249: Embracing Failure and a Growth Mindset with Kelly McDonald

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:02]:

Kelly, you’re so welcome to the Happier at Work podcast. Do you want to give listeners a little bit of a flavor of who you are and how you got into doing what you’re doing today?

Kelly McDonald [00:00:11]:

Sure. Thank you so much. I’m Kelly McDonald. I’m based in Denver, Colorado. I am a professional speaker and an author and a business consultant. I have been doing this for 22 years, and I speak at conferences and corporate meetings, you know, all kinds of places where people gather to exchange business ideas and business concepts on how to do better and be better. And that’s kind of what, my my my lane is. And, I got into this because I was asked to speak at some conferences 23 years ago, and it went really, really well.

Kelly McDonald [00:00:49]:

And it was one of those things where I just did it, you know, as a professional favor for for someone. And then it just kind of, like, I kept getting asked from that. And then I thought, you know, I can make a living at this. And, you know, I I just sort of positioned myself as a business authority, especially in the areas of leadership, marketing, sales, customer experience, and people and culture. So that’s me, and I’m a 4 time author.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:16]:

Fantastic. I I love that. It they’re all quite interrelated, those concepts as well, and I love how you’ve turned what was a professional favor into, oh, wait a minute. I actually quite enjoy this, and I’m quite good at it too. So I can turn this into something that is a career because I think with a lot of people, they they they get disillusioned with their corporate role, and then they decide to to go out and be like, I’m gonna fix corporate. I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna change what’s going on. But I love that that you’ve done that. I’m curious about my own background isn’t in market research, so I’m curious about the marketing side of things.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:55]:

But I’m also curious about the customer experience and maybe the overlap between customer experience and workplace culture because I think they’re so they’re so, so related. Do you want to kind of talk about, like, what are the big things that you’re seeing in either one of those areas and and maybe how it relates to the other?

Kelly McDonald [00:02:17]:

Oh, for sure. So just quickly, my my books and my my core topics and how I got going on this was talking about people not like you. Whether it was marketing and selling to people not like you or the customer experience for people not like you, and now, you know, from a a work standpoint is how to work with and lead people not like you. And what I find is that it’s very easy in business for people to default to people who are just like them. Right? Selling the core customers that you get. You understand your customers. They understand you. Everything’s good.

Kelly McDonald [00:02:55]:

But how much bigger could your business be? How much larger, more successful, more profitable if you could get the customers that you’re not getting, but you could be? Same thing with employees, same thing with marketing and selling. Right? Like tapping into new markets. That’s the best way to grow business. You’re already successful with whatever it is you’re doing, so it’s about expanding that and broadening that. And that’s typically with people who are sort of outside your, you know, your your eyeball arena of of the people that you serve. And, what what’s happening in business right now is businesses have really realized that when they’re the good guys, business grows. You know, when they’re just doing the right things and being the good guys, whether it’s with exceptional customer experiences or, you know, employee rights and employee culture and things like that, everything gets good, really good. You know? Because your products are your products, and your pricing is your pricing.

Kelly McDonald [00:03:51]:

And typically, your products are gonna be at least as good a quality as your competitors. Your pricing is certainly gonna be competitive. So the thing that’s really differentiating one company from another, one brand from another, is how they treat their customers and their people and their culture internally. And that’s what I like to talk about and work with people on and speak at conferences about is how do you actually work on your culture internally and externally and grow your business that way, which is by far the best way. You know, just lowering your prices and having a sale, that’s a race to the bottom. You know, somebody can always better your price. It’s not a sustainable, tactic. And there’s research now this has been talked about for a while, but there’s research now out there that shows that from an employee standpoint, which goes to being happier at work, right, employees have choices.

Kelly McDonald [00:04:48]:

I mean, there’s a major demand for talent and getting the best people. So the employee is holding the reins, you know, they have the the options, the good people. And good people are always gonna be in demand, and good people always have choices. They can go anywhere and get a job. And so what they’re making their decisions on, importantly these days, is the culture of the organization. Obviously, the salary and the compensation needs to be competitive, but that’s kind of a given. And in fact, there’s research now that shows that employees are willing to take in US dollars, $8,000 less for a position that has a good culture. And I was waiting for someone to research that because we know that that’s, you know, that that’s so important, but we were never able to quantify it and put a dollar amount on it.

