[0:05] What if the fastest path to career success is to make more mistakes?

[0:10] My name is Rusty Gaillard and this is Do Something Different, a leadership podcast. I was taught that lesson by one of my earliest clients. In fact, the lesson was slightly different. You have to be not make more mistakes, but be willing to make more mistakes. This particular client wanted to carve out time in his schedule to invest in something that was personally meaningful to him. As we talked about it, I said there's three big places you can take time out of your schedule. You can take it out of your work time, your family time, or your personal time. Now, he had no personal time, so it was either work or family. And he said, I'm not going to sacrifice any more for my family, so it's got to come out of work time.

[0:48] In that first week, we took two hours out of his schedule, and ultimately we built that up to taking five hours out of his work week so that he could invest in something personally meaningful. But it started with a willingness to fail. He had to be willing to say, I'm going to carve out this time and I'm not going to work during that time. And let me tell you, that was 100% against his natural way of thinking because this guy was a hard worker. But what he discovered in doing this was as he took out, the first two hours and then ultimately five hours from his work week, not only was he happier because he could invest in the thing that was important to him, but his impact and his efficiency and ultimately his success at work grew. And he had more control and time over his schedule, obviously, as he took time out. So I started to call this the success trifecta because I saw this pattern in my clients, that they had more success at work while having more control over their time and calendar and more fun doing it because they're doing the kind of work that they want to be doing. So what does this require? It requires this willingness to do an experiment,

[1:59] to willingness to try something new. And fundamentally, what that is, is a growth mindset. It is being committed more to learning and growth than it is to being right and avoiding mistakes.

[2:12] I just started rereading this book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. And the fundamental principle in the book is that you're either above the line or below the line at any time. And when you're above the line, you're committed to learning. And as a result, you're curious and you're open-minded. but when you're below the line, you're committed to being right, which is avoiding mistakes and more in the blame and the shame and kind of closed-minded mentality. Now, this framing of this concept draws very heavily on Carol Dweck's groundbreaking book, Mindset, where she described a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. The growth mindset is very much about being above the line and being curious and wanting to learn and grow. The fixed mindset is like being below the line. It's like being committed to being right. And the fixed mindset fundamentally says, I am who I am. I don't learn or grow. I'm capable of what I'm capable of. And therefore, whatever I'm doing now is what I'm capable of doing.

[3:09] And any stretch assignment I get carries a lot of risk with it because I might fail. And that says I'm not good enough. It's a statement of my value as a person. The fixed and the growth mindset is something that you can shift. Just like being below the line and above the line is something you can shift. This is why it's tied to self-improvement and personal development. Because your personal development, your ability to improve yourself, is key to your ability to become more effective as a leader. Nobody comes out of the womb ready to lead a multi-million or multi-billion dollar company.

[3:45] It requires some growth and some learning as a person. And you 100% can do that. Here's the challenge that you're up against.

[3:54] Way more of your brain circuitry is dedicated to keeping you alive than it is to helping you thrive and learn and grow. From an evolution standpoint, that makes complete sense because you needed to survive. But in our modern day, it doesn't make sense. Or it does make sense, but it doesn't help you. Because the threats we face are not mortal threats. They're not things that are going to kill you for the most part. They're just psychological threats, things that feel threatening, like when your boss gives you a dirty look, or when you have a big presentation and you're afraid it may not go well. All of these kinds of things create this psychological anxiety and they trigger the same survival mechanism that was wired into us, which is fight or flight. And when you trigger that fight or flight survival mechanism, what happens is you tend to go below the line to use that language. You tend to get close-minded and defensive because you're trying to survive. You're trying to prove that you're right because being wrong feels like failure. It feels like being rejected. It feels like in some ways death as you think about it in this kind of psychological standpoint.

[5:03] One of my friends who I worked with at Apple left Apple and went on to work at Amazon and worked in a team where he had multiple meetings frequently with Jeff Bezos. And he recounted one story to me where he got chewed out by Jeff Bezos. And Jeff Bezos was just laying into this guy yelling at him. And it was, this guy was feeling terrible because he felt 100% responsible for this situation. And it's, if you just stopped the story at that point, it would sound like 100% triggering this fight or flight kind of response. I mean, I don't know about you, but if I picture myself in that situation, I would feel terrified and ashamed and guilty and wrong and all of these things that trigger that fight or flight mechanism and make me kind of defensive. But also in a way shut me down so I'm not as open to learning.

[5:50] If the story ended there, it would have been one thing, but it didn't because Jeff Bezos went on to stop and he said, hold on a minute, let me just stop this because I know I've been yelling at you, but do you know why I'm yelling at you? And my friend who isn't being, you know, the target of this said, well, because we made the wrong decision. Jeff said, no, that is not the issue. I was in the room. We all made that as well. We all made that decision jointly together, everyone who was here. So it's not that you made the wrong decision. And it's not even the implications of that decision, which have cost the company X amount of dollars. That's not why I'm mad either. I am mad at you and I'm yelling at you because you had information that you did not share when we were making that decision. And as a result, we made a worse decision than we could have made. I don't ever want you to do that again. When you have information that's relevant to a decision, I expect you to bring it to the table and share it.

