Robert 'Cujo' Teschner
Appearances
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
fake life stuff it really is bad um okay sorry sorry for that uh side note but it is my podcast so i can this isn't whatever i want joe it's my podcast this is first of all you're exactly right it's your podcast secondly this is this is really important it's a very important point you make i'm gonna if i could just put a little bow around this from my perspective
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
You think back to different leadership styles, and probably at the early part of the 20th century, the invoke thing was the heroic model of leadership. The leader knew everything, had all of the answers. All hail the leader. You better not question the leader's decision. The leader is perfect. Again, we will never question, which is so not true.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
There's zero people that are walking around perfectly solving all problems and giving the answers to every question that comes. But anyway, there was a model at one point where that was how things were, and it was a dangerous one.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
I mean, if you apply that to the world of commercial aviation, if we don't question the captain, then there's a good chance that at some point we're going to die because the captain is not infallible. And if the captain misreads something, misanalyzes, doesn't process the whatever, and nobody else speaks up, then this thing is probably headed for disaster.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And there's plenty of evidence of that, many accidents that were preventable Because nobody spoke up in that same kind of a context. And so this whole idea of leaders being potentially fallible and highlighting what it is that they're struggling with, it actually is part of the thing that connects us as human beings. And knowing that you're struggling the same way that I am.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
but knowing also that in your struggles, you're willing to highlight where it is that you're not exactly perfect. And you know, the journey that you're taking to getting to a better state, it does inspire like, cause that's the reality of, of life. Like nobody came out of the womb, like everything's solved.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
You know, we, we have to constantly force and struggle and learn and fail and pick ourselves up. And so what you did was excellent and good job, not listening to that advice from the PR expert.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Yeah, listen, thank you very much. I mean, so Mr. Paradis has been singing your praises and I've been looking forward to this. We do all kinds of different things, but this is this is the kind of thing that I like to do almost the most.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Great question. And I think it started with the, the, the culture was preexisting to me. And so it was very easy because if you didn't adapt to the culture, then you were off the team. So if you couldn't be vulnerable in front of your teammates, then you were going to be off the team. Like we would not tolerate that from somebody. Why? Because again, nobody's perfect.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And I'm really excited to be able to present like an idea thought coming from what it is that you read and debrief to win your listeners to help them and what it is that they're doing. I think it's the exact right audience for what it is we're talking about. So this fires me up.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And our ambition post-mission, and that's exactly how we look at these things. We're executing missions. We don't do projects. We don't plan events. We don't do things. We're not overwhelmed with tasks where we execute missions. And after every single mission, we're there to learn. And learning involves confronting the truth of what happened.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And so if you can't contribute to the truth, like if you can't admit like, yeah, right over here is where I shot you, Hanley. Like this is the point where I take the missile shot that, you know, if it had been for real, would have killed you. Hanley is right here at time 1.56 p.m. That's where I hit launch. If you can't do that, then we can't learn effectively. You're a danger to this team.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
You're off the team. So we've made a call tree that way. I think when we're trying to kickstart something like this in an organization, you go back to, you know, you're starting your insurance agency and you're creating the culture intentionally.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
You have to lead with vulnerability in order to inspire anybody else to follow your lead, to get over their egos, to get over whatever it is that's preventing them from contributing to group learning. And if you're perfect, like if you never make a mistake, like if you're always the one that's pointing the finger elsewhere, it's never going to take root. Psychological safety will never happen.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
the other piece of this is in addition to you being open to the fact that you might have contributed to the team's loss here is not losing your mind while you're talking about it so like it's one thing to commit to learning ritually after everything that we do how we come into that is also really important and learning by way of you know yelling and uh kind of losing your losing your mind is actually not learning like we're creating conditions of fear that fear is a natural thing that causes us to self-censor and shut up
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
