The Five-Step Cycle That Turns Failure into Your Fastest Path to Growth

Summary

Maxwell Leadership Podcast
Episode: The Five-Step Cycle That Turns Failure into Your Fastest Path to Growth
Date: July 1, 2026
Host: John Maxwell, with Mark Cole and Chris Goede

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the concept that failure, when approached with the right mindset and process, is the quickest route to personal and organizational growth. John Maxwell presents his signature Five-Step Cycle—Test, Fail, Learn, Improve, Reenter—as a practical tool for leaders to reframe their relationship with mistakes and fuel innovation. Mark Cole and Chris Goede discuss actionable strategies to embed this cycle into your leadership practice, foster psychological safety, and cultivate a culture where learning and growth trump image and perfection.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Five-Step Cycle: Test, Fail, Learn, Improve, Reenter

[04:04] John Maxwell:

• Organizations that promote innovation allow mistakes and encourage risk-taking—critical for breakthroughs.
• The succession:
  Test → Fail → Learn → Improve → Reenter ensures continuous growth.
• The more you test, the more you fail—and, crucially, the more you learn.
• “The value of testing is that you fail. And the value of failure is that you learn. And the value of learning is that you improve.” —John Maxwell [05:20]

Takeaway:

• Only by pausing and asking, “What did you learn?” after a failure, do mistakes become building blocks rather than stumbling blocks.
• Reentering (the act of trying again) should only come after real reflection and improvement.

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2. Modeling a Growth Mindset and Accepting Failure

[12:09] Mark Cole & Chris Goede:

• Leaders set the tone; “People do what people see.”
• In organizations where failure is openly discussed, team members are more likely to innovate and take responsible risks.
• Both Mark and Chris share personal stories about learning from major failures and setbacks.
• The greatest lesson is introspection and building an intentional plan for ongoing self-leadership.

Notable Quote:

• “You will not have sustainable leadership if you don’t start from the inside first.” —Mark Cole [14:13]

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3. Psychological Safety and Feedback

[16:47] Chris Goede & Mark Cole:

• Psychological safety means making team members feel secure enough to fail and share mistakes openly.
• Mark recounts a candid feedback situation—people often assume leaders won’t welcome critique, especially at higher levels.
• Leaders must intentionally model openness to feedback and show gratitude for honesty, strengthening trust and comfort with risk-taking.

Notable Quote:

• “You cannot know how much I appreciate you and this is going to help me. Incredible.” —Mark Cole, on receiving tough feedback [19:36]

Reflection:

• The default reaction is often defensiveness or justification, but true growth requires listening first, not justifying.

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4. Lessons, Accountability, and Recovery

[24:29] Chris Goede & Mark Cole:

• When addressing a significant failure, prioritize:
  1. Learning the lesson
  2. Accepting accountability
  3. Recovery and moving forward
• Leaders are often biased towards accountability and recovery, but focusing on learning first yields a deeper, more lasting impact.

Notable Exchange:

• “For me…it’s the lesson…without a doubt.” —Mark Cole [26:21]
• The leader shouldn’t dictate lessons, but ask: “Tell me what you learned”—engaging the person in self-reflection and ownership.

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5. Deep Dive: Applying the Five-Step Cycle

[34:00] Mark Cole & Chris Goede:
Each step defined with action points for leaders:

• Test:

  • How frequently do you and your organization try new things, launch pilots, seek out beta tests, or solicit new ideas?
  • Example: Jesse Cole (Savannah Bananas) demands 10 new ideas a week—most are discarded, but the brainstorming culture is vital. [36:19]

• Fail:

  • Is failure actively tolerated and dissected or brushed under the rug?
  • Frequent, “good” failures signal a healthy appetite for meaningful risk.

• Learn:

  • Do failed projects automatically trigger reflection and dialogue, or are lessons lost?
  • Leaders need to model and demand lessons-learned discussions.

• Improve:

  • Are there systems/processes for implementing new insights and closing the feedback loop?
  • Mark ranks this as the area their team needs to work on most. [39:20]
  • Invite outside feedback to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

• Reenter:

  • What’s your team’s resilience score? Do setbacks halt progress or fuel renewed efforts, armed with new knowledge?
  • “You’re never good the first time…but you’ve got to try again.” —John Maxwell (paraphrased by Mark Cole) [39:45]

Unique Challenge:

• Rank yourself and your team 1-5 on each step, identify your weak spots, and build your growth plan around that.

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6. Speed of Iteration

[32:34] Chris Goede & Mark Cole:

• Move quickly from failure to learning and improvement.
• Don’t linger in the failure stage—prolonged rumination saps confidence and momentum.
• “Once you go, ‘Well, this is failing,’ your mind already still needs to work through learning, improving, and re-entering.” [32:47]
• Target: Respond within hours or days, not weeks.

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7. Building a Culture of Innovation

[41:47] Mark Cole:

• The true shift happens when leaders create collective rituals around reflecting on and sharing lessons.
• Encourage teams/families to consume and discuss growth content together—embedding a learning culture.

