his work on the infinite and finite games.

Now, you might know the infinite game is popularized by Simon Sinek's book, but it was actually doctor James Karst who came up with the concept. And it's a very interesting thing because if we look at it in the context of success, oftentimes, we look at success as a as a binary thing, as a win lose. That's a very finite approach to our life because finite games, as doctor Karr said, are ones that have clear rules. We know what the objective is. We know what the we know what the parameters are. There's there's a timeline and there's also a definitive end to the game and there's a winner and a loser. Now, that that speaks to almost a ton of stuff that we do both athletically and leisurely. Any game that we play typically falls under those guidelines.

But then he talks about this thing called an infinite game. An infinite games are poorly defined rules and the really the only goal of an infinite game is to earn the right to continue to play, which, by the way, if we look at it objectively, is really where we're at with anything we do in business or our professional lives, and then also what we do with our life in general. Because we're not trying to win in life. Right? Despite, you know, what people might tell you, we just wanna earn the right to continue to play. And what's interesting is he makes the discernment. He says, doctor Karr said, well, you can have you can have a finite game within an infinite game, but you can't have an infinite game within a finite game. So I you know, when we talk about goals and things we wanna we want to achieve, there can be finite games within our infinite game of life, but those are only looked at the wins and losses are looked at like moments. And I think that's really powerful, and I think it's healthy to look at wins and losses as moments of an infinite game.

So I just want to kinda set set it up a little bit that way, and talk about the fact that I don't think failure is an option. I believe it's the only option if you wanna keep pushing those limits. Right? And and there is a difference between what I'll call ordinary failure and relentless failure. Because from a relentless standpoint, we know that we must keep going and that failing is a verb. Failing isn't a noun or a label, because what happens to things, we turn them into labels, which can be very dangerous. So if we fail a couple times and then we label ourselves a failure, now that's something we are, not something we do. And I think something we do is much easier to modify, change, or evolve out of than something we are. So I think let's go into the first concept of of relentless failure, and that is failure as a commitment, not an accident.

It's it's proof of effort. I mean, if you think about it, failure actually is proof of effort. It shows that we're trying. And I think that's that's the way we need to focus on failure is it's proof of effort. And so as we continue to try, there will be failure, but failure is not fatal, and failure actually is the point of growth. We can't really grow as a person if we're not failing in some way, shape, or form. Because what I view failure as is a learning point. Like when I get to the point of failure, I actually learn something.

I'm at I'm gathering data points to understand where I'm at in this certain thing. And so if I try to avoid failure because it doesn't feel good, which it, you know, I'll be the first to admit it doesn't, that means that I'm not gonna find those points of learning. So from an exos from an ex essential existential standpoint, we aren't really afraid of failing. We're afraid of what failure says about us. And I think those are 2 very different things. So there's the act. There's the act in which we fail. Right? But then there's then there's the perception of what that says about us that really is the thing that we're concerned about.

If we if we really drill into it, are we concerned about the failure itself? Are we concerned about what other people will think of our failure? It's kinda like the example I give if you've ever seen, and this is just a separate example. It doesn't have to do with failure, but it does have to do with the perception of what other people think about us. And that is if you've ever seen a parent with a young child, say a 2 or 3 year old, out in public and the and the child's having a breakdown. The child's throwing a fit, for the for lack of a better term. And the the parent is trying relentlessly, by the way, to try to calm the child down, get the child to stop, get the child to be quiet, all those things. And if you watch the parent, oftentimes, if you look at it logically, you have a 2 or 3 year old with not a with a with a, you know, their brain is nowhere near fully developed and you're trying to reason and be rational with them, which doesn't work. And the more they get out of control, the more you try to control. I've asked this question hundreds of times for people and if you think about this and everybody's experiences that has a child, what were you really concerned about? And when we drill into it, our concern wasn't about the fact that our child was having a fit.

The child the fact of the matter was we were very concerned that other people were judging us to be bad parents because we couldn't control our child. And so, again, we go back to are we worried about failure as the event or are we worried about what other people will think about us and what failure says about us? So when we when we look at it as acting our way into being, which I talk about a lot, failure is an act of creation. It's not destruction. It's not a negative. It's a positive. You know, you're spinning something up. You're trying something different. It is by definition of act of creation, and it isn't and we think about failure as like a detour.

We think about failure as a stopping point. We think about failure as something that prevents us from getting where we wanna go, when actually failure isn't the detour, it's the path. It it the only way forward is through. Right? It's back to a little bit of stoicism here where what's in the way becomes the way. Right? So Marcus Aurelius said, you know, whatever's in the way becomes the way. And so we really have to think about this and go, okay, failure isn't the detour, it's the path. Failure is the way forward. And you can either you can either fail relentlessly on your own terms or life will make you fail anyway.