retract into our shells and it doesn't help us. So like emotional intelligence got to be high, got to work on maintaining consistently high ability to self-regulate in order to maintain the good of the team. And that's hard to do, especially when this is your baby handling. Like you've created the company, you invested the money. This is your treasure that you're putting into this thing.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
You want it to work. When somebody else on the team screws it up, It's hard. It's actually very hard to be able to be like, all right, guys, let's learn together. But that's actually a huge piece of what it takes. And so finding a way to center in, enter into this conversation with childlike curiosity, not make any assumptions, not rush to judgment.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Maintain a positive disposition, neutral to positive tone, presence, body, all this stuff goes into it. That's where it gets a little bit complex. It requires us to be very intentional about leading effectively.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Oh, yeah. So I'll give you an example.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
I'll give you an example because this is this is what you're seeking right now because there are not. OK, so. Back when I was the squadron weapons officer. So this patch indicates that I graduated from the U.S. Air Force weapons instructor course at Nellis Air Force Base, the original fighter weapons school. And when I came back as the chief instructor pilot of...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Of my fighter squadron, I had a mission one day where I violated a major rule of engagement. So think original Top Gun movie, you know, boss, I was only the hard deck for a couple of seconds. You know, there was no danger. So I took a shot. I did one of those kinds of things, only probably more aggravated than that example.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And I'm supposed to be giving the example of what right looks like always 24 hours a day. So that was not good. And I was getting ready to come back in and debrief this sucker. And the word had already gotten to the squadron commander, who is one of my favorite people on the planet, by the way. And so he comes in and he comes into the debrief room. He's like, Cujo, come here.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And he takes me out of the room that I'm in. I actually had to stifle a grin because I knew it was coming and it was perfect. He takes me into an empty debrief room, slams the door so the entire squadron can hear, and screams at me, don't you ever effing do that again. And that was it. That's all he said.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And then he slammed the door behind him, leaving me in the almost empty debrief room right now. Again, entire building shakes. Everybody hears this exchange. He's gone. And I thought that was classic. In fact, it's like an example of perfect from my vantage point. He wasn't screaming at me for my sake. He knew I already knew how bad the screw-up was.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
What he needed everybody else in the squadron to know is that I was held to the same standard as everybody else, that I wasn't going to get a pass, that whatever special status I had did not apply to, like, I'm just like anybody else here. The rules apply to me just like to anybody else here.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
If I violate them, I'm going to get my butt reamed for it, and who knows what else is going to come from this. And the message was received. Everybody was in, like, mode after that. And I'm like, that was that was perfect. So, yes, there are times when we do have to lay the smack down.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And a good leader understands where it is that that's not going to not only not break psychological safety or the team's effectiveness, but is actually the exact right thing for the team. Then it just can't be that way every time.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
That's right. Yep. And I mean, just like anything, like if every day were Christmas and we'll just look at it from the purely, you know, secular lens of like people are getting gifts here and it's all like fun and happy, it would actually diminish the, uh, the joy of, Oh, it's Christmas again. You know, I wish, I wish one of these days we wouldn't get all these presents.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Like it's, it just, it's not the same thing. And if that's your deal where you're always coming down hard on everybody, like, Oh, there he is. There's a boss again, losing his mind over another, you know, whatever, you know, and you got to ask at what point do people totally tune out? I've actually had people tell me as a consequence of always being criticized for everything that they do.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
They've actually not only stopped caring, but they've been actively seeking another place of employment because they, they just tune out.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Oh my goodness. Isn't that so true? Yeah. Yeah.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
It's just noise. At some point it becomes noise and it's not effective. By the way, because you brought it up, kids, youth, sports and the role that that plays and kind of going back to this concept of we learn more through failure than anything else. Where we learn that is really important. It has to start as kids.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Uh, if we don't learn the importance of navigating failure early, when it hits us later in life, we're, we're really thrown for a loop and that's a hard thing to have to overcome. So, uh, my, my oldest who also started off playing baseball and, um, Second oldest, the coach was going to move into a higher bracket, more aggressive league, wasn't going to take the entire team with.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And so he was making the rounds of calling the parents to say, your kid didn't make it. Our kid did. And he's like, hey, listen, if you want to continue with us, just want you to know your son is so talented. We'd love to have him. I'm like, OK, this is great. I'm fired up. He's going to be happy to know that. But here's what I need you to know now that we're playing at a higher level.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