Notable Quote:

• “Reset what you’re going to do when missed opportunities stop being mistakes and failures and become launching opportunities to better days.” —Mark Cole [42:23]

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8. Personal and Organizational Joy in Leadership

[44:23] Listener JJ Question/Reflection

• True leadership joy comes from watching others grow, thrive, and reach new levels of potential—reinforcing the reward of enabling learning rather than just achieving results.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Say yes. Tell the world. And then figure it out.” —John Maxwell [04:04]
• “If you're into image, you'll never have an innovative culture.” —John Maxwell [06:58]
• “The repetition of failure is that you never stopped and asked yourself, ‘What happened? And why did it happen? And how could I change?’” —John Maxwell [06:05]
• “Try something so big that you know you're going to fail.” —Mark Cole [31:22]
• “The lesson is not the leader coming in and saying, ‘Let me tell you the three lessons of this failure you need to be aware of.’ ... It’s, ‘Hey, let's figure out the lesson together by you going first.’” —Chris Goede [27:10]
• “People do what people see.” —John Maxwell/Mark Cole [12:09]

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Timestamps for Key Sections

• [04:04] — John Maxwell introduces the Five-Step Cycle and key tenets of an innovative culture.
• [12:09] — Mark Cole reflects on how leaders’ modeling impacts team culture.
• [14:13] — Mark Cole shares his biggest failure and its lesson: self-leadership is foundational.
• [16:47] — Discussion on psychological safety and the importance of being open to feedback as a leader.
• [24:29] — Prioritizing lesson-learning over accountability and recovery after failure.
• [34:00] — Detailed breakdown and actionable steps for the Five-Step Cycle: Test, Fail, Learn, Improve, Reenter.
• [41:47] — Challenge to multiply value by sharing the podcast and learning in community.
• [44:23] — Listeners' question: Where do you find the most joy in leadership?

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Action Steps for Listeners

1. Force-rank yourself and your team on each step of the cycle (Test, Fail, Learn, Improve, Reenter) from 1 (best) to 5 (needs improvement).
2. Discuss failures openly as a team, focusing first on what’s been learned before jumping to solutions or accountability.
3. Move quickly from recognizing a failure to reflecting and iterating new strategies.
4. Share the cycle process—use this episode as a resource to fuel discussion and build a learning culture in your organization or family.
5. Model coachability/humility; take feedback openly and encourage others to do the same.

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Summary Table: The Five-Step Cycle

| Step | Description | Key Questions | |----------|----------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | Test | Try new things, innovate, push boundaries | What are we testing this week/month/quarter? | | Fail | Accept that “misses” are part of growth | What didn’t work and why? Are we stretching enough to fail? | | Learn | Reflect and extract lessons from every outcome | What did we learn? What would we do differently? | | Improve | Implement changes and act on new awareness | How are we applying the lessons? Who’s holding us accountable?| | Reenter | Try again, fueled by insight and resilience | How quickly do we bounce back? Where do we need persistence? |

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Final Challenge

([42:23])

• Don't just listen—gather your team or family, re-listen, and collectively reframe how you approach mistakes. Make failure a springboard toward even greater success.

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This episode will help leaders at every level transform their approach to setbacks, cement a culture of innovation, and unlock the fastest path to conscious, continuous growth.

Transcript

[Mark Cole]

So take these five things. The cycle of success. Test, fail, learn, improve, re enter. And I want you to force rank yourself in these. One being the best, five being the one you need to work on the most. And that's how we're going to take application. Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. We are so excited that you're here today. In fact, if you will allow us, we'll take the next 30, 35 minutes and we'll add value to you with one challenge. Will you go multiply that value to others? Today I'm super excited to be joined by Chris Goede. And Chris, you're an athlete. I thought about this quote by Michael Jordan that was. It's a great quote. It says, I failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. Now, Chris, I'm going to talk about basketball in just a moment because of Michael Jordan. But last night, my family and I were in a restaurant and they had this saying in the restaurant that says, if you try to fail and and succeed, which one did you do? And I just went, wow, that's a really good question.

[John Maxwell]

It is.

[Mark Cole]

But here it's to much more important thing. A couple of weeks ago, the basketball championship m back to Michael Jordan. The NBA finals happened. And so were you happy with the Knicks or were you pulling for the. For the San Antonio sport Spurs?

[Chris Goede]

I was pulling for the Spurs. Yeah. Can I go back? Something you said? You said, I am an athlete. Maybe I was. And even then might have been a stretch. Yeah.

[Mark Cole]

You know what? I probably said that. Thank you for correcting the intro.

[Chris Goede]

I was pulling for the Spurs. Yeah. To be honest with you, you know, one of the things that I really love watching is the. The response the athletes have.

[Mark Cole]

Yeah.

[Chris Goede]

When they're disappointed.

[Mark Cole]

Y.

[Chris Goede]

And one of the greatest things that I think leads into what you're talking about today and what John's going to talk about is the star player for the spurs afterwards said, I realized that I got to get a whole lot better, like own the responsibility. I want to learn from it because they blew a ton of leads. But he goes, I think I now know a little bit better about what it's going to take for me personally and my team to reach that goal. And I thought that was great comment.