Kelly McDonald [00:05:42]:

And $8,000 US is a lot. So for someone willing to say, I’d rather take a $70,000 position where the culture’s really good than a $78,000 position where the culture’s okay, that’s huge.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:59]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:05:59]:

And I think it’s just a really

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:01]:

interesting data point. 5,000 people. And, you know, if you’re looking for savings as well, just having that right culture. And and I think from the employee’s perspective, let’s jump into their minds for a second. They don’t sometimes you don’t realize how good you have it. And I was like, I worked in a fantastic organization, well compensated, and fantastic culture, and I didn’t realize now I left for personal reasons because I wanted to travel. That was the only reason that I left that organization. But I’ve subsequently been in other organizations where I’m like, wow, I had it really good in that other place.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:37]:

But I think people take for granted how amazing it is to work in a culture where you feel really valued, where where you’re recognized for the contribution, where you get along really well with your colleagues, where you have positive conflict, all of those really, really important things for creating happier working environments, I think people underestimate. And so if someone is offered, say, 10,000 more to move to another organisation and they get there and they’re like, oh, but I’m earning 10 ks more, so, you know, I’m winning here. You get there and realize you look around, you know, these people are are not the people that I want to be with. This is not the environment that I want to be in.

Kelly McDonald [00:07:23]:

You’re absolutely right. And and the the the money fades. You know, like the money value of that fades if the culture isn’t right. I mean, really truly, it’s it’s I’ve been in those situations and I know many, many thousands of your listeners and viewers have as well where you’re well paid, but you hate your job or you hate the the or you hate the

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:42]:

culture. Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:07:43]:

There’s no amount of money that can make up for that. And I I do wanna clarify one thing. I wanna make sure that your your listeners and your viewers absolutely are not taking that data point about $8,000 so that they lowball attention. That is not that is not where we’re going here. I don’t want you to think like, great. I can give people less money. You know?

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:04]:

Have it’s it’s more it’s more that creating an amazing culture will encourage people to stay beyond the paycheck.

Kelly McDonald [00:08:16]:

Absolutely. And and all I was trying to do with that data point about $8,000 was illustrate that there’s finally been some research that people put a price on that. You know? That it’s like, I would rather take $8,000 less and work in a good place than be more compensated and work in a miserable place. And I think that’s the takeaway. Yeah.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:33]:

So Yeah. Absolutely. Coming back to this idea of people not like you, because I think it’s it’s our kind of default nature to want to be around people who are like us. And and if I think of job interviews, if I think of promotion interviews, anything that has to do with other people, it’s the kind of you know, the thinking. I I haven’t done a job interview probably in about 10 years, so maybe my thinking is out of date. But I remember at the time, it was a real perception, like, would I wanna go for a beer with this person? Right. Which is, you know, this is someone I wanna see outside of work. Do I like them? Do I get along with them? So talk to me a little bit more about about the people that are not like us, let’s say.

Kelly McDonald [00:09:21]:

You’re absolutely right that it is human nature for us to default to the path of least resistance. Right? So when you’re interviewing someone, you know, and connecting with someone, if the connection is immediate and there and everything’s clicking, it feels great. And you actually get a little dopamine hit in your brain for that, you know, and so it feels great because it is great. There’s no friction, you know, if you say something and I’m finishing your sentence or you’re finishing mine and we are on the same page. That makes everything easier whether it’s in your personal life or in your business life. And so we default to those people and situations that are highly comfortable for us. That’s completely human nature. We’re not bad people for doing that.

Kelly McDonald [00:10:03]:

That’s how we’re wired. But the real value can come in adding people into the mix whether it’s your employee base or even your friend base whatever who have different views and different perspectives and that largely stems from different backgrounds. Okay? So when I talk about people not like you, a lot of people sort of default to what I call our envelope. And the envelope is what you can see. Right? You can see that I’m a very older middle aged woman, you know, and you can see that I’m white, and you can see my gender and all of these things. And we we see those things, how can we not? But that doesn’t define who I am. What defines who I am and what defines who you are and every single person who’s who’s viewing this podcast is the background and experiences that we have that that shape us as a human being. Right? So what businesses are realizing now is that when they diversify their teams to include different perspectives, People who have different experience, different backgrounds, you know, they come from different perspectives.

