Mike Edwards Of Leading for Change On Becoming Free From The Fear Of Failure

An Interview With Savio P. Clemente

Experiment your way to something good. The reality is we can’t know the right way to do something. So, try something, and if it works, terrific. If not, then drop it and do something else.

The Fear of Failure is one of the most common restraints that hold people back from pursuing great ideas. Imagine if we could become totally free from the fear of failure. Imagine what we could then manifest and create. In this interview series, we are talking to leaders who can share stories and insights from their experiences of “Becoming Free From the Fear of Failure.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Mike Edwards.

Mike Edwards has more than 30 years of experience helping his clients achieve remarkable outcomes. These customers range from medium-sized companies to Fortune 500 members and are in numerous industry sectors, including finance, insurance, media, manufacturing, and healthcare.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?

Thank you for the invitation to talk about such a common problem all of us face at some point.

For the first 25 years of my career, I played things safe. I was an employee for numerous great companies and was by all measures successful, despite playing it safe. However, I never stayed anywhere for long. I was bored, restless, and honestly a little afraid that I was one project away from a colossal failure.

It wasn’t until 2011 that I’d had enough of living and working this way. That was the point I started my own business, Leading for Change, and struck out on my own. Little did I know how much a fear of failure would play on my life going forward.

Fast forward to today. I work with leaders in companies of all sizes who want to improve the outcomes they’re pursuing and the conditions for their people. Through my work, I’ve come to see that every problem comes down to one factor: people.

Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

Absolutely.

This story happened when I was managing multi-million dollar programs for large financial organizations at a point in my career.

One of the most challenging assignments I received would require more than 100 people and two years to complete.

As we got started, the challenges began to reveal themselves. And, with time, things began to unravel.

After several months of attempting to get things back on track, my manager told me I was being replaced. I was devastated as I had failed. She explained how several other managers thought she should just let me go (i.e. fire me). However, she lobbied on my behalf, and they decided to give me a second chance.

While I was grateful for the second chance, the fear of failure was overwhelming. However, I was determined to succeed this time.

My next assignment was only marginally less complicated. I was assigned a program which involved completing an estimated 1,500 days of work within a 75-day window. Unlike the last time, I asked for everything I needed to help the team succeed, no matter how far-fetched it felt.

I asked for:

• A team of 25 seasoned people to be hired within two weeks.
• A dedicated workspace so we could collaborate very openly.
• Daily meetings with management so they’d be able to support the team by removing impediments.

And the list went on.

This time the outcome was very different. We delivered everything on the day we said we would, with no problems in our deliverables after going live, and we were $1,800 under budget (that would have amounted to less than a day).

To this day, this has been one of my crowning achievements that I continue to talk about. The list of things I learned is a long one, but the key lessons I continue to use in my work:

• Ask for help fast — this is the critical difference in my behaviour between these two experiences.
• Experiment your way to something good. The reality is we can’t know the right way to do something. So, try something, and if it works, terrific. If not, then drop it and do something else.
• Make it possible for people on a team to collaborate quickly and transparently.
• People thrive because of who they work with, not because of the fancy offices and tools they have
• Nothing is impossible unless I tell myself it is. So, why not make it easier?

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

All of a leader’s character traits combine to make them a successful leader. This includes the character traits they might wish they didn’t have or the ones we think of as being on our dark side. However, for me the three which stand out for me are:

• Empathy — I know it might feel cliche that I’m leading with this one. However, several years ago, I learned to trust what I’m feeling and sense beyond what seems obvious. This is what empaths do, but they take it to a different level of listening to what’s happening.

I can think of one team I was leading through a workshop series that would result in them being stronger leaders and a team. During a residential retreat workshop, I sensed intense grief in the room. I used this information to ask a question that became the turning point for this team.

It turns out the grief was pointing to the fact the team was mourning the loss of how things were. With that on the surface, they could honour what got them here and, without discounting it learn to move forward and do something better.

• Curiosity — I’ve always believed it would be very arrogant to think I have the correct answers. This is why I believe my curiousity serves me well, as it means I’m more open to accepting what might be true for others.

