Bounce Back From a Faceplant: How to Flip the Script on Failure with Melisa Buie and Keeley Hurley

Melisa: [00:00:00] The sooner you can get clear about what actually happened. And what you did, what they did, what the facts were. Then when you move into the reflection, it’s a lot cleaner process.

Katie: Welcome the Chain of Learning with the links of leadership and learning Unite. This is your connection for actionable strategies and practices to empower you to build a people-centered learning culture, get results, and expand your impact so that you.

And your team can leave a lasting legacy. I’m your host and fellow learning enthusiast, Katie Anderson. You’ve had that moment when something doesn’t go as planned, right? We all do a project slips a conversation derails. You realize you’re carrying the emotional weight of a setback longer than you expected.

We talk about. Learning from failure, but the truth is that the experience of failure, the fear, the funk, the uncertainty, our anxiety can keep us stuck far [00:01:00] more than the failure or mistake itself. Today, we’re unpacking what really happens beneath the surface when we face faceplant and what it takes to get back up with clarity, confidence, and intention.

I’m joined by Dr. Melisa Buie and Keeley Hurley. Two seasoned change leaders in engineering quality and continuous improvement, who has spent their careers helping teams navigate complexity, solve tough problems, and learn through setbacks. They’re also the co-authors, Faceplant: FREE Yourself from Failure’s Funk, spunk, a book that blends research, reflection, and real life stories to help us shift from emotional hijacks to intentional action.

We started our conversation with a simple and provocative question. What inspired you to call the book, Faceplant, and what does that image really capture about the experience of failure? Let’s dive in.

Keeley: The image that just kept coming into my mind, my, my mind sees everything in images. Basically [00:02:00] it was just this like wiping out face planting because it just encompasses so much of what failure is, right?

It’s not just the emotional thing, but sometimes it’s the physical pain of actually. Experiencing these failures, and nothing was more coming more clear in my mind than just an actual face plant. I’m, I’m not known for my coordination, so unfortunately I have a lot of experience here and a lot of times, you know, some of my imagery didn’t always land with Melissa Noelle, but this one, when we talked about it, we were like.

Oh my gosh, this is it. This absolutely sums up a little bit of the comedy of it and yet also the pain that comes along with it too.

Katie: Yeah, for sure. And like for yourself from Failure is funk. I mean, I think those two, like face, plant, the whole poof and then the funk, the emotion. We talk about failure and learning from failure and embracing failure, but there’s like real.

Emotion and pain that [00:03:00] goes on when we are experiencing that we’ve failed or had failures. And so I thought maybe we’d start there about unpacking that emotional component of failure and how it gets us stuck. Melisa, maybe we’ll turn to you for this.

Melisa: That was one of the most tricky things for us when we were, when we were starting this, is there was all these platitudes out there and people telling us to just jump in and fail.

Do all this stuff go fast. And, and there was no acknowledgement, no acknowledgement at all about how we felt about the failure. And the more I read and, and dug into it, the more I realized that this is something that we just kind of step over. We step over how it makes us feel, and if we don’t, and if we continue to step over that, then we’re never gonna be free.

To really take chances and learn and grow from failure. We’ve [00:04:00] gotta be able to feel like there’s a, there’s some acknowledgement to that.

Katie: You know, it’s interesting as you’re talking right now, it’s making me think back to my conversations with Isao Yoshino and working on my book, “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn,” and how he always would talk about on a very surface level, like he had this big business failure.

He never went deep, and I think it’s because he had not really gotten over the emotional side of feeling like he’d failed or what the, the, the sort of the emotional weight of that. And the beauty was through all our conversations and reflection, there really was this one moment where I could see. The cloud, the weight, the grayness lifting off of him and the reframe of, of that failure and seeing it in a different way.

And so we have to start there ’cause then we can’t truly, deeply move on from it. So I really appreciate you starting in that place and, and sharing your, your own emotional journeys with failure as well, because we’ve all had that right to air as human, right? So we’re all gonna have [00:05:00] these, uh, these experiences.

