Phillip Kane of Grace Ocean On Becoming Free From The Fear Of Failure

An Interview With Savio P. Clemente

Many people don’t or won’t fail because they are terrified of the blemished record, the broken streak, the end of perfection. So, step one for a lot of people is to give themselves permission, or to realize they have permission from their leader, to fail. That a black mark or an L is OK. So, repeat after me, “It’s OK to fail.”

The Fear of Failure is one of the most common restraints that holds 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 experience about “Becoming Free From the Fear of Failure.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Phillip Kane.

Phillip Kane is a husband, father, businessman, and now author of The Not So Subtle Art of Caring, a 2022 Hoffer prize finalist. He has had a successful career in some of the world’s best-known corporations, working for brands like Goodyear, Pirelli, and NAPA, where he had the privilege to lead thousands of individuals to create billions of dollars in value for their stakeholders. Crediting his father, then a Polish sales manager, and a Nigerian priest with almost every good thing he has learned about life, leadership, business and the art of storytelling, Kane proved for 30 years that the requirement to choose between winning and caring for others is a myth. Kane lives in Ohio with his wife, three children, and four wonderdogs.

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’?

I was born in Detroit, Michigan. My grandfather was a truck dealer. My father was a truck dealer. My father’s brother was a truck dealer. I grew up in these successful family businesses learning from all three of these men that one did not need to choose between winning and treating others with kindness. For the first 20 some odd years of my life, I never saw another style of leadership. Imagine my surprise when I found myself in corporate America where the typical leadership style was anything but empowering and uplifting.

I was like a salmon swimming upstream. But I prevailed, never giving up when many more powerful than me hoped I would. I proved that the notion that one must choose between productivity and caring for others is pure myth. I delivered results by holding others accountable while still treating them with respect and kindness. Every good thing about life and leadership, I learned from my father, a Nigerian priest, a Polish sales manager, and a former chairman of Goodyear. With what I learned from them, I and the teams I led accomplished extraordinary things that proved the narcissistic, autocratic, micromanagers wrong year in and year out. I even wrote a book which includes actual letters from myself to my teams during these years called, The Not So Subtle Art of Caring: Letters on Leadership.

Two life events have shaped who I am. As a young man, my 58 year-old father died in my arms when the CPR I tried didn’t work. This was shortly after my first child was born with a very rare, and then often fatal, heart defect called Transposition, which required her to undergo open-heart surgery at five days old. These experiences, as awful as they were, taught me what I was capable of enduring — namely Hell on Earth. I came away from them secure in the knowledge that my life in business could never duplicate the agony of either of those weeks and no man, no matter their title, size or strength could ever hit me as hard as those two events had. So, my approach to setbacks and failure changed forever. From then on, I stopped letting things get to me. I’d seen and lived through things that to me were worse than the loss of my own life. So, not much gets my goat anymore. A missed EBITDA objective, a dropped plate of food, a wrecked car … these things matter, but they don’t warrant the loss of my temper. They are temporary and mostly meaningless setbacks to be learned and moved on from; not things to destroy the dignity of another human being over.

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?

I spent my career in the automotive aftermarket where not much particularly exciting happens. But I will tell you two things about my career that I think matter and you can decide which your readers might find more interesting.

First, I am none of tall, dark or handsome. I was never a member of the “club” as it were. I did not fit the mold from a leadership perspective: I treated people with kindness, I did not micromanage and I refused to pit people against each other or participate in office gossip or politics. But I thrived. I thrived because the teams I had the privilege to lead and I did extraordinary things. We did these things precisely because of the way I treated them. I thrived because the results we produced made it impossible for my detractors to move on me. I tell you these things as encouragement for your readers to know that it is possible to do things the right way and thrive. I want to see more of it. And now, knowing that it’s more than possible, there’s no excuse for more people not to try to lead the right way.

The second “interesting” point I’d like to share with you is this: I have been to all 50 of our United States. Why am I telling you this? It is not as a humble brag, I assure you. It is to tell you this: people are people everywhere. I never detected any variance from one place to another in the degree to which any of them wished to be treated with kindness and respect. Not one bit. The notion that people on the east coast don’t care about niceties like people in the Midwest is preposterous. People are people everywhere. There is no one that does not wish to be respected. A great deal of what is driving the departures of the Great Resignation is toxic bosses and the toxic environments they preside over. The sooner that people realize that people everywhere want to be loved and treated with basic human kindness, the sooner the Great Resignation will begin to subside. It’s also true that people of one certain geography are not more likely to take risks or accept fear more than any other. That too is a function of leadership. If you want people who are committed to staying with a business longer and to taking greater risks simply find better leaders; it’s no more complicated than that.