[Mark Cole]

Well, and another great leadership moment. It's a great leadership moment. And you'll appreciate this because you coached your son for a long time as Brunson, who has now become this player I'm going to watch because he took the. He took the games on his shoulders and brought it home, much like Michael Jordan. Back to the quote, but he was sitting at the end of the interview, his dad, who coaches for the New York Knicks, and Brunson, who plays, they were talking and they asked, the father said, hey, what are you most excited about as it relates to your son and how he plays or how he connects? He said it's how he conducts himself on and off the court. And about that time, Brunson said, thanks, mom. It was like really cool. Hey, we are so excited today. Speaking of the five step cycle that turns failure into your fastest path to growth. In fact, John makes a quick statement in here that I don't want you to miss. John makes a statement that says, say yes, tell the world and, and then figure it out. And Chris, you and I have a combined 50 plus years working on John Maxwell's team. And if there was ever a statement he made that he lives out daily, it's say yes, tell the world and then let the team figure it out. And so I want you to know John will be teaching authentically in this lesson. But I hope you enjoy it. It's gonna be a great lesson for you. Take some notes, come back, join Chris and I and we're gonna put some application, we're gonna put some things that we've put into place with teams and with organizations. From what John' us about the five step cycle that turns failure into the fastest path to growth. All right, grab a pen, grab a paper. By the way, if you want to download a resource that will help you follow along, you can go to the link maxwellpodcast.comcycle and you'll be able to get that maxwellpodcast.comcycle here is John Maxwell.

[John Maxwell]

People do what people see. And so in organizations that lack or desire creativity or thinking outside of the box or new ideas, those kind of organizations have a tendency to be kind of managerial in their thinking and in their operations. But in an organization that creates, that promotes innovation, what happens is you let people think out of the box. You allow people to make mistakes. You understand that to get to where you want to go, you have to have some misses along the way because you've never been there before. Everything is pioneering, everything is fresh, everything is different. And so the ability as a leader to encourage people to make mistakes, encourage people to try, encourage people to think out of the box is just really conducive to having a kind of an innovative culture. The way I always say it is, you know, say yes, tell the world and then figure it out. And there's just kind of a real sense of being able to appreciate a sense of discovery. We have what we call a cycle of success. And the cycle includes in the very beginning, test and then fail, and then learn, improve, and reenter. And this. It really works. This just really works. Your ratio of failure is based on how many attempts you have to test something brand new. So if I test 10 things, I may fail five times. If I tested 100 things, I'd probably fail 50 times. So the failure rate goes up as the testing rate goes up. But that's also where the discovery is. You see, you test and you fail. Why do you do this? To learn. You learn what works, you learn what doesn't work. You learn what you need to try a little bit more of. You need to learn what you probably need to let go of a little quicker. There's a whole learning world that only happens if you test and fail. The value of testing is that you fail. And the value of failure is that you learn. And the value of learning is that you improve. So when people talk about failure, I let them talk about failure. It's okay. But when they're done, I only have one question. When you and I mess up, when we fail, we all fail. The only question I have when we fail is, what did we learn? What did you learn? If you learn something, failure is a great success. Failure is a very successful tool to use in getting better. But you have to always understand the value of failure is that you learn from it. If you don't learn from it, there's no. You know, when people repeat the same failures, it's because they never learn from it. The repetition of failure is that you never stopped and ask yourself, what happened? And why did it happen? And how could I change? And what do I need to do differently? So you test, you fail, you learn, you improve, and then you reenter. But notice, getting back in the game doesn't happen until you've tested, failed, learned, and improved. So when we think of the. When we think of tenaciousness, the person's. They get knocked down, but they keep getting back up. And you just look at them and say, man, you know, look at them. They're just. They're amazing. They just, in spite of adversity, getting knocked down, they just. This is just a tenacious. This is not a tenacious person. You know, while you're down, before you get back, get back up, why don't you ask yourself, what knocked me down? Why do I keep hitting the ceiling? Because there's an answer to that, but you have to ask why? And so you never reenter until you improve. The sequence of innovation just works really good. And I encourage you to use this in your life. Just constantly be testing. Out of the testing comes a lot of failure. Out of the failure should come a lot of learning, and out of the learning should come a lot of improvement. Let me tell you what the quickest way to improve in your life is through testing and failing. So when you think of it, improvement is the fact that I can do everything right. That's not reasonable. That's not right at all. I've learned a lot more lessons in my failures than I have in my successes. I owe much more to where I am today because of my losses and my misses and my failures than I do because of my successes. So creating, developing, and promoting an innovative environment for your organization is incredibly healthy. But be ready to allow people to miss and come up short and not always get it right the first time. And so what I learned a long time ago is insecure people seldom allow that kind of a climate of innovation because they want to look good and they want to put forth, you know, like, a good face. And if you're into image, you'll never have an innovative culture because there's just a lot of messes and misses in creating, but there's also a lot of learning and growth in it. So it's almost like you gotta have the messes and misses so you can have the growth and the improvement.

[Ella]

My father passed, and I was in a really difficult time, really questioning what is life really about. One day we're all going to be gone. What makes you think that you live that life? Well, I was really looking for answers. I met a girl who told me about John Maxwell. The more I looked at the information that I found out, I realized, well, he's really offering all the resources that I'm looking for right now, which was amazing. In three days, there was a conference. I was on a call with Kelly. I had this feeling that I just really needed to be there. I got in the car and I drove. When I walked in and I saw the sign, welcome home, I thought, wow, that's amazing. Kelly introduced me to Mark, and she told him that, you know, I just found out about John Maxwell three days ago, and here I am. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into, but it felt so good.

[Mark Cole]

Come right up here, Ella. This is all unscripted. She's one of our Maxwell leadership certified new team members. John. She said, I really want to do more with my life. I want to begin coaching. I want to do something with my life. And John, her friend said, well, you've got got to talk to John Maxwell team and be on the Maxwell leadership team. She said, who's John Maxwell? I think this is drop dead funny. She said, I have a saying that says when the student is ready, the teacher appears and I'm ready. Show me the way to Ella.