The moment that he doesn't pass muster, bench him. The moment that he has an attitude that suggests that it's getting to his head, bench him then. And by the way, if you want to kick him off the team at any point, you're cleared in hot. And he said, you know, I got to say, Mr. Teschner, in all of my years of coaching, I've never had a parent who is talking along those lines.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Usually it's the parent that upset that their kid isn't playing more, that they did get benched, that didn't make it to the thing. So can I just ask, why are you going this route? I'm like, yeah, it's simple. This is the time to learn. Learn how to navigate. You know, you didn't make it. I need my son to learn that now, not 20 years from now when he gets cut from the company and is like, what?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
I've only ever won all my life. I need him to learn this now. We need to learn this while he's still under my guidance so that I can coach him up through that thing and we can harness that to have a better day tomorrow. That's so important. And it begins with where you are right now.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
yeah look what a what a great question and what a big problem and i think it it ties in and i'm not going to have any statistics for you on this it's just my observations um i think we're living increasingly in a world of you know what's in it for me how do i how do i meet my own personal thing i mean immediate gratification and satisfaction in all ways like if the amazon thing doesn't get delivered within the next 30 minutes i'm going to be really angry you know um
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And tied to that, what are the expectations? I mean, you look at it in the sports world, you look like a like a Patrick Mahomes. OK, playing a game, very violent game, very fast paced game at its level. But at the end of the day, it's a game. He's making five hundred million dollars over a decade to play said game. You know, what is the ambition? I want to be like that. I want to be like that.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And so, I mean, I think parents might be kind of trying to position their kids to be like that in that thing. They're hyperprotective all around to make sure that the kid is protected. is doing whatever is best for the kid and not for the team. And the lesson and the ambition here is different.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
I think it used to be like we're supposed to be learning how to be a team and what it takes to be a person of character on a team and to support the team's good and not to do it for ourselves. Like, hey, coach says I need to lay down a bunt. That's not actually what I want to do right now. I'd like to jack the home run. So what am I going to do?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Today, I might just go my own way and try to crank the home run. Back then, if you didn't follow the coach's instruction for the good of the team, you'd be punished for it. And I think the ambition behind what we're doing may be shifting because of what's at stake. Back when we were kids, folks weren't signing those kind of contracts.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
As long as you want. Okay, good. I'll tell you what, the brute force method seems to be probably the entrepreneurial spirit. Like, let's just go out there and attack and dominate and do whatever it takes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Like, I'm on fire with this concept and we're just going to go and we're going to make mistakes along the way, but we're just going to keep on plying forward.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And though the ambition to be like whatever the hero was of the day was still there, didn't have as big of an impact, I don't think, as it does these days. We model... or we follow the behavioral patterns of those who we hold in high esteem. And so if they're doing things, it must be okay for us. You talk about, you know, getting fired up about your home run.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
I mean, name for me an athlete who's not doing that on the big stage right now. I think back to the World Series and some of the things and the bat flips and whatnot. I mean, like, okay, you know, and I see it in my kids. They emulate the folks that they're watching on TV.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And so I think it's up to us as parents to help kind of co-design with our kiddos what it is that we're trying to get out of this. And my ambition in telling the coach, Benchim, was that I'm not trying to limit my son's ability to do what it is that he's capable of. I just want him to be a man of character while he goes about and does that. And he needs to learn to fail now.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And it's through navigating that that he'll become his very best. But his best is also going to be you know, having the self-confidence to know that he's been through tough situations and, and he's going to be okay on the backend. That's important.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And eventually, we're going to win at this thing just because we've just been so... Power focused and energetic all the way through. And that's definitely an option. And I think both you and I have been have been squarely focused on that kind of an option in the work that we do. And so it kind of makes sense to us. And there you go. And it can be successful. Question is, is the best option?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Yeah, well, for sure. I mean, part of the leadership deal is being trustworthy and fulfilling your obligations and honoring your commitments. All of that, I mean, that's leadership 101. I mean, nobody's going to look out for you better than yourself. I mean, I say this as a post-colorectal cancer kind of a guy. Like, I talk to a lot of doctors.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