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?

While many character traits go into and are responsible for the ultimate achievements of any leader, undoubtedly, the that have had the most to do with my success are (1) Kindness, (2) Courage, and (3) Persistence.

Kindness. Think about the leader or teacher or coach who had the greatest impact on you and your life … I’m willing to be that this individual was also the kindest leader, teacher or coach you’ve ever had. That’s why you remember them. Kindness is hard. It’s messy. It requires all-in emotional investment. It requires that we have difficult but critical conversations with people that if we didn’t care, we’d never have.

A couple weeks after arriving in Fort Smith, Arkansas for an assignment to fix up a flagging subsidiary for Goodyear, it became obvious that one of my direct reports had been sent there not because it was the next step on their fast track but because the brass in Akron had run out of rope for him. He was exceedingly bright. The trouble was, he knew it and was obsessed with making sure everyone else did too. He had close to zero EQ, didn’t play well with others and was in danger of being organ rejected from the company. I could have watched that happen. Or I could be kind enough to tell him things no one else would.

I chose the latter. Soon enough, he became the star performer I knew he could be. Ten years later, he and I joined together again on a large opportunity. But it all started with an act of kindness: telling him the truth about where he stood, and why, then making sure he knew what he needed to do to recover.

Courage. At the onset, I want to be clear that courage and fearlessness are not the same. Courage is a leadership trait. The other is a red flag, typically associated with narcissism and a complete lack of self-control. Courage is not the absence of fear. Those with courage still feel fear. They simply manage it; they set their fear aside long enough to accomplish the work that needs to get done for whatever contingency they are representing — like I did ten years ago in a very large role at Goodyear.

I had just taken over Goodyear’s second largest product business unit in North America. It was hemorrhaging money. It’s prior leader and my current boss had been trying to make money by making things, not by creating value then collecting for it. So, we set out to change that. It would require us to take gigantic price increase to many of our largest customers. There was a possibility that some would stop buying from us. But we had done the math. We knew who could leave and who could only walk so far. Yanking their chains would take great courage. But I and the team exhibited just that. We took extraordinary increases to some extraordinary customers as part of a larger strategy which completely transformed the profitability of our business.

Persistence. I have taught any and every team I have had the privilege to lead to never, ever, ever give up. It is always the last blow of the hammer that cracks the rock, never the first. And it is always the team that is willing to fight the hardest and play the longest that is most likely to win every single time. I am not the biggest or the smartest or the best looking. I didn’t go to the best schools. I’m not gregarious and charismatic by the typical definitions. But I will outlast almost anyone. And because of that, I and the teams I lead don’t often lose. It’s not braggadocio, it’s just math. If you’re the one standing at the end, someone is going to raise your arm in the air.

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?

I talk a lot to those I coach and have the privilege to lead about the traits we have in childhood that adults promptly beat out of us. Things like unbridled curiosity and our habit of repeatedly asking why for example. Another is our willingness to try new things and to go right up to the edge of other things. It doesn’t take long for our parents and others to discourage (pun very much intended) this sort of exploratory behavior. And it’s downhill from there.

A fear of failure is instilled in us at all levels of our development. From the grading system used in our education system, to the meritocracy that decides starting positions, first chairs and other extracurricular lead roles of our youth to the 5 and 7 point Likert scales used by our bosses to grade us relative to our peers at work, every aspect of our lives is governed by a system that screams, “Don’t mess up or else.”

We are taught from these tender young ages that failure brings with it negative consequences: time outs; spankings; cuts from teams; missed promotions; firings; divorces; and worse.

It’s not so much that we are afraid of failure because we are afraid of what we know will happen. We are afraid of failure because we fear what could happen. And that’s the saddest part.

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

As a result of teaching our children from the age of consciousness that failure is bad, that failure equals negative consequence, we discourage risk taking, we encourage people to reach conservative goals by staying well within very safe boundaries. As a result, people rarely achieve their complete potential … because they never reach as high as they are capable of flying … because they are too afraid of falling.

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

Think about it this way. Our fear of failure artificially limits our boundaries — physically, intellectually, and emotionally. As a result, we experience less in life because we are afraid that by going further we might experience failure. So, we stop short of our potential every time out.

A willingness to confront and accept failure actually enables us to reach further and accomplish more than we’d ever be able to were we not willing to do so.

What many also fail to understand is that success is an awful teacher. Success never taught one person one thing, except maybe that winning feels good, but doubtful one needed to win to comprehend that.