Melisa: So the really interesting thing for us is that it was out of reading your book that all of this got started, the work that the two of you did on helping us get in touch with failure and, and making it. So public and so, so much a process of learning and growing. That’s how we really jumped into this. It made such a huge difference seeing from his professional perspective, which is often things that we try to cover up, how impactful that was.

Katie: Thank you for sharing that and I’ll, I’ll let Mr. Yoshino know. I mean, if others can learn from our failures and challenges too, that’s a, that’s a huge gift, right? So not only our own learning, but how do we pass that on truly the Chain of Learning? Might we, might we call it?

Keeley: Well, and I think to that point, right?

So many of our failures that we’re ashamed of or try to hide. Really have been experienced by someone [00:06:00] else, and it’s through sharing or through, you know, reading other people’s stories about failure, that you start to realize like, I’m not alone in this. You know, you can really start to get that other perspective of maybe I’m being too harsh on myself, or maybe I’m not looking at the full picture of this.

Get over that hump of that funk and start to be able to process it and, and move forward.

Katie: Yeah, I like that phrase, get over the hump of funk. It’s not a, it’s a mouthful, but, but, uh, but provocative as well. You know, I really like some of the frameworks in the book that you have. Just, they were, they were really helpful and as I was thinking about how I process failure and how we, we think of failure and moving past it as well.

And some of the things that paralyze us. And one of that is like the anxiety of the what if. And you had an equation in the book to sort of help people understand the magnitude of anxiety and some personal stories too, Keeley from yourself. Maybe you could share that with people.

Keeley: Yeah. The, the [00:07:00] equation that we, um, we found was one that says, you know, anxiety equals care times uncertainty.

And if we really think about it from, you know, a life perspective, if you don’t care about the outcome of something, it’s not. Really going to make you anxious or worried or nervous, and if you know exactly what the outcome is going to be, that’s also not going to make you all that anxious or nervous or scared or any of those things.

And so it’s when those two things come together where your uncertainty is high and you deeply care about the outcome. That’s when your anxiety starts to just amplify. And I couldn’t figure this out, like why I had this visceral reaction that I shared in this book to scary movies, but I. You know, get deeply attached to these, these characters in there.

And so by doing that, my care factor was like artificially high. So any sort of, you know, scary movie, which the whole point is to make things uncertain, [00:08:00] um, would just send me. I still hate scary movies even though that I like, I know this about me now. Like it’s it’s okay. I don’t have to cross that bridge too.

Katie: Yeah. You also shared like when, when it relates to your children, ’cause you care so much, your anxiety’s like that much higher, but when the stakes are potentially lower, yeah. Maybe we don’t feel. That, that same level of anxiety.

Keeley: Yeah, and I think with, I think there’s, you know, the two parts of the, the kids come into it, right?

The care factor is high, but anytime you involve another person, then now your uncertainty gets a little bit higher. ’cause you can’t always predict what other people are going to do. So it, it’s, it’s a really interesting exercise to do and to sort of see where, where your tipping points are on those anxiety scales and what.

What you do really care about and how that impacts the stress levels you feel in certain circumstances.

Katie: Yeah, and, and also the, the uncertainty part is like, how can we actually mitigate that, right? Because sometimes our sense of [00:09:00] uncertainty is unfounded. How can you, I guess, things more concrete, like how do you actually know rather than what you’re assuming is gonna happen?

And that can lead to a lot of, you know, the sense of unknown. It can drive a lot of that fear factor.

Keeley: Right. And so we do talk about, you know, have some pointers of, as you’re, you know, kind of checking your story of what you think is going to happen or, or, you know, predicting the future. So far we haven’t met anyone that can accurately predict the future.

So, you know, if you’re predicting the future of how someone else is going to act, chances are that that. Not really based in, in truth or fact. And we can kind of edit those pieces out and try to reduce some of that anxiety level a little bit.