For many of them, I'm just another number, you know, like almost dehumanized. You know, I'm patient number 406. Come in, get my thing, and, you know, whatever. And I realize that I know a lot more about my condition than many of the people that examine me and do whatever because they may have had, like, a one-hour class
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
on this particular thing but i'm living it every single day and i guarantee you i'm very very in tune with what it is that i'm experiencing so i have to be i have to be about me more so than anybody else in order to advocate properly for myself that said what is the ambition of a team
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
I mean, is the ambition of a team for the team to serve its individual members, is the ambition of the team to help the individual teammates to achieve their own individual unique aspirations? I mean, the teams that I've been on, it's certainly not been the case. In fact, it's been the opposite. Everybody subordinates self-interest to the good of the team. And if one of us fails, all of us do.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And it's a totally different dynamic. And so I think if leaders have broken trust by not fulfilling obligations and they've caused folks to then kind of be in the defensive crouch of, I must protect me, then we're doing it totally wrong. Because what's the point of a team? What's the good of a team if we're really not one but in name only?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Like everybody's just contributing their piece to keep the boss off the back just so they can figure out where they're going to jump next. Like that's not a fulfilling place to be. And though it may be where people are and maybe it's okay for them to be there because of the broken trust and the experience that you're describing there with your father. I mean, that's sad. It truly is sad.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
I actually had the same experience when I joined the Air Force. I was at the Air Force Academy. As a freshman, the chief of staff of the Air Force came and said, listen, I know I told everybody, or the rule was when you signed up here, that if you made it to graduation and you were pilot qualified, you were going to fly airplanes for the Air Force.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
But I just want you to know that as a result of shifting strategy, it's not the case anymore. Only like a quarter of you are going to get a chance to fly. Good luck. We're like, what? What? And actually, somebody even called out the chief of staff on this, like, hey, we have an honor code here. We're supposed to, like, not, you know, ever lie.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Can you reconcile what you've just done with our honor code? I mean, you know, I mean, tensions were high, and that does not endear us to the leadership. Fundamentally, there's no point in teaming if it's all about me. If you and I are a team, but I'm only going to do the parts that benefit me, let's just call this what it is. It's the everybody-in-it-for-themselves show. And good luck.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And that's a really worthwhile question for all of us to think about. Like, is brute force the best way to move forward? Or is there something else that's missing that could make this whole experience of building and leading a little bit better? So I would contrast
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
May the best one of us win. And I do think that... that it comes back down to we need leaders who honor their obligations, who speak the word and are truthful always, who can then create an environment where it is about the good of the team and about the team achieving mission success together.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Meaning that if I sense that you're having a problem over here, Hanley, I'm going to commit myself to helping you out, giving you whatever gift of time and talent that I've got that can help you to help advance our collective mission because that's what teammates do. And those are the kinds of organizations that we want to be on.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And if we're not finding that fulfillment here, we're going to go our own way, create our own companies, and hopefully create that dynamic there. And I suppose of all the ills that we describe, if we can then, inspired by not replicating what it is that your father's experienced, create a kind of environment that brings the best out of our teammates, then that's a win.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Yes. Yes. And triple yes. Oh, yeah. And it makes it fun. These days, one of the squadrons that I used to be a part of, we love hanging out with each other. We're all done. Like none of us is, I don't think, well, maybe there's a few of us that are still in the airport, but most of us are washed up old retired guys now and gals. And, uh, we can't wait till the next reunion.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And we, I mean, our first reunion was just conducted at a very inopportune time. Like the schedule was not really convenient for anybody. And we all showed up. Some people were only there for a few hours, but they showed up. They flew all the way to Las Vegas to show up, to be there for this thing, because we miss being around one another, because there's something special about work.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Even in high pressure, dangerous situations, working with a bunch of people that actually care about one another and care about achieving success together, that's a really big deal, especially now.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