The most important and lasting lessons we learn in life come from adversity and failure. Those who, because of fear of both, never experience either, never learn much. These people become unidimensional, incompetent, and wholly incapable bosses who almost always make up for this lack of first-hand knowledge by bullying their way along.

The more we fail, the more we learn, the more resilient we grow, and, maybe most importantly, the empathetic we become to the lived experiences of others who inevitably experience setbacks in life. That makes us better leaders, which is really what all of this should be about anyway.

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 August of 2014, while changing lightbulbs in my home at the typical lightbulb changing hour of about 10:00 pm, I fell from the ladder I was perched upon with one foot as I reached up and away toward the 96 year-old crystal chandelier I was servicing.

From a height of more than 10 feet, my head slammed down on the edge of an Oak step in our foyer knocking me from consciousness. The fall and the contrecoup brain injury I suffered as a result caused a bout of ongoing seizures and a subsequent need to learn to do things like talk, walk and perform basic mental functions all over again. I even needed to have my eyes operated on so that I’d stop seeing two of everything.

At the height of my career, I was out of work. I couldn’t drive. I was required to be in therapy several days a week. The world was going on around me and I was told I couldn’t return to work until I passed a battery of rigorous mental and physical tests — tests that were difficult for normal, healthy people to pass, let alone recovering traumatic brain injury survivors.

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?

I will jump ahead to the punch line to tell you that on a date before any thought I could but me, I passed the tests that were keeping me from work. It was, and still remains, one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. I cried twice taking the tests. But I passed and returned to work early.

But that’s not the most important part. That’s just a story of overcoming adversity because of grit.

The most important part, and the part that has to do with how we deal with and overcome failure, is this: It’s a matter of perspective.

When we fail, the very first thing that almost all of us will allow to happen is for the world to convince us that we are somehow a lesser version of ourselves than we were before. Failure knocks us down. We fall in ranking, in status, in contention. From whatever height we occupied pre-failure, we are seen as holding a lesser perch afterward. It’s a simple human nature thing.

I bought into it … until I didn’t.

What I did realize though was that the world moved by me more slowly, mostly as a function of the fact that my brain processed life differently. It didn’t work as fast as it did before. So, the world seemed to go by less quickly.

What I learned as a result was that I wasn’t damaged. I wasn’t broken. The system simply wanted something I wasn’t yet prepared to give it. But the more I examined the system, in slow motion, the more I decided I didn’t quite care for it.

The changed perspective of my new perch caused me to see things differently. The more I saw, the less I liked. So that even as I moved my own heaven and earth to pass my exams to return, I made a decision to leave my employer before the year was over — because of what my new perspective had afforded me.

I think for anyone who has ever failed at something, this is what we achieve more than anything. We attain a perspective that few others ever do. We attain a perspective from the rung of failure. And because we do, we can see things, understand things, process things, and know things that not everyone can. These things make us better leaders, friends, spouses, partners, siblings, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Because, as I said elsewhere, success teaches us nothing. Failure and the unique perspective it brings though, offers us wisdom that is available nowhere else.

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.

I think that the most important steps to undertake to shake off the fear of failure are things we can do, as leaders, to change how people think about failure and to break out of the mindset that failure is some absolute, career-ending or otherwise life-altering event. Here are 5 steps to change the way people think about and approach failure:

1. Many people don’t or won’t fail because they are terrified of the blemished record, the broken streak, the end of perfection. So, step one for a lot of people is to give themselves permission, or to realize they have permission from their leader, to fail. That a black mark or an L is OK. So, repeat after me, “It’s OK to fail.”
2. Number two, I tell the people I have the privilege to lead that there is no discreet decision they can make on any given day (short of abject stupidity) that would either cause them to stop breathing, get fired, our company to go bankrupt. It’s my way of saying, “step out and take a risk … and fail.” So, step two is to do just that … to start engaging in riskier behavior that will result in you failing, in order to prove to you that you and your organization will live through it and to gain the perspective that comes from doing so. People have to see that they can fail without bad things happening as a result.
3. Third, redefine the terms. Trying things that don’t work should not be viewed as failure. So, organizationally, and especially as a leader in that organization, change the nomenclature. Erase the word failure or even error from simple trials and experimentation. Also, agree on what constitutes true fails. Meet as an organization and come to agreement on the true definition of failure. Of course, try to focus on keeping it to a very small list of things. But help people understand that only a very few things actually rise to the level of failure. Next talk as a team about how to avoid these true fails.
4. Number four, create a culture of courage. Reward careful risk-taking. Ensure that associates who cautiously step out are compensated more than those who hide in a bubble. Likewise discourage headlong fearlessness, which as discussed earlier is a dangerous red flag.
5. Finally, number five, shift the literal focus by rewarding the try instead of punishing the fail. If you want your team to expand its boundaries, it’s going to have to try new things. Start by financially rewarding tries instead of otherwise punishing fails. It’s that simple.