[Chris Goede]

Where have you been?

[Ella]

I remember John's question, where have you been? So I decided to take action to achieve my dream. Now I know it was the best decision I've made in my life because I get to do what I love to do most, which is helping others to achieve their goals and dreams. Now I know that it's never too late to be what you might have been.

[Chris Goede]

Your story is waiting to be told. Learn more at Maxwell leadership.

[Mark Cole]

Something Chris, that John was teaching right there really stood out. We have these standout statements and one of the things that really struck me right here is people do what people see. And when you can get a leader that is committed to this five cycle pattern that we have of the success cycle, you will watch an entire team start leaning into a different perspective of what it means to have success, go after success and what you even do to make sure that success, yesterday's success don't become the obstacle to tomorrow's opportunities. And so really excited as always to sit down and talk with you. So man, let's go.

[Chris Goede]

So one of the things I think has been the greatest takeaway for me in working in this environment as John was talking about is the perception of and the response to the failure. Yeah, I'm an achiever by trade. Right. So those that follow enneagram. I'm an enneagram3 and it's like, hey, I want to check the box. I want to do it right. I want to succeed. And it was so hard for me around failure personally. And what you just mentioned is so true because people on my team would see how I would react right to failure. And then would they then want to act the same way? Would it make them hesitate? Right. And in this environment, both under your leadership and John's, it, it's not that, it's not that we want to see a ton of failure, but it's part of what we do and, and this cycle of success, and we're going to get to this in just a minute, has helped us do that, has helped us understand a system around something that maybe most of us are not good at, which is accepting our Failures.

[John Maxwell]

Yeah.

[Chris Goede]

Before we get to the system though, I want to back up a little bit in your leadership journey and I want, I want you to think about and these are going to be off the cuff. So just what comes to mind, what, what failure comes to, to mind for you that you've experienced that just has taught you more than any success you've ever had. Is there something that pops in your head says, yeah, that I learned 427 lessons more than any success you've ever had?

[Mark Cole]

Yeah. And it goes back. I've shared this on the podcast, perhaps to the point you could tell my story better than me, Podcast families, you consistent listeners or viewers. But it goes back to my personal failure 20 plus years ago, 25 plus years ago now to where, man, I just lost everything. And the failure lesson is not all the things I did leading up to that failure, which was just a ton. The real failure lesson to that for me, that drives me every single end of the year and every single day after the end of the year when I put my personal growth plan together, my life plan together, it's this podcast family. You will not have sustainable leadership if you don't start from the inside first. If you do not have a plan, if you do not have an intention on self leadership, your days are numbered. You will not be able to finish well. And certainly that was true for me, Chris. You know, a lot of my story, again, a lot of our podcast family, I just, I had this incredible opportunity to lead in the first decade of my adulthood. Great opportunity. I mean, just kind of like a silver spoon in my mouth in my little world. And yet, man, I squandered it. Not because I didn't make the most of the opportunity, but because I didn't build my internal capacity in a way that would make a huge difference. In fact, just kind of a little behind the scenes kind of deal. Here in the studio today, we have Brian Rezik. He's one of our new interns. And I'm watching him over out of the corner of my eye, taking notes at our podcast. And if I could tell any intern, any young college student, when you listen to this podcast, apply it to your self leadership first and do something with it inside first. Because when I did not develop myself on the inside first, my shelf life was already determined. It just was. What was the date? My date was about 10 years of extraordinary success, but then a crash and a burn coming back. And man, I think about that all the time from the space of self leadership.

[Chris Goede]

What I love about that is that is a core value to ours, which is growth. And I think John mentioned some of the greatest growth has come from some of our greatest failures. And I think each of you that are listening or watching would say say the same thing. Personally, what I want to do is before we get to the cycle now, I want to shift into your leadership role. And you're leading, and we know that, and this is a big buzzword and corporate America about this psychological safety.

[Mark Cole]

Yeah.

[Chris Goede]

What does that, what does that mean? What they're saying is, do the people feel seen, valued, and heard in a way to where they feel comfortable failing? They. They feel comfortable innovating, and it may not work. And you may throw out 10 ideas and, and, you know, maybe. Maybe none of them are there. But when it comes to leader, I want to shift gears a little bit here away from you and into how you're leading. How do you identify the difference in. To celebrate a failure versus hey, let's address the failure. Because maybe there's not. Maybe there was poor execution, maybe there wasn't proper accountability. Right. So there's two different camps here where we want to say, man, hey, what'd you learn from it? And da, da, da, da. And we celebrate like, let's keep going versus, well, you better have learned something. But it was around poor execution and maybe accountability. Do you have just things that go off in your leadership mind that you're aware of when other people on your team are going through failure?

[Mark Cole]

Yeah. So I've got a personal example, but applies to my team right now. I was just recently at James Madison University for the second year in a row doing an event with them. Several hundred people there. But who brought me in was not only a friend, not only a co leader, and not only someone in our, in our brand, but I mean, we've spent a lot of time developing leaders together. And they had some really, really critical feedback. Now, not critical in a bad way, but really a critiquing set of data points that they really wanted to share with me. And I found after all that we've invested together, I felt, I found as all of the things that we share the same DNA for. They looked at me and said, I've been worried about asking this for a long time, but would you want some input into some team members on your team? And I went, always. And they said, yeah, but this is like people that's really, really close to you. These are people high up in your organization. Do you really want that? And I found myself going, what you're touching on right Here I found that the higher and the more influential you become in an organization, the more success, the more people are prone to believe you don't want feedback. Here's why. Because most of the time, when you have a level of success or a tenure of success, your first response to feedback is a pushback that they don't know what they're talking about because I couldn't be this successful with that level of feedback. Therefore, it creates this tension. They gave me the feedback in an email after I said, I will hold you responsible if you don't give me what this looks like. And, man, I got the feedback, Chris.

