Podcast Summary: This Is Woman’s Work with Nicole Kalil

Episode 389: “Why Playing It Safe Is Holding You Back (and How to Fail Forward Instead)”

Guest: Lorraine H. Marchand
Date: February 23, 2026

Overview

This episode is a deep dive into the ways that fear of failure holds women back from pursuing dreams, innovating, and growing—both at work and in life. Host Nicole Kalil is joined by Lorraine H. Marchand, innovation consultant, educator, and author of No Fear, No Failure: Five Principles for Sustaining Growth Through Innovation. Together, they challenge the traditional mindsets around “playing it safe,” share practical strategies for reframing failure as learning, and explore how to create cultures—in organizations and in ourselves—where experimentation and boldness are supported.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rethinking Fear and Failure

[01:00-04:33] Nicole’s Introduction

• Many women have dreams and ideas that are sidelined by a “well-rehearsed list of reasons” not to pursue them; most of these are rooted in fear—especially fear of failure or being seen to fail.
• Nicole shares her own experience: most successes are built on many more failures.

[04:33-09:20] Lorraine’s First Story: Childhood Innovation

• Lorraine recounts solving a real-world problem at age 13 with her inventor father, designing a “Sugar Cube” to speed up cafe service.
• “My dad made it safe to experiment. He wanted to imbue that as a culture in our family.” (Lorraine, 06:35)
• Key point: Early encouragement and the normalization of experimenting—and failing—matters. The opposite happens as girls grow older: criticism, responsibilities, and fear of failure begin to “shut us down.”

Notable Quote:

“I encourage everybody, but women in particular, think back at what your dreams were… when there were no boundaries.”
(Lorraine, 08:46)

2. Changing Cultures—Even When You’re Not the Boss

[10:36-14:40] Making Failure Safe in Work Environments

• Many organizations pay lip service to “innovation” but actually punish mistakes, leading to fear-driven cultures.
• What individuals can do:
  • Focus on what you can control—start with your own mindset and team.
  • Lorraine’s “Fail Free Friday” at IBM: weekly meetings dedicated to sharing what isn’t working, with no pressure to fix it immediately. This normalizes discussion of failure as learning.
• For job seekers: Ask interviewers, “What happened to the last person who failed here?” or “What happens when things don’t go as planned?” to get a real sense of a company’s culture.

Notable Quote:

“…what you can control is yourself. I like to use the mantra: try, fail, learn.”
(Lorraine, 11:12)

3. Internal Barriers & Gendered Socialization

[14:40-18:00] Internalizing Failure – The Gender Gap

• Research and experience suggest men are more likely to say “I failed at something,” while women often internalize: “I am a failure.”
• Women are socialized to value perfectionism and to avoid risk, which makes failure feel personal and shameful.

Strategies:

• Surround yourself with confident, supportive, accountability partners who can flag when you’re engaging in negative self-talk.
• Seek out encouraging managers and mentors.
• Use journaling or another form of reflection to uncover triggers and patterns.

Notable Quote:

“I think it’s really important that women have an accountability partner, a buddy who can help them out of that kind of speak.”
(Lorraine, 15:55)

4. Reframing Self-Doubt: Angel’s Advocate

[20:26-22:59] Challenging Worsts with Bests

• Nicole’s Technique: For every “10 reasons why I’m not ready,” she forces herself to list “10 reasons why I am.” Likewise, for every worst-case scenario, she contemplates the best-case.

Notable Quote:

“I love that… what it does is help you disabuse yourself of that long laundry list of negatives…”
(Lorraine, 21:29)

• The guest and host agree: learning, not binary success/failure, should be the goal of experiments. Define clear learning objectives for every “try.”

5. What “No Fear, No Failure” Really Means

[22:59-25:36] The Book’s Message

• It’s not about never feeling fear or failing, but not letting fear of failure be the thing that holds you back.
• The everyday risks we face—taking an idea to a meeting, speaking up—are low stakes compared to what fear tells us.