Like, it's gonna happen. If you're trying new things, if you wanna continue to move forward, it it's gonna have to happen. And so, we either do it by choice and do it on our own terms, which I'm a big fan of, or we don't and we allow it to happen to us. So why is it critical? So point number 2, why is relentless failure critical? Well, the I want you to I wanna give you another kind of way to think about this. Think about failure not as a coffin, but as a crucible. So we often, you know, failure and it's horrible and we want to avoid it. So it's more like a coffin. It's more like death.

Something we try to avoid. Think of it as a crucible. So the original crucible was something they heated to high temperatures and melted metal metal in. Right? So they would forge, you know, in a forge, they have a crucible to melt metal and make it malleable. Well, think about that as a situation of horses change. So in in failure, we we often find the way forward. We find what makes us us in at points of failure. I've asked lots of leaders this question when we talk about this, and I say, when when did you learn the most about yourself and when did you grow the most? Was it were were there points in your life where things were going swimmingly and going extremely well? Or were there points where you were having you were experiencing a failure? And where did you learn the most? And 100% of the time, they come back with, well, it's always when I'm when I failed.

When I failed, it's when I learned the most. Okay. Well, what about trying to seek those things out? You know, explore, experiment, evolve. It's impossible without failure. That's the whole point of it because experimentation requires failure. And the the problem with there is no there is no really such thing as safe growth. If you're not failing, you're not trying. So there's no way to grow safely.

And failure failure doesn't teach on a curve. It just gives you another shot. Like, it isn't like, ah, you get a c for that. It's, you failed. Okay? You got a failure f. Failure f. It's okay. Like, you're gonna get another shot at it, and now you know how not to do it.

And that's awesome. It isn't it isn't something to be avoided. And and it really does it really does build up what, Angela Duckworth wrote a book called Grit. You can call it psychological resilience. You can call it whatever you want, but it's the ability to bounce back. Right? It's that ability to come back and know that, okay, this didn't work, but I've got confidence that I can I can move forward? And the best way to fail less is to fail more. You fail hard, fast, and often because you get resilient and it becomes part of the process. This this really is also many things in our life follow this pattern because the things we seek to avoid are things really meaningful to us that we need, like feedback.

And we we see this repeated time and time again with both people and organizations and teams. The ones that do great with feedback are the ones that normalize feedback. They don't just talk about the bad things. They talk about all things as opportunities for improvement. They talk about good things. They talk about bad things. They remove the stigma attached to feedback because we're getting feedback all the time. Because most people would assume we're only getting feedback when we need to improve something or change something.

When the reality is, that's not the case. The case is we wanna normalize feedback, talk about all the opportunities, and talk about how we did in anything because there's always gonna be points of failures. That's typically not absolute. It's not gonna be an absolute failure. We did something, and there were points in it where there were points of failure. But overall, we did okay. We still wanna address those. Alright.

So here's what we do. We're gonna we wanna reframe there's there's ideas here. Right? So the ideas are what's the we we talk kind of theoretically about failure, about what what it means to us, how we react to it. And and I think that there is a there is a an emotional deterrent here. Because from a very young age in our educational system, we're taught to have right answers. And so we carry that into adulthood, never thinking that maybe that doesn't apply in life. And it does. It it definitely does hinder us.

It doesn't apply, actually, but it does hinder us because we get set into the thought of we always have to have the right answer because being wrong doesn't feel good. And being wrong doesn't feel good, but only because we're taught that. So we can teach ourselves something different. Because we don't believe things because they're true, they're true because we believe them. And the best way to break out of this avoidance of failure is to fail more, because we have to overcome the fear. We have to see that the stigma attached to failure isn't true, because we're not going most of the time, not gonna say anytime, we have to be safe, but in but in our lives as we try to develop and in in work, failure is rarely ever fatal. And that's what our fear is. Our fear is either 1, we're gonna die or 2, we're gonna be ostracized by the people that we care about, in which case we're gonna die as well because that's what our brain thinks because it's running on outdated hardware or software.

Our brains running on, you know, the way it developed up to about 20000 years ago, 20 to 300000 years ago, depending on who you listen to. So it's still operating in a hunter gatherer environment in in a tribe of 25 to 30 people. And so it still sees the world that way. So if you if you failed and were ostracized then, it was certainly death. And so it's understandable why we have a heavily emotional attachment to it, but we have to overcome that because that's not our truth anymore. That's not the way the world works anymore. We can have failure failure all the time that isn't fatal, that does serve serve us well. It actually serves us.