Kelly McDonald [00:11:12]:

That’s where the magic is because those perspectives become the conversations where if 3 people are alike in a meeting and they’re all sharing ideas and they’re all going, yeah, it’s a great idea. Let’s do that or whatever. And somebody else with a different perspective goes, yeah, but what if this happens? Or, well, what if we did it this way? Or, I have a concern about that. Those are the voices that we need the most around the table because otherwise we just keep on keeping on and we can be successful with that. We really can. We can be successful with that to a point. But that will only take us so far. It will not grow your business exponentially as if you have that other voice, that other perspective, that other person’s background.

Kelly McDonald [00:12:00]:

That’s how business grows is when people are saying, well, what else? What else what else do we need to think about? What else do we need to consider? And it’s hard to consider different viewpoints if they never enter your mind because everybody has the same mindset.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:13]:

Yeah. Does that

Kelly McDonald [00:12:13]:

make sense?

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:14]:

It does. Absolutely. And I I saw something, a number of years ago, and I don’t know was it a piece of research or I don’t know was it, was it an anecdote or or something like that to explain that where there was a group of people who physically looked different. There were different races, different genders, all of that kind of

Kelly McDonald [00:12:33]:

Age. Yeah.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:34]:

Age, they all together, and, you know, you have this group of people, and then you have another group of people, and those other group of people were a similar age, same gender, same ethnicity, all of that kind of thing. And the idea was that the the group of people who all looked different on the outside, they actually all went to the same school. And they may I I can’t remember if they had done the same, course as well. So the assumption being that, oh, you look different, so you must think differently to other people Right. Is not necessarily the case. And and Right. The people who all look the same, they actually have vastly different backgrounds and so brought a greater range of diverse thinking to the team. So it’s not just about what you see on the outside, it’s more about people’s thinking and their backgrounds.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:26]:

And if someone came from a different industry, for example, because I know there are there are a lot of industries where where they’re like, oh, you must have experience in this industry, which I get to a point. But if you bring in people from other industries, they can bring fresh thinking. So, like, you’re not bringing in a whole team of people who don’t have any experience in

Kelly McDonald [00:13:46]:

your industry, because it’s crazy. You have

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:48]:

to have some people with experience in the industry. But if you do bring in someone who has no experience in the industry, they they bring a different perspective. They may not get how the industry works, but they can challenge how how you do things as well.

Kelly McDonald [00:14:03]:

And they can get up to speed on a new industry, and it’s easier to do that and faster to do that than it is to try to go get different perspectives, you know, or or not. Your example of the school reminds me of a friend of mine who in the town that in the city that he lives in, there is one really prestigious high school. Okay? And, like, really good. I mean, the best. And when they have candidates at that company that come straight out of high school and these are individuals who are, they’ve either gone to college, but they went to that high school or they’re not gonna go to college and they went to that high school that they see on their resume that they went to high school. He and I were talking about this and he was and I was talking about people not like you, and he was totally getting it. He and he said to me, wow. You know, we have this high school and it’s so well regarded that whenever we see a resume from somebody who went to that high school, we immediately say that’s our guy or that’s our person.

Kelly McDonald [00:15:04]:

Yeah. And we and and so if we’re sitting there with a stack of resumes and there’s 3 or 4 people who went to different high schools and here’s the really good high school, he goes, we automatically go that’s the person that we want to talk to, that’s the person that we need to hire. Even though that person could be an idiot. I mean just because they went to a good high school does not make them the right candidate. And he had a real, you know, he had a real moment of reckoning with that, and he said, we’ve really been defaulting to this, like, high school thing. And he said, we need to pull back the camera and look at the total picture

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:37]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:15:37]:

And then just interview people for who they are, not for what what school district they happen to be born into. You know?

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:46]:

And did he go to that high school? No. Interesting. Okay.