[Chris Goede]

Fortunately, it wasn't where you got it in person.

[Mark Cole]

By the way, I didn't bring you on the podcast.

[Chris Goede]

I was going to say, guys, it's been a fun run. It's been great years with Mark alongside. I'm Al.

[Mark Cole]

But it was truly, I mean, one of the leaders that I value, one of the leaders that I believe in for and invest in, and we have just lost our way. Just a minute now. My first response was to the person that gave me the feedback and says, you cannot know how much I appreciate you and this is going to help me. Incredible. They called me right after that and they said, you cannot believe your response and what it did for me. And I went, isn't this always my response? They went, yeah, but the stakes are much higher here. The critique is much greater here. And I went, oh, so you can feel like you're open to failure and disconnect and people still think that you're not. There's something in the human nature, in the leadership nature that says, let's not talk about that. And because of how deep it was, I'm just going to tell you this. It occurred to me that the more that the human nature still will allow us to think it, that people open to feedback doesn't want feedback if the stakes are too high. Even with tight relationship, we've been doing stuff for years now together. There was an echelon of belief that the stakes were too high, that I don't know if I can do that. The second thing that I found is when I pass that off to the relevant teammate, they went, oh, my, I am so sorry, do you need me? And they went, pretty drastic with what I needed you to do. And I went, no, this is just something for us to work on. So I know that the tendency, even in an environment not like ours, Chris, to where John encourages it, that you get further away from our environment that loves to dissect Failure, and it gets even tighter around mistakes. And so I would just tell every leader listening today, you've got to get really focused on intentionality and in feedback that allows your team to understand failure is going to be okay.

[Chris Goede]

And I think the way you receive it, they watch. You're modeling that all the time. And so you want to get to a position where you're able to give them feedback and. And hopefully that they've learned under your leadership over time how to respond to that. Well, let me give you an example. Yeah, we've been texting the last couple of days. I was getting ready, and so I want to go here for just a minute, be extremely vulnerable because I've been in this cycle and I've been in Mark and in John's ecosystem for a long time. And Mark said, hey, I got this text about a certain team member that I've had the privilege of leading at a certain point in my career here. And he goes, I know, like me, you want feedback. And so I'm just going to pass this along. And so, absolutely, I was like, man, that's grateful. But you know what my first fleshly response was? Well, let me tell Mark what all those. I immediately was thinking the situation and justifying it versus going, no, no, no, let's. Let's sit back and go, that's their reality. And you and I talked a little bit about defining reality in where they are. And John says, listen, if you think you're leading, turn around and you're nowhere close to the person. You're just on a walk. So we got to go. We got to go to their reality. And so it checked me and it was like, so let me tell you

[Mark Cole]

my side of this, because right as I was talking about this other feedback, which, by the way, is in the same week.

[Ella]

Who's.

[John Maxwell]

What's.

[Mark Cole]

The email's coming from me in just a moment. When you get the email from me, will you send it to me? I do want to hear it, but I got that feedback from you. I feedback from another teammate that's been with me for a long time. We've worked together a long time. And in that one, I had to explain a lot of the feedback before they received it because I wanted to prep their mindset. When I got that feedback from you first, I'd gotten it a day or two before, and I went, I got to get Kris this feedback because I would want the feedback. And when I was getting ready to send it to you, I felt the temptation to go tell Chris that you understand the other side of the context, because he may not know that. And I went, he knows it. I'm not going to give him all that feedback. But it's funny, I decided not to give you an awareness that I knew some of the extenuating circumstances. And your first indication was, I need to tell him the extenuating circumstances.

[Chris Goede]

Right. Yeah.

[Mark Cole]

In that human nature.

[Chris Goede]

And we've been doing this a long time, so know that that's going to happen. We're just. We want to bring this to light because those are natural. What you do next is the most important part with that information. And how do you. How do you grow together on that? One last question around this leader perspective of leading people or teams that maybe not. Maybe that fail through innovation and all kinds of stuff that I want to ask you before we get into the cycle of success. So the role of the leader, when you have a team like this and there's a major failure, I put them in three categories. There's a lesson to be learned. There's accountability, and then there's recovery from that. And move forward with me giving you those three things. A lesson, accountability, and a recovery.

[John Maxwell]

Yep.

[Chris Goede]

What ranking do you give those three? Like what. When. When. When this situation happens? Let's just say it was that email or even the text between you and I, let's go there. Where does your mind go as a leader of what's most important, then what's next? And then the. The third one. If those were the only three responses, boy, it's.

[Mark Cole]

So let's just camp out here and get the success cycle right. This is such a good frame of how to look at these things. And what's funny is, as you give me those lesson, accountability, recovery, I had to write them down because I'm going, wow, that is a great way to look at the question you're posing and how you address getting the fastest path to growth.

[Chris Goede]

That's right.