[6:45] And in that moment, Jeff Bezos turned what could have been a blame and shame kind of interaction into a learning and growth interaction. That was masterful. But it's that turn that we all need to learn to do for ourselves. How do you take any situation which doesn't go well and could easily trigger that defensive mindset, which is committed to being right? How do you trigger that and how do you change it into something where you can be open-minded and willing to learn and grow?

[7:21] This matters because it impacts your success as a leader. It impacts your executive presence because you're going to show up more powerfully and more committed and more strongly if you are grounded in this belief that growth is what matters more than being right. Right?

[7:41] It also impacts your leadership skills because when you invest in growing and learning, you're not just investing for yourself, you're also focused on your team because you want to elevate them. As they elevate, you elevate as well. It gives you more room to grow because they're doing more and more. And of course, it's going to help your career growth because the more you grow, the more you're ready for that next level of performance and that next opportunity. All of these things, your executive presence, your leadership skills, your career growth, they all matter. And when you adopt that kind of growth mindset, that focus on learning rather than being right, when you become willing to make experiments, it boosts your confidence. Most people misunderstand confidence. They say confidence comes from having done something before. Once I've done it before, I'm confident that I can do it again. And I would suggest to you, if you only think about confidence in that way, you are limiting your growth because it requires you having done something before you have confidence. But you can have confidence in advance of doing something. And where does that come from? It comes from your knowing that you can land on your feet, that you can learn and grow and adapt. And you may not be successful the first time you try something, but you will be successful if you work at it.

[9:00] That's where confidence comes from. It comes from your knowing that you are going to survive this experience, you're going to learn from it, you're going to grow and come out a better version of yourself. That is self-improvement. That is personal development. That is the root of confidence because it's going to help you in your career growth.

[9:20] Some people are very focused in their career because they want more impact. They want more purpose. They want a sense of meaning. But of course, the financial impact matters as well. And adopting a growth mindset is the fastest way to earn more money in your corporate career.

[9:37] In the corporate world, as long as you're operating inside that environment, the fastest path towards more earning is promotion, is more responsibility, and ultimately leading people. There are certainly in many companies, there are highly paid individual contributors who are technical experts in their area. And yet, the highest paid individual contributor will always be earning less than someone who continues to advance as a leader in the organization managing other people. So if you want to maximize your earnings, the fastest way to do that is to focus on your advancement, on your career growth, on your promotions in terms of growing your personal impact in the company. Because your earnings mirror your impact. The more impact you have, the more earnings potential you have.

[10:24] One of the greatest examples of growth in career that I like to talk about is actually Jeff Bezos. I'm going to use him as an example again. And I use him as an example because when he started Amazon, it was a handful of people. And he was a leader of a handful of people. And when he retired as CEO of Amazon or stepped down as CEO, he was leading one of the largest companies in the world, both in terms of revenue and number of employees. That is a massive growth trajectory for any individual. And of course, it went or took place over many years. But he grew from the kind of person that can lead a very small team to the kind of person who can lead hundreds of thousands of people and make multi-million and billion dollar decisions.

[11:11] How does he do that? He continued to invest in growth. So if you want to grow your earnings potential, it requires growing your impact. And the way to grow your impact is always operate a level above where you are today. Because when you're operating a level above what your current job title is, you are demonstrating to those around you that you are bigger than your job and you are ready to be promoted.

[11:37] That requires building your capability. It requires leaning into your growth. So how do you do that? Two things. Number one, look at what the people above you are doing. How are they spending their time? What kind of decisions are they making? How are they leading their teams? Who are they interacting with? What are they talking about in meetings? Those are the kind of things you want to observe and note for yourself and identify how you want to start to act that way. how you want to start to be like a person at that level of the organization. Break it down for yourself. Get something specific, an action that you can take that's going to help you act more and more like that person. And then be willing to grow, to learn, to do the experiment in order to do more of that, in order to be more of that on a day-to-day basis. The second thing that you can do is not only to look at them and observe them, but to interact with them more at the people one level above you. So this is not just your boss one level above you, but your boss's peers. Who's your boss interacting with? Who are their peers? How can you start to build relationships with those people?

[12:45] Those two things, looking at what the next level above you is doing, how they're acting and spending their time, and then interacting more with that same level, one level above you, both of those things are helping to position you as that level of leader so that you are ready for promotion.

[13:01] Now, as you approach this, there's some common mistakes. that people make when they are wanting to adopt this kind of mindset of growing, of focusing on growth rather than focusing on being right. The first problem that people or mistake that people make is they avoid feedback. Because feedback fundamentally often is a criticism or a judgment. And if you're afraid of that because it means that you're wrong, then you're not going to, you're going to be depriving yourself of a huge opportunity to learn and grow. I truly believe that feedback is a gift so when someone offers you feedback whether you agree with it or don't agree with it whether it's helpful or painful be grateful thank them appreciate what it is that they have to say and say hey i really appreciate you making the effort to share this feedback with me i'm going to take it to heart and reflect on it and think about how i can incorporate it to be a better leader and a better person that is a very simple response you're not committing to doing anything other than reflect on it. But don't think about feedback as all judgment. Think about it as how do you learn from it? So that is going to help you be more open to it rather than avoiding it or rejecting it.