6. Five Principles for Growth through Innovation (The Five Cs)

[25:36-30:45] Lorraine’s Framework

1. Culture

• Build a “learn-it-all” rather than “know-it-all” culture.
• Quotes Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) as leaders who promote experimentation.

2. Customer First

• Break the echo chamber; truly understand what your customers want. Real conversation reduces self-centered fears.

3. Chance

• Allocate resources (time, budget) to new ideas and allow teams to experiment—and sometimes fail—without penalty.

4. Collaboration

• Collaboration today is about aligning all stakeholders around growth and customer satisfaction, not just "getting along" with colleagues.

5. Change

• Remove tasks before adding new ones to make space for experimentation.
• Communicate what isn’t changing to ground people during transitions.

Notable Quotes:

“…as you mentioned, we should eliminate as we’re adding or testing…”
(Nicole, 30:46)

7. Practicing “Failing Forward”

[31:42-33:10] Concrete Tips & Everyday Application

• See every attempt as a small experiment designed to teach you something.
• Lorraine’s story: Building a diagnostics startup, recognizing and dissecting mistakes to power the next step.
• “Make yourself a student again. If you’re reframing it as learning… you’ll see opportunities to test the waters and figure out what you want to gain from that.” (Lorraine, 32:29)

8. Overcoming the Fear of Being Seen to Fail

[33:10-37:17] Making Your Tries Public

• The human instinct is to focus more on not wanting to be wrong than being “meaningfully right.”
• Two strategies:
  • Reframe your focus: Aim to be meaningfully right through informed testing—not to avoid ever being wrong.
  • Share your experiments with trusted confidants for support and normalization.
• With time and practice, the opinions of naysayers reveal who shouldn’t be part of your growth circle.

Notable Quotes:

“As human beings, we tend to focus more on not wanting to be wrong than being meaningfully right.”
(Lorraine, 33:45)

“Who you surround yourself [with] is everything.”
(Lorraine, 36:15)

Memorable Quotes & Key Timestamps

• “Much more is possible than we believe because we buy into our limitations faster than our possibilities.”
  — Nicole (02:10)

• “Try, fail, learn.”
  — Lorraine (11:15)

• “If you define the experiment with a learning objective, I think that’s really important…”
  — Lorraine (21:56)

• “Playing it safe has a cost that we don’t talk about nearly enough.”
  — Nicole (03:26)

• “Every day, just make that commitment to try something new, not be worried about the idea of being wrong.”
  — Lorraine (35:13)

Segment Timestamps

• [01:00] Nicole’s setup: Fear, failure, and internal “head trash”
• [04:33] Lorraine’s formative childhood story; early experimentation
• [10:36] Changing culture from within; “Fail Free Fridays”
• [14:40] Gendered habits—women internalizing failure, striving for perfection
• [20:28] Nicole’s “Angel’s Advocate” approach
• [23:54] “No Fear, No Failure”—explained
• [26:05] The Five Cs of sustaining growth
• [31:42] What failing forward looks like in practice
• [33:44] How to handle fear of public failure and others’ opinions
• [36:15] The importance of supportive people

Conclusion

The episode closes with Nicole’s encouragement:

“Make ‘try, fail, learn’ your personal mantra... Growth doesn’t happen without failure. And playing it safe has a cost. So go chase dreams, test ideas. Follow deep desire because more of you isn’t reckless. It’s required. And that is woman’s work.” (37:47)

Resources

• Lorraine Marchand: lorraineMarchand.com
• Book: No Fear, No Failure: Five Principles for Sustaining Growth Through Innovation (available everywhere, prioritize your local bookstore)

For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode

Expect actionable strategies for:

• Reframing failure as valuable feedback and learning
• Creating safer environments for innovation, whether you’re the boss or not
• Discarding perfectionist self-talk and internalized fear
• Building supportive networks and mentors
• Letting go of people and tasks that drain your confidence and ambition

The conversation is candid, supportive, practical, and full of real-world examples—ideal for anyone who wants to redefine their relationship with risk, fear, and growth.