what it is that we do in the world of business and specifically the entrepreneurial world with the way that we attack it in military high performance teams, high reliability, high consequence organizations, I might add. And that is though we have a lot of brute force that we can bring to the mix for sure. And we're talking a lot of type A players and folks that are in it to win.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
That's right. I mean, you look at teams that have only ever won together. I would argue they're not a team. What really allows us to know that we are one is when we can navigate the challenges together well. Like when the pressure is high, the stakes are super high, everything's riding on this. And we can come through that aware of all of this.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
It's not that we had our heads buried in the sand and we're blissfully unaware. We're aware of all of this and still manage to get it done correctly. That's a very, very special thing. And those are the things.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
that um that build bonds that are so special and unique that you'll never forget that and you'll actually look about look back on those hard days as the best of times that's that's what's cool and that foxhole mentality is a that's a valid thought that applies literally everywhere so it goes back to how we started our conversation today And that is we learn the most from our failures.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
How we fail really matters. The best teams fail exceptionally well together. Maybe a question for your listeners is at every level, wherever it might be that we team, whether it's at home, whether it's at church, whether it's on the softball team, whether it's whether it's at work, how well do we fail together?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And maybe that's a good benchmark against which to measure whether we're that kind of team that we want to be. And I'd say the best teams fail exceptionally well together. They do so in a way that builds the bonds of trust. And everybody comes out of that failure analysis super amped up about wanting to go out there and prove that we've learned from this how to never fail this way again.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And may that be our aspirations. Think about it. I mean, in a relationship, somebody that you love, you get through that honeymoon phase where everything's perfect and everybody's always like super awesome and you're faced with a stark reality that maybe we are all human beings here and there are challenges.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
How well we navigate that is going to determine what the rest of the life is going to be like. And if we can't fail well, we're going to break up. Like this thing is going to end at some point. my wife and I, we try to fail well together. And that's a really, really important, strong ambition for us. We're coming up on 20 years here in January.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Hopefully, we'll continue to fail well together because that's, I think, how we're measuring how well we're doing as a couple. And I think it applies everywhere.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Yeah, I'd say come join us at TopGunTeamwork.com and learn how to apply the principles that we use in high-performance teams to your significant benefit. That's a great starting point. And I'd add to it, thanks for what you're doing in the world, Hanley. Thank you for putting this show together. It's a lot of work.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
all the background that goes into preparing all of the things that you know coming into this, navigating everything, putting it all together. That's a big deal on top of everything else that you've got going on. So you're doing an exceptional job from my vantage point. Keep up the outstanding work. Thank you for the opportunity and privilege of being part of yours.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
We've gone with the intentional route that says we owe it. We owe it to those who we serve. to do this thing as effectively as possible, which means learning constantly and baking in, making it a cultural focus to bake in the time for reflection always. Not occasionally, not only when there's been a disaster, not only if it best serves us or if we feel like, okay, this is the one that warrants it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And know that I appreciate Paradiso for introducing us to one another. What a great day it's been. Thank you.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