Kelly McDonald [00:15:51]:

But he just mentioned that he

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:52]:

says that this is a, a wow. This is such a prestigious place. We definitely have to take everyone. And I can I’m from Dublin, so I can imagine that in in certain places in Dublin or if someone is hiring someone in Dublin and they went to a certain school, they would probably be like, oh, that’s a good school. So we’d definitely go to

Kelly McDonald [00:16:10]:

I went there too. Yeah. Or no. And we see that all the time where someone has again a a really nice, what I’m gonna call, pedigree. You know, maybe they went to Harvard or Princeton or something like that and either that becomes the whole like, oh, top notch school. Right? Yeah. It must be the person that we want the most, not necessarily. Or to your point, there’s a connection point between the person interviewing and they go, I went to Harvard too.

Kelly McDonald [00:16:35]:

Or, you know, and then it’s like we default to these assumptions about that person and their background based on one connection point. And those connection points are important. I mean, I’m not saying you’re a bad person if you have a conversation with someone and you found something in common there, but but try to really pull back the lens and go, okay. I need to look at this person’s skill set, how they conduct themselves, personality, their growth mindset, all that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:02]:

Yeah. I was gonna ask, is there a way, like, so I did my master’s at this stage about 5 years ago now, but I was really interested in this concept of FISH. And one of the concepts around FISH was if you if you create an organization and you hire people based on their values, you’re going to get a whole load of people who who are the same, which is not necessarily the case. But the big challenge within that and within the literature as well is this idea that we need diverse thinking. So it’s not all about creating the same people again and again. It’s it’s identifying people who have different thinking to the people who already exist within organization to drive innovation, to be able to handle adaptability, all of those kinds of things. Are there ways to test for that? Well, I

Kelly McDonald [00:17:53]:

I think the conversations, if we go back to your values or whatever, and, you know, I think shared values corporately are an important thing. So, you know, usually people’s corporate values and what they want in a company and to work for whatever are are in line with their personal values. Right? Like inclusion and respect and, you know, things like that. So I think the values conversation is a very important one for companies to have because you wanna hire people who are, like, in agreement with that, which is this is who we are as a company and a brand, and this is who we wanna be, and everything that we’re gonna do is gonna drive customer satisfaction and alignment with that. So somebody does have to be on board with that, but their perspective on those values can be different to the way that they come to those values and the way that, you know, they were socialized is what asking the right questions on that, I think it’s about trying to draw the other person out as much as possible and starting with things like, not just tell me about yourself. Yeah. Because people go into an interview with their canned, you know, here are my 5 talking points about myself. But then leaning into almost anything that they say with, tell me more about that.

Kelly McDonald [00:19:08]:

Mhmm. Or how did that affect you? Or, has that always been your approach on this? And if not, when did you modify it and why? I mean, just trying to, like, take the onion and peel it down a few more layers. And because otherwise, everybody does go into conversations well prepared, and they have their their talking points and they will always get to them. Always. Right? Because that’s what they prepared and that’s what they want you to know. So the better conversations are the ones that try to kind of go in sideways from those things and dig deeper and I think that’s the way you get to where a person really is and if they’re uncomfortable with those questions, that’s a flag.

Aoife O’Brien [00:19:48]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:19:49]:

Right? Because then they stuck to their prepared questions, but if if I say something and you say tell me more about that, how how did that come to you and, you know, what did you learn from that experience or what was the most uncomfortable moment about that? Those are questions I’m not prepared for and you’re gonna get the real real in that moment.

Aoife O’Brien [00:20:07]:

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Even if it’s like give me a second to compose. Right.

Kelly McDonald [00:20:11]:

Even if it’s like Yeah. My eyeballs are like this and I’m, you know, I’m rapidly thinking and stuff like that. I mean

Aoife O’Brien [00:20:17]:

Yeah. But I think it’s it’s such a good point as well because, again, if I think from the interviewer’s perspective, and I’ve been in that seat where I’m interviewing, excuse me, we’re very much like, here, we want to make it as fair as possible. So it’s very much like, here are the scripted questions, here are the questions associated with certain competencies, all of that kind of thing. However, I think you raise a really valid point by drilling into that to get beyond just, like you say, the scripted answers and to get to the real person. Like, here who are they as a person without having prepared for all of these things? And something else has just popped into my head with, the the the kind of changes that I’m seeing when it comes to neurodivergence and and sharing questions in advance so that people can prepare for the very specific questions that are going to be asked. But I think if we let people know as well that you could be asked to to share, a little bit deeper beyond what it is that this question asks of, like, how did you come to that? Or, you know, these are the kinds of questions that that could come up so that it’s, I suppose, not to exclude anyone who Right. Has problem answering those kind of questions on the spot.