[Mark Cole]

It's the speed of it without a question. Without a question. It's trying to find the lesson without a question. And what you want to do is you want to be accountable. Hey, I want to be accountable to creating a good culture. So let me tell you what all I did to try to create one and what was rejected. Right. We want to jump straight. Good leaders want to jump straight to accountability because they want to explain sometimes.

[Ella]

Excuse.

[Mark Cole]

Not our podcast. These are other podcast listeners. You guys own it. You don't excuse it. But. And then everybody's ready for the recovery. Okay, I got it. Can we move on?

[Chris Goede]

Let's Go, let's go.

[Ella]

Yeah.

[Mark Cole]

So there's a leader has a bias for action, so they like to get to that recovery quicker and they think the best way to get to recovery is to explain accountability. Whatever. Okay, I'm accountable. I missed it this time. I'm going to. I've watched leaders do that all the time. We jumpstart, in my opinion, the greatest return on a failure. John just wrote the book how to Get a Return on Failure. And for me, and it'd be. That's such a good question that I wish we could poll some leaders with it and I think we will. Do you think the lesson, the accountability or the recovery from a mistake is the most important? Without a question. I can answer that question. For me, it's the lesson. Yeah, without a doubt.

[Chris Goede]

I think outside here that's probably not the common.

[Mark Cole]

I don't know.

[Chris Goede]

Maybe, maybe not. Yeah. And also I would say, because I've been on the other side of these conversations with you, it's not only, you know, the personally the lesson, like let's say in this example, I ran a project that failed and we were talking about it. What I want to be very careful. What Mark's saying is not necessarily Mark telling me what the lessons were in that. It is, hey, Chris, tell me the lessons you learned. And oh, by the way, he, he has lessons and he'll share them with me. But you don't do that until you've heard me go through the process of saying, what were the lessons that you learned for losing three quarters of a million dollars on that deal?

[John Maxwell]

Yep.

[Chris Goede]

Okay. Let me tell you what it looked like on my side. Like, can we, let's get our top three together. Are we in alignment and agreeing with this?

[John Maxwell]

Yeah.

[Chris Goede]

Good. So let's move forward and not let that happen again. And then he's going to hold me accountable to it because I have that responsibility and accountability as a leader in the organization and then we'll recover from there. But I want to make sure you hear him say the lesson is not the leader coming in and saying, let me tell you the three lessons of this failure you need to be aware of. That's not what he's saying. He's saying, hey, let's figure out the lesson together by you going first, Chris, in this situation.

[Mark Cole]

So I'm going to stay here just a little bit longer because again, this is so good. And we can abbreviate the breaking apart of the cycle of success. But I'm thinking about my response leaders. So when John and I get Asked the question all around the globe and he'll answer it the same way. He uses a different word than I, but it's the same thing. What is the most desirable trait in a leader? What do you look for the most in a leader? For me it's coachability. John says humility. He was just asked this question yesterday. We were both on stage and I said, yeah, I believe that it's coachability. People that can be coached in a situation or, or desires to learn so much that every situation becomes a coaching environment. I love people that's hungry to learn. I just love it because better days are ahead for them. John loves people that are humility. Why do you love people that are humble? Because the humility allows them to learn. He'll break it on down. And I kind of go to coachability when somebody comes up to me that has made a mistake, big one or a small one, and they go, let me tell you this, here's the mistake. But let me tell you what I've learned in this. I don't have to test them to see if they're accountable. It's the people that come to me and say, hey, I made a mistake or don't come to me. I have to go to them and say, you made a mistake. And I look at the leader and even the ones that comes to me and says, hey, we missed the numbers right here. And let me tell you why we missed the numbers. And they go off giving me all these reasons why that I bet you most of them are right. I've already turned them off because they have not come and said we missed it. And this is what we're doing different because of it. Now I know that they have already done the self reflection and the application.

[Chris Goede]

Yeah, you just lived this out in a meeting that we were recently in where we missed a number. And your first question to me in that meeting was, well, when did you realize it? What did you learn? And then what did we change? Right. Like in that moment.

[John Maxwell]

Right.

[Chris Goede]

We had that conversation. So there is a much different approach for people that are, are trying to take accountability but skirting it versus coming with the lessons first, then accepting accountability. And here's how we're going to recover.

[Mark Cole]

I'll tell you there's two resources, Jake, that I hope we can put into our show notes because of how well this lesson applies. And one is a book that John wrote. It was the first book John. It was the book that John finished in 1999. And when I started in May of 2000, it was the most fresh book that he had written, which is Failing Forward. And I had just come through a colossal personal, professional failure. Just unbelievable. And I got to read this book and I got to realize that failure is not final. And if I could get anybody, and my mind, Brian, is on college students right now, obviously. And so if I could just get anybody to understand that failure is not final. So try something so big that you know you're going to fail. Because now I'm in the middle at a 56, 57 year old mind of relative, I mean, a lot of more success than I thought I was going to have in life for certain. And I'm learning, man, through some significant failures that I've done over the last several years of an unaddressed grouping of failures in my leadership and in my business performance that I'm learning. And what I'm enjoying is the return I'm getting on trying some things I never thought I'd even be in a position to try and seeing it as a return on failure rather than man, what's the cost of this failure? It's a game changer for me. It's a game changer because it still lets me know there's better days ahead, there's brighter days ahead because I'm still in a learning mode of what to do with this failure. Failure is not final. Lesson number one with failing forward,

[John Maxwell]

how

[Mark Cole]

to get a return on failure. Lesson number two. And I don't know what bundle they're going to put together, but here's what I promise you my team will do. If you'll go to Maxwell podcast forward slash cycle, they will give you a two book bundle on those two books. Because I think it's two very different lessons, but very important lessons in leadership.