Katie: Yeah. And even from the workplace though, if we can like plan things out better and sort of reveal the different, um, potential outcomes and talk about things so it’s not hidden, we can help people in our work environments too.

Maybe not have the fear of the unknown around change as well.

Keeley: Yeah, and we actually, you know, we include that as one of [00:10:00] the appendices in the book is this whole pre-mortem exercise of doing exactly that. It helps to brainstorm and predict everything that could possibly go wrong, that could send your project or your initiative off track.

And then it allows you to go through the exercise of saying, okay, if this thing starts to happen, how will we see it coming? What steps can we take to mitigate? Or how can we just. Divert path and go a completely different way to avoid it altogether. So it’s a really great thing to do as part of a group because then it normalizes that we are expecting failure to happen and it makes it a whole lot less daunting when those situations come up.

Katie: Right. And having conversations too about it. So we’re like putting it out there in the open and it’s really connected to that plan. Do study, adjust cycle. You know, often we, we end with like, oh, we’ll have some reflection, but. If we can now, uh, say, well, what might we adjust or what do we need to plan for adjusting in, in [00:11:00] advance?

Like, what are our assumptions? What do we think will happen? What do we expect to happen? What might happen then? We have a little bit more confidence on how we’re gonna respond to them, even though we don’t know which of those is going to unfold.

Keeley: Right? And the, you know, there’s the bookends, the premortem, and the postmortem.

So once you get through, you can go back and reflect again and say, were we able to anticipate a lot of these failures? What went wrong also that we missed? And how can we make sure we let other people know about these things? Or we can do better the next time?

Katie: All right. So it’s like really embedding that learning cycle in.

In action in practice, both on the individual and, and the team level as well. So, awesome. I really, uh, suggest people take a look at that and start thinking about how you, or not even just thinking about try putting in place, how can you bring in some of this reflection, both before, during, and after things happen, so that you can anticipate learning and anticipate potential failures?

’cause as we know, failure will [00:12:00] happen and that’s the part of learning, right? I mean, it’s sort of the motto of my daruma dolls, which I have to go grab one. It’s like the fall down seven times, get up eight, like falling down. Face planting is, is inherent in achieving a goal or having success. Like literally we’re gonna, if we acknowledge we’re gonna at least fall down seven times, but we need to get up eight, we’re more likely to go forward.

So that’s exact same. Philosophy and mindset that you’re, you know, advocating for and putting actual concrete steps towards how people can practice, uh, in your book. So I love that because it’s so tied to the daruma. Perfect. Also, one of the frameworks that I found really valuable was actually the framework for your whole book around the free model.

I’d love to hear more about how you came up with this model and then let’s explore some of the aspects of it so that listeners can start practicing how to free themselves, uh, from failures, funk. Melisa, do you wanna get started?

Melisa: When we were looking at developing the free model, [00:13:00] what we saw, what we did was really look at the process that we went through ourselves in analyzing our own failures.

And part of that was going through and, and really just like what happened, getting clear about the facts, you know, the facts of the failure. And a lot of times if you don’t spend the time. Getting clear about the facts, it gets collapsed into whatever that reflection or judgment or all the other stuff that’s mixed in there, all the other emotions.

And so the sooner you can get clear about what actually happened. And what you did, what they did, what you know, what the facts were. Then when you move into the reflection, it’s a lot cleaner process and one of the things that we realized is that the reflection part was one of the most important parts of [00:14:00] this whole process.

It’s looking at it really how, what’s the impact that it had on you, on others? Where are you in all this process, and it’s only by getting those first two steps that you’re able to really cleanly move into the next two steps. Keeley, do you wanna talk about the next two steps?

Keeley: So, yeah. So focus is the first step.

Reflect is the second. The first E is explore, and that’s really to look at, um, what are your options, right in, in your reflection, you’re kind of identifying how you reacted in these situations. And explore is more of how you would’ve rather acted and chosen to act in those circumstances. So it’s. Not necessarily the wrong thing.