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 have always, when considering this quote, envisioned a target with its many rings encircling the bull’s eye.

I think what Aristotle was saying was that success was possible only by hitting the center of the target, while failure could be achieved in a seemingly limitless number of other places around or even off the target. It is, of course, true.

There is also no intellectual inconsistency between this quote and the one about cat skinning. In the latter, the cat still gets skinned. The bull’s eye still gets hit. Winning is still defined only one way: by skinning the cat or hitting the center of the target. So, what I think he really meant is, “It is possible to define failure in many ways. But to succeed can only be defined one way.”

What I love about this quote is that it elicits a relentless pursuit of perfection … of the ultimate. It says, there is only one podium. That there are no participation trophies. Hit the mark or not. Win or not. Succeed or fail.

It begs from us a persistence; to try and try again — until the arrow finally hits its mark — neither under, over, or around, but dead center in the red, the only one way to win.

You are a person of great 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. :-)

I would endeavor to stop the hate.

We are teaching our children at very young ages that the best response when encountering disagreement is to hate the object of your disagreement. There is no more civil discourse in the world anymore. Disagreement immediately devolves into screaming matches, name calling then rock throwing, fire-bombing and worse.

In many cases, our elected leaders are leading the way.

This is leading to very bad policy decisions on energy, climate, education, justice, and other areas made solely out of hate for the other side and that are leading to terrible societal outcomes.

It encourages failure.

It all needs to stop. The hate needs to stop.

And that begins at home and at school and in our churches and our communities. Parents need to teach their children that it is possible to disagree with someone without hating them. Our teachers and college professors need to do the same. Our community and religious leaders need to do the same.

It starts with telling our children the truth.

We are perilously close to losing complete control of our society due to ginned up hate.

Young people need to be told then agree that enough is enough. They need to be convinced to call for an end to the hate. They need to stop allowing adults with agendas to manipulate them. They need to choose love. They need to stand up for kindness.

They need role models who are uniters, not over-indulged dilettantes who scream incessantly at those they disagree with about unsettled this or that and believe that hatred constitutes somehow changing the world for the better.

For there is no issue facing this world that is so urgent or so pressing or that matters so much that it is worth hating another human being over. Not abortion. Not pronouns. Not climate. Not false racial grievances. Not anything.

It’s time for the hate to stop.

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 :-)

I would like to spend some time with Harold Ford Jr., former U.S. House Rep from Tennessee. I very much appreciate his ability to see around all sides of an issue and to formulate rational and reasonable positions on complex, often emotional issues. He’s the sort of kind, calm-headed and caring individual I want to associate with and learn from.

If Rep. Ford was busy, I want to meet Enes Freedom Kanter. I talk and write a lot about courage. The courage Kanter has shown in standing up for what he believes in has been breathtaking. I want to learn from that experience.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Readers can follow me on Twitter at @ThePhillipKane and learn more about me at phillipkaneauthor.com. I contribute regularly to Inc. about issues related to leadership and the future of work as well. Plus, at least once a week, I share random thoughts on a better, more caring way to lead on my blog, AndWin.net.

And if you’ll indulge me, my book on care-centered leadership, from John Hunt Publishing, London, The Not So Subtle Art of Caring: Letters on Leadership was just released on July 15, 2022. It’s available for purchase now, as they say, wherever quality books are sold.

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

Thank you for having me. I hope it makes the life of someone a little bit better.

About The Interviewer: Savio P. Clemente coaches cancer survivors to overcome the confusion and gain the clarity needed to get busy living in mind, body, and spirit. He inspires health and wellness seekers to find meaning in the “why” and to cultivate resilience in their mindset. Savio is a Board Certified wellness coach (NBC-HWC, ACC), stage 3 cancer survivor, podcaster, writer, and founder of The Human Resolve LLC.

Savio pens a weekly newsletter at thehumanresolve.com where he delves into secrets from living smarter to feeding your “three brains” — head 🧠, heart 💓, and gut 🤰 — in hopes of connecting the dots to those sticky parts in our nature that matter.

He has been featured on Fox News, and has collaborated with Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, Food Network, WW, and Bloomberg. His mission is to offer clients, listeners, and viewers alike tangible takeaways in living a truly healthy, wealthy, and wise lifestyle.

Savio lives in the suburbs of Westchester County, New York and continues to follow his boundless curiosity. He hopes to one day live out a childhood fantasy and explore outer space.