[Chris Goede]

That's good. All right, so let's, as we move to the back end of our time together, let's talk about this five step cycle. Okay. And we were talking right before we started recording, we said, man, we should, we should give a little bit more application about this. These are, these are five great words. They're simple words and you could interpret them differently. And so what Mark had an idea is like, hey, let's tell them our interpretation. What does this look like in our mantra? So I would love to do that. Before you do that, here's a question for you about this. What is the speed that I heard John mention, like work through this fast. In essence, some projects you can faster than others. But how quickly as leaders or as people with. If we look at this cycle, when it Comes to failing and learning, what would your recommendation for us to be in regards to speed of working through the cycle?

[Mark Cole]

I think as soon as you determine something is a failure, something is failing, like right away. I think immediately you need to have an intuitive and a substantive plan on how you're going to learn, improve, and reenter.

[John Maxwell]

Yeah.

[Mark Cole]

And I mean, let's call it 24 hours, let's call it two hours. Once you go, well, this is failing. Your mind already still needs to work through learning, improving, and reentering. There's two reasons for that. One, if you stay in failure too long, the failure spirals on you, both in your confidence, in your ability to move forward, and in your sense of saying, I'll try this again. You debilitate yourself from properly responding to failure if you don't get a plan to learn, improve and re enter quickly.

[Chris Goede]

Quickly. So I ask that ahead of time, before Mark goes through and gives some example, because I want you to be thinking about that. Yeah, I want to. I want you to be thinking about, man, when this happens, how quickly am I going here? What am I thinking about? So have that as a context. This is not something that we want you to go. Well, I'll just sit back and in about two weeks, then I'll go to the learn part. As Mark walks you through this, it is. I mean, in everything that we do, it is. And John says this, it's not the fastest one. It's the one that starts first. And so we are all going to fail. So how do we learn from it? And that's what you'll hear a little bit about as he breaks it.

[Mark Cole]

And so do me a favor, Chris, because this is going to be a little bit. We've talked about the success cycle multiple times on this podcast. Test, fail, learn, improve, reenter. But today we're taking a whole podcast and we're talking about this cycle of success. And so, Chris, I'm going to take man, no more than five minutes, but I'm going to take a few minutes right here and I'm going to tell you how to go deeper in each five of these levels. What I want you to do is I know where I'm going, so interrupt me, interject it, make it better. But the reason is because this is going to be the action item for the podcast today. I've never challenged leaders to do this. I want you to take the propensity of your team, of your organization, maybe even of your personal psyche in each five of these levels, and I want you to rank them One through five, which one are you the best at? That's one. Which one are you the least effective at? That's five. I'm going to give you five things that will help your team become more successful today. It will make a difference. So take these five things. The cycle of success. Test, fail, learn, improve, re enter. And I want you to force rank yourself in these. One being the best, five being the one you need to work on the most. And that's how we're going to take application. So when we say test, let me tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how well does your organization test new ideas? How well do you try things? How many beta tests are you in? When's the last time you've tried something for the first time? That's what we're tackling right here. In fact, my good friend Jesse Cole, Savannah Bananas, we've had him, love him, he's been at exchanger event, he's done, he's done several things for us. But he challenges his team every week to come in with 10 brand new ideas to discuss. Now he says by the end of the week there's only two that is still on the board that's even worth testing and trying. But he's not interested in the eight bad ones. He's not even totally interested this week in the two maybe ones. He's just interested in an idea environment that is constantly testing new ideas and seeing how well they are. How well does your organization test? What are you doing personally to try things brand new that you've never done before.

[Chris Goede]

The second, real quick, let me just jump in because I was thinking about that was when it comes to that, that just doesn't happen. Okay, Meaning this. You better be intentional about your growth. You better be intentional about putting yourself in rooms that maybe are not even on the same, they're not even the same industry as you or the size business of you. Right? Like get to a place to where you are thinking on the business or your personal journey a little bit and continuing to grow, which is a value of ours because that's where the testing comes. There's no doubt that you and John come back with some crazy ideas that come from you being in rooms or reading or having conversations that allow us as an organization to test those on your behalf. So just understand that testing that Mark's talking about doesn't happen unless you as a leader are learning and stretching yourself from what you do every single day.

[Mark Cole]

And so the second, that's great ad this second sphere the second level of the success cycle is fail. Now, I talked a lot about earlier in the podcast, I talked a lot about this concept, your perception of failure. What do you do? And so here's the question for you. How well does your organization fail? Are you good at it? Have you become a pro at failing? By the way, if it's been a long time since you failed, you're not trying anything big enough and you need to try something bigger because every great organization is trying things on a consistent basis that is beyond their ability to execute and to perform with excellence. So how well do you fail? And that is meaning how often. But it's also, what's your response to that failure? And so once again, give yourself a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. As we continue through this cycle. The third one, Chris, is one around here at Maxwell, leadership we are super passionate about is learn. How well do you learn? We talked a little bit earlier in the podcast about a leader's response to failure. Do they make mistakes or, excuse me, do they make excuses or do they find the lesson? And that's my challenge for you. Are you an organization that is constantly looking to learn? John says something toward the end of his talk today about how can I take something that's good and make it better? Are you learning in certain areas that'll make you better? What is the learning posture of your organization? Number four is improving. How well do you improve? This is all about accountability. This is all about how well do we keep ourselves accountable. Chris and I are a part of right now trying to improve the accountability of our team. If I had to give my numbers right here, five would be accountable. It would be improve. Yeah, I don't think we have this discipline that says, oh my, that's what it was, and we will come back with an improve. I would give ourselves a 5 on that, meaning that's the one we need to improve the most.