Your reaction’s not necessarily wrong, but it may might’ve led you down a path that needed a pause or it needed a slight direction [00:15:00] change with new information. So it’s really about looking at that and thinking, if I had been consciously choosing. What happened next? How would I be, have behaved differently?

And then the last step is engage. And that’s really to go forth and do those things right, to actually plan out, okay, if I’m in this situation next, how am I going to behave differently to actually. Act consciously instead of continuing to be on this hamster wheel of reaction to the same stimulus. So that’s the piece where it’s the practicing and the trying to interrupt that cycle because those reactions are just, you know, so inbuilt in us.

And the more times we do it, the more they’re, they’re dug in. So it’s really this focused effort on. Engaging with a different choice and, and that’s what it comes down to really is the choice to behave differently,

Katie: learn to [00:16:00] see it in yourself, and then make a different choice. It’s the difference between being reactive, so just responding in our same habituated way to being proactive and saying, how do I really want to be here?

Okay, what do I need to do the same or differently to achieve that outcome? Exactly what I like to say of leading with intention.

Melisa: Yes, yes. We very much embraced Hansei as a part of this. And you know, the, the first two steps are really the self-reflection. The next two steps are really self-improvement and really leading to.

What experiment am I gonna do to, uh, change the future?

Katie: It’s not to have an unrealistic expectation of who we are and our response, but how do we get a little bit better at processing, adjusting, and behaving differently and being kind to ourselves on that? Like, because we all have these human reactions, but how do we not act on that reaction?

Or you can experience the feeling, but how do we move through that faster and maybe respond in a, in a [00:17:00] different way? Absolutely. Mm-hmm. For those of you listening who don’t know the word Hansei, although if you’ve been listening for media for any period of time, you probably have heard this word. Hansei is a Japanese word that means reflection or deep self-reflection.

And it’s really, it’s, it’s really looking inward and then also examining things deeply, um, as individuals and as a group as well about what actually happened and, and then. Having that steady adjust part of what can we do differently? I thought that the different, I guess, characters or modes that you came up with in the reaction phase, those emotional hijacks were very, um, very helpful.

I guess provocative images about how we can identify sort of what’s going on for us when we’re, we’re in that reactive mode. Yeah. I’d love to hear from you about the four modes and then for each of you, which is the one that you. Get stuck in and hijacked by most often.

Keeley: We basically have a four quadrant system, and in, you know, in the upper right hand quadrant is who we deem as the [00:18:00] machine.

And this is essentially the fight response, right? So you are moving forward, you’re, you know, your. Continuing on the same path, regardless of additional information, you just won’t stop. It’s over work. It’s over, you know, demanding that your way is the right way. It’s this constant need to continue forward because of this fear driving you.

And then when we move to the next, um, upper left quadrant, we have sort of the. What we call the magician, and that’s the, that’s the flight response, right? You’re escaping from responsibility. You’re blaming the weather, you’re blaming your coworker, you’re blaming traffic. It’s totally removing yourself from the equation because maybe that doesn’t feel good to know that you were contributing to this situation, to this failure.

If we go to the bottom left quadrant, then we see what we call the statue, and that’s the freeze response that we typically get [00:19:00] in fear. And that’s more of a, you know, overanalyzing things, analysis, paralysis, inability to make a decision one way or another, literally getting stuck in these situations that we.

That are scary or that are, that are causing us this anxiety, right? And so then to the bottom right corner, we go, we call it the satellite. And again, this is more of a fawn or a, you know, peer pressure response of it’s easier to fit in with the group than it is to stand out and, and risk that alienation from these groups and these companies, or, you know.

Places where we want to belong. So it’s really allowing the group to, to make decisions for us or following along, not speaking up in a meeting when your, um, opinion may be different from everyone else’s. So it’s those four quadrants kind of hit on the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, natural fear responses.