One client asked me to coach a manager and one of his reports. The two of them were in conflict, and it was becoming toxic to the team. By opening my curiosity, I was able to help them see their perspectives and find what would make it possible for them to both thrive while continuing to work together.

Honestly, it was about helping both of them be curious and understand each other better. Last I knew, they continue to enjoy a good relationship in their work.

• Boldness — In 2015, I got a bold tattoo on my forearm. It’s my first tattoo, and it’s a constant reminder of how being bold changes what’s going on around me. For example, I was brought in to help a group of executives improve their teamwork as an impetus for change in their organization.

It was a carefully facilitated workshop as we wanted their truth to the surface while restraining some strong biases in the room. After a while, the team spun a story about how much their people trusted them.

I stepped in and started with, “So, you think your people trust you.” For the next couple of minutes, I challenged their thinking in a bold rant that ended with, “So, you can choose to believe your people trust you. It’ll work. For a while. After all, it did for Nortel, Kodak, and Motorola.”

Someone spoke up with, “oh my god, we’re being complacent.”

The team never turned back.

Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the concept of becoming free from failure. Let’s zoom in a bit. From your experience, why exactly are people so afraid of failure? Why is failure so frightening to us?

Have you ever walked through the woods with someone afraid of spiders?

Who can blame them for being afraid of spiders, right? They’re creepy crawly little things with eight eyes and legs. They spin webs which stick to anything!

When your friend walks through a web (or anything that feels like a web), they will have a reaction rooted in fear.

They might even do a little caveman dance while screaming and waving their arms in the air as they try to get rid of the spider.

What’s going on is their amygdala has hijacked them. The amygdala releases chemicals to prepare them for one of three things: fight, flight, or freeze.

In other words, they have a primitive response related to their very survival.

This is what’s going on when people get trapped by a fear of failure. While failing doesn’t involve death for most of us, it might include being fired, demoted, or feeling shame.

All of these feelings are what we’re trying to avoid. We’re trying to avoid the anxiety of what might happen if we fail.

Whether it’s being fired, demoted, or feeling shame, failure can significantly impact our ego. That’s why our primitive brain is trying to protect us.

Our response is different for each of us, although most of us have our defaults. For example, I know my response to failure is often from a mindset of shame (I.e. I’m not good enough). For others, they may lay blame, justify, or do something from obligation.

Regardless of which mindset someone might go to, It’s the discomfort of the resulting mindset that people want to avoid.

This is why the fear of failure keeps them frozen.

What are the downsides of being afraid of failure? How can it limit people?

Here’s a simple reality about life and business. Despite feeling confident about something, you cannot know with certainty what will work and what won’t.

Something that worked previously is not guaranteed to work again.

So, the best you can do is to take action and watch what happens. If it works, fantastic! If not, pivot and try it again.

Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time coming up with ideas, voting them down, and never doing what you want.

At its worst, a fear of failure could have people quitting jobs, closing their businesses, or not living the life they want to be living.

In contrast, can you help articulate a few ways how becoming free from the free of failure can help improve our lives?

Most people live life as if there are constraints, certainties, and realities.

Truthfully, life is all made up. It’s made up of the stories we tell ourselves. We’ve been composing these stories based on what we’ve been taught, our experiences, and where we are.

Imagine a life where you know nothing is real. You can do anything you want, and you might fail. But, without the stories, you don’t get stuck. You keep moving forward.

We would love to hear your story about your experience dealing with failure. Would you be able to share a story about that with us?

In one of the previous questions, I shared a story that starts with a colossal failure.

In that story, the failure was devastating and caused me to lose sleep. However, I was grateful for a manager who believed in me and helped me overcome my fears with a second chance.

These days things are very different. I fail all the time.

I put a lot of effort into blog posts and articles that get very little traction. I talk to prospective customers who say “no” to me. I offer a free webinar that no one shows up to.

If I let failures get to me, it would eat me up.

So, when things don’t turn out as I hoped … I pivot and try something different. That’s what makes people successful in life and business.

How did you rebound and recover after that? What did you learn from this whole episode? What advice would you give to others based on that story?

As you can tell from my answer, I don’t spend a lot of time these days having to recover from my failures.

The key is to Get Infinitely curious about yourself. Learn the truth behind why you respond to failure in the way you do.

Fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that everyone can take to become free from the fear of failure”? Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Get curious about you — numerous mindsets can cause a fear of failure. Unfortunately, these mindsets are the very thing you might be trying to avoid (fight or flight). The mindsets are blame, justify, shame or obligation. When you can start to see your default mindsets, it becomes easier to see your fear of failure for what it is. And it becomes easier to overcome that fear. My default mindset has been shame, as I’m historically pretty hard on myself when I fail. However, I can remind myself that no one is keeping score, and no one cares when something I try doesn’t work.
2. Tell yourself that “what other people think of me is none of my business.” The number one reason I find people frozen by the fear of failure is that they’re so busy wondering what other people might think. I teach all my clients the mantra, “What other people think of me is none of my business.” I keep this mantra on the wall in front of my desk. It’s a constant reminder to stop worrying about failure and just do it.
3. Ask for help — whether you ask a colleague or hire a coach, asking for help is one of the most powerful ways to overcome your fear of failure. Remember that your fear is all made up, so getting a different perspective might be all it takes to get you past your fears. Whenever I find myself paralyzed by a fear of failure, I reach out to my coach. He often helps me get past it by brainstorming creative ideas that help me see how I’m making things way more complicated than they need to be.
4. Try something smaller — when you find yourself frozen out of fear of failure, it can be because something is big, complex, or risky. One of the easiest ways to get past this fear is to try something smaller to prove your way forward. I ask myself, “what is the simplest thing I could do to prove if this bigger thing will work?” Sometimes these smaller things will succeed, and others will fail. If they succeed — awesome! Do another small thing to keep moving forward. If they fail — who cares? It was small; what else could you try? You simply need to check out my blog to see this in action. All I hear is crickets with some posts, while others get plenty of interactions and comments. It helps me understand what content resonates with people, which eventually becomes a book, workshop, or webinar.
5. Do it again — earlier, I talked about a fear of spiders. The best way to overcome a fear of spiders is to go out into the woods and walk through 100 spider webs. While it will be uncomfortable at first, you’ll progressively re-write the story you tell yourself about spiders with each spider web you walk through. You’ll be learning how harmless spiders are, and you’ll eventually be able to walk through a spider web without hesitation. Fear of failure is the same as those spider webs. The more you try something and fail, the easier it will become to take the risk of failing. With each failure, you’ll be learning how nobody keeps score or even cares when something fails. I know this to be true because I’ve gone from frozen out of this fear to willing to quickly try anything to see if it sticks in my business. And, guess what? No one notices or cares about my failures. They only pay attention to the successes.

The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, “It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way.” Based on your experience, have you found this quote to be true? What do you think Aristotle really meant?

I disagree with Aristotle.

While we often fail in many ways before finding what works, who’s to say there aren’t other ways to succeed?

How many times do we succeed? Then, say, “Phew, I did it!” And stop.

What if there’s an even better way than what we’ve already found? What if that better way would have us saying the previous ‘success’ was actually a failure?

This idea of success and failure is only a perspective on reality. Once you can see that, you can start to let go of the idea that failure is something to be feared.

Failure is only an experience.

You are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

The movement that I’m already working on starting is titled “Empowered, until further notice.”

We spend a lot of time voting on ideas, people, and concepts because we don’t know if something will work. So, we spend time fighting the fear of failure as a result.

We’re wasting time, money, and energy trying to figure things out.

Have an idea and nothing to disprove it? Then “empower it, until further notice.”

Someone new joined the team, and you’re wondering if you can trust them? Then “Empower trust, until further notice.”

Hear a new concept and unsure if it’ll work? Then “empower it, until further notice.”

And, it’s not a failure in those moments where “further notice” becomes a thing. Instead, it’s simply a sign that you’ve learned something, and it’s time to pivot and empower things differently.

We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them :-)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

I think he embodies the type of leadership needed in chaotic times. And, the past two years have certainly been chaotic.

With chaos, you cannot know the relationship between cause and effect. All you can do is act and respond to whatever happens.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

I have an offer for your readers. If they go to https://leadingforchange.ca, they can download my “How to guide for making the world a better place.”

They will also find me on LinkedIn at: https://linkedin.com/in/mikeeedwards

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about this critical topic.