Kelly McDonald [00:21:32]:

One of my clients is also doing something that’s interesting too, which is, you know, in a lot of interviews, you’ve got this person’s resume, you can see, you know, what their key accomplishments were in their last roles. And then, you know, instead of asking like, tell me about, you know, one of the greatest successes that you had at your last organization. They’re flipping the script on that and they’re saying, tell me about the last time at work that you failed.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:58]:

Mhmm. I love that. Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:21:59]:

And what what that felt like for you, what you did, and what you learned. So it’s not just, like, tell me what failed because it’s really also easy for people to deflect that and say, well, we were doing something and then the budget got cut. Right? In other words, it’s not really failure. It was something external that affected the outcome. And so they drill deeper, but they get to how did that feel and what did you do about that? What came next? And what did you learn from it? Yeah. And I thought those were 3 really good questions because most people are not gonna talk about about feelings in an interview, but what they’ve learned from that is how somebody handles that adversity. And so when they say, you know, I felt really disappointed because I put, you know, 9 months into this project and honestly the outcome wasn’t as expected, you know. And it felt it really felt demoralizing or whatever.

Kelly McDonald [00:22:53]:

Or I felt frustrated or I was angry or whether they blame coworkers, you know. I mean, like, you find out a lot more from the failure conversation than the successes.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:05]:

Oh, that was Kelly’s fault. My colleague, Kelly. She messed everything up and therefore, blah blah blah. And it’s like, oh, wow. Okay. So this is a person who will not accept responsibility for their Exactly. In in, the failure, you know, and then and throwing their colleagues under the bus as well. Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:23:22]:

And we learn so much from failure. You know, failure is a part of business. Not every you know, I I was just, reading some famous quotes from people who failed before they succeeded, whether it’s Bill Gates or Walt Disney or Vera Wang, you know, all these different, different wildly successful people. And every one of them will say, my failure led to my success because failure is not fatal and it’s not the endpoint. You will recover from that and it’s about how you look at that and go, okay, that didn’t work. What needs to change?

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:58]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:23:58]:

You know, and and and we’re still we’re still on our mission to do whatever. This this particular attempt didn’t work, but don’t turn, you know, curl up into the fetal position in the corner. Pick yourself up, assess what happened, learn from it, and now keep going forward, you know, and so that tells you a lot about somebody how somebody views themselves in the world when they fail too, you know. Do they give up? I mean, that’s a really important thing too, is do they give up? Do we want those people on our teams? Or did they say, you know what? We tried something. It was, it didn’t turn out as expected, but we really it’s it was good for us to do that. You know? We found some flaws in our system, and we recognized some things after the fact. That’s what

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:46]:

it’s all about. So there’s kind of 3 avenues that are popping up for me as we’re talking about failure. 1 is I have the fear of failure, so I’m not even gonna try something that’s too difficult. I’m gonna stay in the line. Number 2 is I failed at something, and you know what? I just moved on. I didn’t reflect. I just distanced myself from what happened, didn’t associate myself with it at all. And then there’s number 3 where I failed at this thing.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:12]:

It was something I really wanted. And you know what? I dug in and I analyzed the the facts and I realized what went wrong so I can learn for the next time because I I am surely gonna do something like this or this exact same thing again. So what can I learn from this experience? So they’re the kind of the 3 avenues. The other thing

Kelly McDonald [00:25:32]:

I’d say there’s a 4th.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:34]:

Oh, okay. I would say

Kelly McDonald [00:25:37]:

that the 4th one was, well, we were doing all of this and then blame. Right? The budget got cut, You know, our lead project coordinator left on maternity leave or, you know, whatever. I mean, it’s real easy to do this. Yeah. I’d say that’s a foretling.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:53]:

Yeah. That’s such a good point. Such a good point. The the other aspect of failure that I wanted to talk about that I’ve heard a lot about recently is that we’re often not afraid to fail, but what we are afraid of is how we’ll be perceived by others if we try something and it doesn’t work out. It’s failing in front of other people. It’s failing publicly as opposed to just failure for failure’s sake. So if I do something and no one knows that I ever tried, then it doesn’t matter. But it’s more if I do something, if I declare it, and it doesn’t work out, or if I’m on this big project and the numbers aren’t there, then that’s when failure really impacts us.