Katie: And how and how did that link to [00:20:00] the concept of failure and that the fear, part of the failure of what’s holding us back.

Keeley: So it was interesting, you know, we, as Melisa said, we went through this whole process. We wrote a ton about our own failures and um, the experiences we had, and we had a lot of different personalities that were associated with each one.

And it just kind of. No matter how we tried to structure the window, it just kept coming back to these four things, and it just made sense when we kept. Trying to rearrange and finding ways to make sense of it, that really what was going on is that, you know, we were afraid of different outcomes, right? We were afraid of, you know, if I’m not charging forward and finishing this project, people will think.

That I’m not capable, or if I speak my opinion in this group that doesn’t share the same opinion, then they’ll no longer let me, or maybe I’ll get [00:21:00] fired. Right? Or, you know, if I have to make this decision about staying or leaving a job. Both sides are gonna be mad, so I’ll just, you know, not do anything and let the cards fall as they may.

Right. So it just, all of it, the more we dug into it, the more we could see this fear was just this underlying thing and we were doing all of these actions to try to control it. To try to control the situation, to try to control how people viewed us, how people were interacting with us, and it really just kept coming back to underneath it all was fear.

And I have to say that was by far one of the shocking, most shocking parts of this book was to really see how much fear head controlled so much of my life.

Katie: Wow, that’s just so powerful. This to like come together and then have this realization. What’s an example for you of how this. Fear showed up for you in holding you back in one of these emotional hijack uh, reactions.[00:22:00]

Keeley: I, I think my career is a perfect example of this. I’ve been in the laser industry for 25 years, and I started out as an engineering assistant, and as people left companies or as roles changed, they just kept putting me in places where I really felt I had no speaking. And you know, the fear was like, if I say something, I will get fired.

I can’t say I don’t want to do this job, so I’m going to just do it anyway. And then the fear changes from, okay, I’ll do it to now I’m a machine right now, I’m going to charge on, I’m gonna learn everything I possibly can about this job and show them that they were right in putting me in it. And so it’s this very interesting cycle for me of like.

Oh gosh, don’t say anything and then, oh, let’s just prove him wrong.

Melisa: Yeah. For me, it was very much a, in my personal life, so I was, I’ve always been pretty good in math and science, and so, okay, work, I’ve got this, I’ll just work [00:23:00] harder. But when it came to areas where I was trying to be more creative or more athletic or those kind of things.

The fear of the first time I would hit a failure, a fa have a face plant, that was it. I was done. Okay. I can’t do that. I had a very much a fixed mindset about that.

Katie: Yeah. And I’m glad you brought up the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset. That’s something I explored with Carol Dweck back on episode three of this podcast.

You know, Carol Dweck, who wrote Mindset, and it’s really powerful and, and, and you talk about this in the book about the difference of. Labeling ourselves as a failure versus failing at something or, you know, do a mistake or something that didn’t go right. It’s like the process versus the fixed mindset of this is who I am, a failure.

Um, and how, how did you overcome that, Melisa, moving from that fixed mindset to more of a growth mindset approach [00:24:00] around failure?

Melisa: It was really through this work. So I lived all these years, many, many years and was really stopped in certain areas of my life. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t move forward and I didn’t realize.

I had that fixed mindset in, in certain areas, and so I got brave and started trying a few things and allowed myself to fail and say the wrong thing and do the wrong thing. That was the big thing for me is really taking a chance.

Katie: Well, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that, you know, that it’s, it’s hard to.

Feel like we’re, we’re not doing things right or that, that putting ourselves out there and, and the what people might think of us or what we might think of ourselves, but making that shift to see that we’re not a failure. We’re not the thing. We are a pro a learning process. And how can we like learn our way forward?[00:25:00]

Towards greater success or what we want. And again, back to the jma, face plants and falling down are, are the natural part of, of moving forward. Right? We have to fall down. We have to fall down. ’cause the learning happens through, through mistakes. And I, I’ve been reflecting a lot on this concept of failure because, you know, people often ask like, how can we create this learning culture in our organizations?