And again, it isn't a isn't a coffin. It's a crucible. So how do we how do we build in a practical application for this? So what are some practical steps we can take? Well, number 1, as with many things we talk about, reframe the game. Stop measuring success, start measuring attempts. So simple as that. Don't don't measure how many you how many times you're successful. Measure how many times you try. This is just, again, back to the old theory about activities versus outcomes.

So if we stop getting hyper focused on the outcome and worry about the activities we have to do, because by and large, like even if you establish a goal and if you've listened to me before, you know I hate goals. But if if you wanna do that, I understand. So you have a goal. It isn't the goal that matters. It's actually who you become along the way to achieving the goal that truly matters. So worry about that and not about achieving the goal. So number 1, reframe the game. Number 2, set failure targets.

Actually, have an option in there to fail x number of times because the reality is if you fail that many times, you're probably gonna succeed at some point. But stop avoiding it. Right? Actually set a failure target. We, we used to do this with, when when I worked in sales, we had people who would we'd have so many calls to make. Well, what we'd eventually tell everybody is we'd figure out how many calls and then the percentage of calls you needed to make. So we would actually focus in on get 20 noes. Like, get 20 people to tell you no. Because we knew if we could get people to focus on that as the game, they would get a yes.

But they had to get the 20 noes. So the focus wasn't on getting a yes, it was on getting the 20 noes no matter how many yeses they got. So you can gamify it a little bit. It's all it's all in how you think about it. And then this will lead you to be able to do the third thing, which is deconstruct the fear. What's really at risk here? Comfort? Ego? The way you look to other people? If if you have if you're if first of all, if you if you have a a very solid self image and you have a healthy dose of humility, this won't bother you at all. Because if I'm if I if humility is at the core of what I do, I know I'm gonna fail. Because humility tells me I'm not perfect.

I don't have to show up perfectly every time. I don't have to be that person, that shining star that never fails. Because even and I forget who said this, it was years ago. It's like, you you know, if you if you bat 300, you're probably gonna get in the hall of fame in baseball. That's one out of every 3. Right? So in no nowhere do we recognize people for perfection. If you look in every sport or in any game, any of those finite games, nobody ever gets a 100% of anything. You know, it differs with everything they're doing, but passer passer ratings, passing percent, completion percent, you know, batting average, free throw, 3 point accuracy.

All of those things, they're never a 100%. Yet, in our lives, we start out with that as the baseline. We we start out with expectations that everything's gonna be perfect. It's gonna be a 100% and then anything less than that is failure. When in reality, that isn't the case. So just be realistic. The the next step would be just have radical transparency. Lead the way with failing.

Own it in real time. Like, embrace it because this is the other thing. If we say we want innovation, we what we're saying is we want failure. Because innovation requires healthy doses of failure because you just keep trying things. And then assemble a crew assemble a failure crew a failure crew for yourself. Surround yourself with people who will call you out on your cowardice when you play it safe. That's what you need. You need people there that'll hold you accountable for being a coward.

And that's what cowardice is, is not willingness to be risk to take a risk. You don't have to take huge ones. You can take small ones. You don't have to you don't have to break the bank here, but put yourself out there so you can normalize it for yourself. And then the last thing would be just momentum over perfection. Iterate, don't stagnate. So you wanna keep moving forward. Right? It's it's all about moving forward.

It isn't about being perfect. It's about momentum. Now, this I I wanna be clear on why this matters. Right? And this will be the last thing I talk about. Why this matters is because it isn't us that we're judging. This is not a judgment on you. It's a call to action for survival and relevancy in a world that is changing at a pace we've never seen before. So I want you to think about this as a function of that.

This is not just for the sake of doing it. This is not something you must do just for your own edification. This is to stay relevant and survive, and I mean survive as being relevant in a world. If you want to create a better world for those you care about, which is what I wanna do and what I call people that lead, then we have to increase our resilience to failure in order to stay relevant in an ever changing world. Because the pace of change on the outside is tremendous at this point, and there's nothing that says it's gonna start getting slower. So with that pace of change, you can't afford to stay the same. Because if if you try to tread water, everything moves past you. So you have to keep up, and keep up means innovation, and innovation means failure, and failure means success at some point.

So failure is inevitable. The only choice is whether you'll fail small and safe or fail relentlessly and become something more, something that only you know what you can accomplish. Now, what I'd like to do is have everybody go fail relentlessly, and that would be pretty awesome. So if you're ready to stop waiting and start doing, you're in the right place. Keep questioning, keep pushing, and remember, growth isn't comfortable, but also remember, comfort wants you dead. So I'll see you next time in the Potential Leader Lab.