[Chris Goede]

I agree. And around this, be open to presenting your failure to other leaders and being like, hey, here, here's what happened. Here's. Here's what I have learned. I'm thinking about doing this. Am I on the right track? And you'd be, you'd be amazed. They'll be like, you're doing the exact same thing twice in a row. No, go fix it. So be open to that. And that's where that humility comes in, the coachability throughout that process.

[Mark Cole]

And then the fifth level of the cycle is re enter. What is the resilience level of your organization? How persistent are you? Do you take failures as final and just say, I'm not going to try that again. Or do you take it as insight so you can try it again better? John makes the statement all the time. I love it. He says you're never good the first time. But so many times people see when it comes to trying something different, as significant as a one and done. If the one time doesn't work, I'm done trying it again. Well, you are not going to be successful at anything greater than what you're doing right now. If you don't try things with a mindset. We're not going to be good the first time. It's going to have to take a second time, a third time, fourth time. That's why I'm super excited about what Maxwell Leadership Corporate Solutions is doing in resilience with Valerie Burton's book. You guys have an entire program that you're using to work with organizations on this. Number five, how to reenter, how to stay standing, how to be resilient.

[Chris Goede]

That's exactly right. And it is something that's weighing on our people. It's weighing on you as a leader, but it's also weighing on the team. And it's heavy. And so, you know, how do you do that and re enter that cycle and then be re energized about what you are learning from it? Mark, I want to, I love the challenge of having our listeners, our watchers that are watching with us on YouTube, rank themselves. Never done that before. So I love that that if you were to as you wrap up, if you were to close with one thing that you would encourage a leader of a team to do this week that would create more innovation, maybe create a healthier culture for the team, be accepting failure. What would it be other, other than something you talked about today, like what is the one thing if I said love the ranking. Yes, they're going to do that. What's the one thing that you think we want to challenge the people with that says this will create more innovation and I think this will also create a healthier culture around learning and failure.

[Mark Cole]

Well, it's going to be. I'm going to answer that with a bias of learning. I'm so passionate about the lesson, the bias, the responsibilities. Right. Made that clear the whole time. What I would love for you to do as a next step to this leaders that really want to create this environment of accountability and of success and creating a cycle of recovery around failure is I want you to do what my friends at Plexus does. I was with them a couple of weeks ago in Columbus, Ohio and they came up to me, dozens of them came up to me and said, mark, we love your podcast, but just understand this when we're listening to your podcast, we're listening with 20 people, 25 people, 30 people.

[Chris Goede]

I love it.

[Mark Cole]

I want to challenge you podcast listeners, podcast family, podcast leaders, get people around you and consume this lesson. I don't know if I've ever just challenged you to go now re listen to this podcast or a particular episode with somebody else, but some of you need to get your teenagers around a table and understand how to create a five step cycle that turns failure into your fastest return of growth. And that's what you can do from this till. So the bias is go get this podcast after you've ranked yourself and pull in a community, your team, your family, your kids and start resetting what you're going to do when miss opportunities stop being mistakes and failures and they become launching opportunities to better days. We have a listener comment, Chris, that I want to finish with. I think it's actually a question that a podcast listener kept themselves. No, it's jj. JJ said it's interesting when people keep score with the quote, I've done more for you than you've done for me. I've learned to lean in to the joy of just helping others with no exception of return or no expectation of return. Here's JJ's question. That's where real joy comes in for me. But what brings you the most joy in leadership? Thank you for the question, jj. I'll ask you the same question. What brings you the most joy in leadership? For me, jj, it's really seeing a return of growth. I've told you this podcast family, this podcast group many times that my purpose statement in life is to motivate and inspire people to reach their full potential. And when I watch people around me step up to the next level of potential and live that out and get a reward of it, there is nothing in my opinion that brings more joy and leadership for me at least for that.

[Chris Goede]

Yeah, I think it's a great question. As I was reflecting on it, I looked back over some of my leadership journey and I think there are different seasons as a leader of things that bring you joy. And I know, I've heard John and you talk a little bit about this, but for me right now, what brings me the most joy in my leadership is having those one on one coaching conversations with my team, like just going in and being curious and trying to collectively with our thoughts and our ideas raise it to another level. Like those conversations bring me so much joy and they give me so much energy. And that's a form of what we talk about when it comes to developing your people. You know, that level four skill set in the five levels is are you reproducing yourself of lessons that you've learned, like why hold that stuff, you know? And John wrote a book called the Leader's Greatest Return and everybody's like is there a financial number here at the bottom of this thing? And no, what he's saying is it's watching to your point. People succeed far above what you would have by you investing in them personally. Yeah.

[Mark Cole]

Hey, thank you so much for joining Chris and I and John today on the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. We really are committed to adding value to you. We're really challenging you to go multiply that value to others. And we do all this because everyone deserves to be led.

[Ella]

Well,

[Chris Goede]

Sam.