And we have to be able to set challenging goals that we don’t, that are seemingly impossible. And the only way that a seemingly impossible goal is okay, is if we know that there’s going to be. Failures along the way in trying to figure out how to get there. And so we have to be okay that people don’t have the right answer right away, and both for ourselves, but as leaders and, and change leaders in the organization.

So I’d love to bring it back to, because you both are organizational change leaders and have been for many, many years, how. Do you see the, all these concepts that you’ve talked about for especially, you [00:26:00] know, it’s, it’s really on this individual level, but we can bring it to that, you know, you talk about the organizational level too.

If we are wanting to really create organizational learning cultures that, that, you know, move towards success, how can we approach failure, I guess, in a better way? Or what’s one thing we can do. I know there’s so many things we can do. What is, what is one, what are one or two things that you discovered through both your, your lived journey as well as the process of writing this book?

Melisa: I think for me, the big thing is acknowledging the funk when there’s a failure, acknowledge that there’s some emotion that goes along with it, and really try to very quickly get to the place where like I see it and understand the source of that. Once I, once I’m at that place, then it’s really easy to say, oh, okay, what can I do differently?

Like, there’s a whole other life on the other side of that.

Katie: And Keeley, how about you in working in leading teams, have you [00:27:00] helped, uh, create this Embracing of failure is

Keeley: okay. I mean, I think, you know, what you mentioned before is vulnerability. I, I make sure that I am communicating my own. Face plants and where I haven’t lived up to my own expectations or my teams.

Um, but I think that’s the biggest takeaway that I think I got from this book was this expectation disconnect. Right? And, and if we don’t know what. Our supervisors or our teams are expecting of us, then it sets us up for failure. So it’s really, really important to be very clear on what expectations are.

For some things as simple as email responses, like we’re expecting you to respond to meeting requests. The same day or like the next day to let us know if the schedule works or, you know, for this project, here’s what we’re expecting the budget to be, or you know, it’s just about being super [00:28:00] clear about where our expectations are because then, you know.

It gives people the opportunity to say, that’s not realistic. Like, where did that come from, that that’s not a thing. And before that, we get too far down this path to then that they’re now hiding stuff or not willing to communicate with us when, when based plants do happen. So to me it’s about being explicitly clear about expectations and really just being honest about.

Our own struggles with making the goals or getting to where we need to be.

Katie: Yeah. And you know, to me that links back to what we talked about earlier in this episode around anxiety. That if we don’t have clarity on the expectation or the timeline, that’s, that’s when some uncertainty comes in. And so our own assumptions or thinking someone’s expecting this.

Today when maybe they thought it was, you know, fine for next week. And so then we’re putting all this pressure on ourselves that we have to get this done now, rather than clarifying that [00:29:00] expectation. And your second point, you know, and I’m just thinking of building on this right now, that as leaders. As team members to set the expectation that we understand failure will happen, and so that we want the bad news first, right?

And so to, to lay that foundation that we are not expecting, uh, perfection here or being really clear on when is it. Eduardo Senio says in episode five, the performance zone, where we really need this to be spot on. And when do we have some more space for like that learning zone? And it’s okay to make some mistakes and we’re learn like we’re on the, we’re practicing, right?

For the main, the main game, you know? And so get clarity on when is it, do we need high performance and when is it okay to be learning a little bit more? And making those mistakes and failures. Mm-hmm.

Keeley: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Katie: One of the quotes that stood out to me as I was reading, uh, this was after you talked about, you know, the emotional hijacks and then the liberators from our hijacks.

One of the subheadings was by learning the wrong lesson, [00:30:00] you can get stuck with a life sentence. And I thought that was really powerful, reinforcing for ourselves, a certain reality that might not be true, and then it becomes our lived reality. How did you come up with, I know that’s a very provocative phrase,

Melisa: Melisa.