No, we're going to do it always. And we're going to bake it in to where generation after generation after generation will always do it that way. And, you know, you might ask, OK, so what? Like, how does that apply to me? The answer is in that world where so much is riding on the outcomes, we know that we can't afford not to take the time to do it that much better the next time.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And I think there's a lot of cross applicability there into all that we do.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Good. So now we get into the real deep psychology of all this. And it starts with I was recently interviewed. Somebody was interviewing me about whether or not they should hire me to deliver a keynote at their conference. And so that the one big question that that the principal asked was, you know, what? what is the thing that has equipped you the best to learn?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And I instantly responded with my failures. And he said, I thought that's what you were going to say. And then he proceeded to say that most of the people that he asks that question of talks about how great they are and it positions them to learn because of how open they are to just knowledge and wisdom and power and might and whatever it is at the top of their mind.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
He's like, it's actually failure. Failure is the thing that equips us to learn. And it's through navigating those failures that we figure out a better way, hopefully. And that's the philosophy that's at play here. So if we won, yeah, it might be fun to celebrate that, I suppose. But really, we had to ask ourselves on the winning side, did we win due to us or due to the fact that we got lucky?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Was the person that we were having the sales call with going to buy no matter what? and we just happened to stumble upon that? Or did we actually do something to truly earn that win? Those are some of the questions we need to be asking on that side.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
But on the loss side, if we can figure out why we lost this deal, didn't sell it, then hopefully it equips us with the ability to go in with higher confidence to that next call and that we're going to win this thing. And so it's those failures that if we can extract the lessons that are potentially available to us there, they equip us with a brighter future.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
And that's the thing that all of us need. So it's the failure side that has always revealed the most to me in my previous career, for sure in this career. And the people that I really am impressed with the most are the folks that lean into that.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Yeah, I think it may be part of that. It may just be that we feel as human beings that in order to get to escape velocity, we may have to make it seem like we're winning bigger than we actually are. And that if we were to evidence any insight that it wasn't that way, that people would think less of us and not buy what we're selling. And so we posture. And I mean, you mentioned social media.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
I mean, that's the place where everybody it's a learned skill because this is relatively recent that this thing is a phenomenon. We've learned to posture highlighting how grateful we are for how successful everything tends to be around us. And there it is. The reality is vastly different. And if we believe what it is that we're reading there, then we're
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
We're probably placing our belief in the wrong thing. Go academic for just a second. I'm a big fan of the work of Dr. Amy Edmondson. And she's written numerous books. Probably my favorite of her books is The Fearless Organization, where she's discussing the role that psychological safety plays in organizations that want to win.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
So if you're talking about team learning, you've got to have a psychologically safe environment, a place where you can be okay being vulnerable in the effort to learn. And her work has influenced mine a lot.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
One of the things that's interesting about Dr. Edmondson at Harvard is that when she started her work on her PhD, and I'm just gonna summarize in my words what it is that I think I learned from her. When she started working, her theory was that the best teams made the least amount of mistakes. And it stunned her as she began her research to find that that was actually incorrect.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
The best teams made more mistakes than the worst teams. It was so upsetting to her actually that she almost capsized her PhD work and went a different route. But then she was so frustrated with this that she decided to dig deeper. And once she dug deeper, what she found, it wasn't that the best teams were making more mistakes.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
It's that they were talking about all of them and the worst teams were covering them up. Or just ignoring them. And in the process of that, repeating their mistakes. So the best teams were talking about them. They were exposing them to the light. They were learning from them and working to not repeat them, which that describes my background in the high-performance team world of fighter aviation.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
Like, we made mistakes. It's impossible to be perfect in that world. So many things coming at you.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
but our idea was if we can go back in and scrutinize why things went the way that they did this time then hopefully we're equipping ourselves to have a better next time and that again serves the interests of the people that we are here to serve and where would that not work and and the the only thing that we have to contend with
The Ryan Hanley Show
Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders
as entrepreneurs and leaders in the business world is that the culture that I'm talking about, this one of ritualized learning post-mission, as we call it, it's not the culture in business. And so then it requires us to be intentional about building a culture where learning post-mission is the way, and then that sets conditions for success. We just have to create that culture.