[14:15] A second common mistake that people make is waiting for permission to be a leader, waiting for permission to step up, waiting for permission to start booking meetings with the peers of their boss. Don't do those things. Don't wait for someone else to ask you. Those who want to learn, go out proactively to learn. It is a choice. You don't have to wait for anything else. You start doing that now. It's like the client example that I shared right at the beginning of the podcast. That someone who carved time out of his schedule, he didn't wait for permission to do that. He didn't ask his boss about it. He said, I'm responsible for my success as a person and as a leader. And if I want to grow as a leader, if I want career growth, if I want personal improvement, personal development, I've got to be willing to take action now. Stop waiting for permission.

[15:05] The third common mistake that people make is being defensive when challenged. If you're in a meeting, if you've got a recommendation and you put a proposal forward and you're somebody criticizes that or challenges your proposal, don't respond with defensiveness because defensiveness is only a sign that you're trying to be right. That being right is the most important thing. That's not the most important thing. You have to remind yourself of that. And this is where self-awareness becomes so important because in that moment, when you get criticized or when you get pushback or challenge, it's very common to go to that fight or flight response because that is a chemical reaction in your brain. You have to become aware of that, take a deep breath and reset and say, look, I don't need to say this to yourself, by the way, look, I don't need to be right. What I need to do is learn from this and get the best solution that's going to help the company grow and achieve its objectives. And if you take that mindset, when you're challenged, you're not going to be defensive. You may for a moment, but you're going to reset, take a deep breath and shift back into that learning and growth mindset. And when you're in that learning and growth mindset, you're going to be open and you're going to create a better solution and a better outcome for the company.

[16:18] Let me give you three simple tools that you can use now to help you apply this and help you bring it to life in your day-to-day work and you pick one of these things or actually pick all three of them if you can and put them into practice this week because it's in the doing of something different that you actually start to build a new habit and that new habit starts to become a reflection of who you are as a leader all three of these share a common theme which is they're shifting from being backward looking to being forward looking. If you're growing as a leader, you want to look forward. You want to see where am I going? What am I building? What kind of new capabilities and skills am I building? How am I improving as a person? So don't be all backward looking, be forward looking instead. The three practical tips are these. Number one, stop asking for feedback.

[17:07] I say that a little bit tongue in cheek, but I'm serious. You can change the words you use because feedback tends to be backward looking and often has a criticism interpretation to it. So instead of asking for feedback, ask for advice, ask for recommendations, ask for suggestions, ask what can I do differently to be more effective? Ask a forward looking kind of question rather than a backward looking kind of question if you want to get actionable suggestions and ideas. And by the way, for most people, it's way easier to give advice and recommendations than it is to give feedback. Number two, also shift from backward looking to forward looking. When something goes wrong, don't look for who's to blame. Don't focus exclusively on what went wrong and who's responsible. Focus instead on what you can learn from it and what you can do differently next time. That is a forward looking approach that's gonna help you be more effective as a leader because what's done is done. You don't need to assign blame. You want to go forward and figure out how to improve this next time.

[18:13] The third tool that I want to offer you is to carve out five minutes in your week at the end of every week to reflect on what you did and what you can do differently. Next time. This is both backward looking and forward looking. The backward is a reflection on what I did, not from the sense of a blame or shame or criticizing yourself, but from the sense of reality check. Hey, I said I wanted to interact more with the people one level above me, with my boss's peers? Did I do that? Did I have any meetings with them? When I was in a meeting, did I talk to them? Did I chat before or after the meeting to have a little high hallway conversation? Whatever your goal is, just do a reflection. Am I doing that? And then look forward and say, what can I do differently next week? This five minutes of your week is your superpower that's going to help you stay focused on the specific actions that you can take to learn and grow.

[19:06] So this tool that I've given you here is a mindset tool to help you focus not on being right. And when you fall into that place of wanting to be right because you've been criticized or threatened or judged or given difficult feedback, you've got that chemical reaction that puts you in the fight or flight kind

[19:24] of response and you get defensive and you want to be right. Notice it take a deep breath do a reset and say what can i learn or grow from this situation and from that curious open mindset take the next step because your career growth your success in your job your happiness in your job your sense of purpose your fulfillment your ability to manage your schedule your ability to achieve the success trifecta of more success with more control of your calendar and more fun doing it, is all dependent on self-improvement, on personal development, on leadership growth, on positive thinking, on a growth mindset operating above the line.

[20:09] Be the person who is committed to growth over committed to being right. And when you do that, you can grow as a leader, you will be more successful, and it leads to faster income growth, faster salary, more happiness, more fulfillment, more control, a stronger sense of purpose. And it starts by changing your mindset, being willing to do something different.