So life sentences, it kind of goes along with the conspirator theme, right? The, this theme of these, these characters that, um, that really hijack us and, and prevent us from living the life that we wanna live. And when we get stuck in this mentality of I’m not creative, I never explored that for myself because I had this life sentence that I was just supposed to do math.

And so those are things that we can. I felt very attached to that life sentence when, when it, when it came up, because it was something that I [00:31:00] had experienced myself and don’t want anyone else to have to go through. Oh, I,

Katie: I appreciate that so much. I also appreciated that Wendy Smith, uh, wrote the forward to your book.

She, I mean, she has such a powerful book, both and, um, she was on, uh, this podcast back in episode 35. You know, we tend to think things as either or, like success or failure. And what is the e The both and thinking that you’ve come to embrace through this process of embracing failure or, or our face plants.

Keeley: I, I can speak to my, for myself and you know, the both and is, is exactly why I am where I am in my career now. I had these fears of saying no to certain jobs, but through that and through pivoting so many times, I’ve been a part of every aspect of a laser company or a high tech, you know, manufacturing company.

And it gives me such a different perspective on how [00:32:00] all the operations go, how, how the company works, how people interact at different levels that. As a chief of staff, now, I, these are all the pieces that I’m trying to coordinate and have worked together as a, as a high impact, high powerful. Team. Right?

And so it can be both and right? This may not have been the, the path that I chose right at that moment, and it’s also led to these amazing opportunities that I never could have expected or predicted at the time.

Melisa: Melisa, how about yourself? I think for me, like realizing that I don’t have to be, I think it’s a little more general, but I don’t have to be perfect at everything.

So it was, I, I needed to be perfect. I needed to be really good at it, or I just needed not to do it. When I read Wendy’s book, it really opened that up for me that I could be like, okay, I can write something that’s, uh, you know, [00:33:00] that’s actually crap and send it over to Keeley, and she’s gonna say, oh, no, no, no, that’s not gonna work, and I’ll try again.

So, um, and we had plenty of those, but it was, it was very much a, I don’t need to be, I don’t need to be perfect. I don’t need to do it right the first time that I actually have a, yes, I can write something and I can also rewrite it and, you know, or like anything where there was that required. You know, me too, that said, okay, this was a failure, or this didn’t, wasn’t perfect.

I could have another look at, I could have another perspective.

Katie: I see that both and, and the growth mindset of being so, you know, so connected in our resilience, in our, in our willingness to try something and, and really embracing that. The path forward is going to have [00:34:00] stumbles and setbacks, and it’s really how do we create a learned response for those predictable, unpredictable moments, right?

That are, are gonna happen. Uh, it might be seven, it might be 20. Um, but how do we keep getting ourselves back up and learning our way forward?

Melisa: Right? It’s the, it’s the freedom. And, and so the free model is just so real in this process. ’cause there really is freedom on the other side.

Katie: It is, it’s letting go as well of that emotional side.

As you know, I experienced with Mr. Yoshino and I’ve experienced in my own sense of failure, if we’re feeling that weight, we can’t actually move forward to see things from a different perspective and adjust. So it’s like how do we process that and then free ourselves truly. From Failure, spunk. So I love that title and thank you Keeley And Melisa, I also, I wanna say thank you to your, in your previous company, you were the first organization that did a bulk book order of Learning to [00:35:00] lead, leading to Learn back in the Pandemic when my book came out in 2020.

And I remember just being so excited, signing hundreds of copies and shipping them out to you. It was a really special moment. So. Thank you, um, for giving a new author a, uh, a shining moment, and I’m, I’m here to shine positive light on your great book that’s coming out, um, at the end of 2025. So we’ll be out by the time this podcast is released.

So I encourage people to free themselves, um, from Funks failure with, with, Faceplant. So thank you Keeley and Melisa for being here today. Thank you. Thanks so much, Katie.

As you just heard, Melisa and Keeley bring so much honesty and practicality to the concept of failure and to the power of learning to free yourself from the emotional hijacks that can get in the way of moving forward.

If you’d like to learn more about their work or get a copy of their new book, Faceplant: FREE Yourself from Failure’s Funk, you can find the links in the show notes. What I want you to take away [00:36:00] from this episode is twofold. First, like the Japanese proverb says, fall down seven times. Get up eight. And like the weighted paper mache deru dos that always write themselves back up when knocked over.

Our path to success comes from acknowledging the inherent stumbles, setbacks, and face plants that are along the path to success. What matters is that we don’t get stuck. We don’t stay knocked down. We get up and learn our way forward. And second, that reflection isn’t just about looking back. It’s about how we look ahead.

Keeley talked about the power of a pre-mortem, intentionally imagining what might go wrong before it happens so that we can anticipate, prepare, and respond with more clarity, choice, and less panic and anxiety. That’s reflection in anticipation, working hand in hand. So here’s my invitation to you. Think about a project, a change initiative, or a personal goal that you’re working on right now.[00:37:00]

First, how can you frame it as an experiment, not a pass fail exam? Embrace the both end thinking, not either or second, name your assumptions. What are you expecting to happen? What are you afraid might happen and what must be true for the outcome that you intend to actually happen? And third, run a simple pre-mortem with your team.

Think about if this face plants, what will have gone wrong. How could we see it coming? Think about how you can anticipate all the different aspects of what must be true for you to get to the success that you want and how you might respond if things don’t go as planned. ’cause as we know, things often don’t go as planned, but it’s about what we learn in those moments that will help us get better at getting there faster.

This process mirrors the Japanese concept of Hanse deep reflection, not only after the fact, but at every stage of learning. [00:38:00] It’s what I write about in my book, “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn,” and what the daruma symbolizes we will face plant. The question is, do we learn our way forward? I was honored that Melisa Keeley and their co-author, Noelle Kreidler, described “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn” as one of the best examples of Hanse in business.

That’s the through line between their work and mine, using reflection and experimentation to free ourselves from failures, funk, and move forward towards our purpose with intention. I highlighted a few past podcast episodes during this conversation, which I’ll relate to in the show notes, including my conversation with Carol Dweck, author of Mindset in episode three.

My conversation with Wendy Smith, who wrote The Forward The Face Plant, and is the author of Both and Thinking in episode 35 and my conversation with Eduardo Senio on the difference between the Performance Zone and the Learning Zone back in episode five, and also go back to episode 20 to listen to my conversation with Toyota leader Isao [00:39:00] Yoshino, where we explore the power and practice of Hansei.

As you reflect on this episode, I encourage you to do two things. One, reflect where are you letting fear or past face plants keep you stuck? What’s one story you might be telling yourself that might be assigning to you a life sentence? Two, adjust. Choose one upcoming initiative like I talked about before, and run a mini pre-mortem with your team.

Frame the next project as an experiment. Get clear on expectations and surface the assumptions and risks together. What might you need to adjust is you get going, then circle back after. What did you learn together? About how things actually unfolded. Building in small, intentional steps like these, the study in adjust parts of PDSA are how we build true learning cultures.

One experiment, one reflection, one. Get back up moment of learning. Time. If you or your organization need outside support to build a culture that [00:40:00] embraces learning, at its core, I’d be happy to help. I love supporting change leaders, continuous improvement practitioners and executives like you to grow your impact and realize your vision for change, while also developing the mindset and skills to get you there.

You can learn more about my Trusted advisor work coaching and learning experiences at kbjanderson.com and I’ll also put the link in the show notes. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow or subscribe to Chain of Learning and share this episode with your colleagues so we can all strengthen our Chain of Learning together.

And if this episode resonated with you, I’d be grateful if you rate and review the show on your favorite podcast player. It really helps others find these conversations. Thanks for being a link in my Chain of Learning today. I’ll see you next time and remember, fall down seven times. Get up eight. Have a great day.