Aoife O’Brien [00:26:37]:

It’s it’s the perception that other people have of us.

Kelly McDonald [00:26:40]:

And that’s the culture within an organization. And, Carol Dweck is very, very famous for creating the growth mindset.

Aoife O’Brien [00:26:47]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:26:47]:

And there’s a lot of, attributes to the growth mindset if you look at, like, what the list is of, you know, the people who have a growth mindset are like this. But the number one the number one most important, attribute that they have is looking at failure viewing failure as learning. Mhmm. Right? So the or the organizations and entities that actually embrace a growth mindset from a business standpoint are the ones that do not look at failures. You know what? Thank you. But, you know what? We’re gonna move you to this department because, you know, being punitive or something like that with you, that they go, okay. The outcome wasn’t what we hoped for. What did we learn from that?

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:30]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:27:31]:

And that the person is not stigmatized by that, you know, the the people on that project or team, that in fact the the organization wraps their arm around the entire project and including the people and saying okay, we tried something we and we learned from it, now how are we going to adapt to that learning? What are we gonna do differently?

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:51]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:27:52]:

And, Albert Einstein said and I’m paraphrasing his quote or whatever, but he said something to the effect of it’s not that I’m the smartest person, it’s that I sit with problems longer.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:04]:

Oh.

Kelly McDonald [00:28:05]:

And he just that was his MO. It was just like, I can’t figure this out, so I’m just I’m not gonna let it go. I’m not gonna set it aside. I’m just gonna continue to learn and to think about this and to percolate on it and, you know, and the failure, I think, is where the real learning is. I mean, it’s awesome to win, but we’re not gonna win every time.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:27]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:28:27]:

And we can learn far more from our failures than we can from, I think, our our successes.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:33]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we’re more likely to reflect on our failures than we are our successes as well.

Kelly McDonald [00:28:40]:

But the culture has to be there to support the people so they know it’s okay to fail. Yeah. I mean, the culture really has to to truly be that as opposed to, oh, wow. Okay. Well, we just spent a lot of money and a lot of time on this and, really wish that you guys had done a better job. You know? I mean, like, that’s a scary place to be if you’re an employee in an organization like that as opposed to one that said, nothing is all for naught. Nothing is all for naught. Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:29:09]:

We’re gonna learn from every single thing and we’re gonna try again. That’s another part of that growth mindset is continuous attempts to do better. Not ever giving up. Because a lot of people when they fail they’re like, I tried that once, not doing that again.

Aoife O’Brien [00:29:25]:

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Going back to what we had said before, the ones who just kind of move on from failure, who don’t even really think about it, dare I say that the the team that failed in whatever it is that they were trying to achieve, they’re probably best placed to actually continue on that project because they’ve they have all of the learnings already. Exactly.

Kelly McDonald [00:29:47]:

The investment is sidelined or

Aoife O’Brien [00:29:49]:

moved to a different department or whatever that might be. Now if we come back to this idea of culture and creating that culture where it’s okay to fail, what do you think are the, kind of, the make or break? Like, what makes it different? And even if we bring that down to the individual level, because there are probably let’s face it, we’re dealing with humans here. There’ll be people Right. Within that organization who don’t think it’s okay to fail or and, again, we talk about this on the podcast in the past where a lot of stuff that comes up in the workplace is from our childhood. It’s stuff that triggers us or it’s stuff that we’re afraid of or whatever it might be. But there could be that coming in, like, oh, I was taught that it’s not okay to fail or to be a Right. A big boy or a big Or

Kelly McDonald [00:30:30]:

at the last company that I worked at, if you fail, your career was over.

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:35]:

Hangover. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:30:38]:

So we’re Absolutely. You’re absolutely right. We’re a product of our socialization whether it’s our childhood and our parenting or whether it’s the previous organizations that we’ve worked at

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:47]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:30:48]:

Where, you know, it was far more about success and and even posturing and faking that success more than actually having success. So obviously what has to happen is that the if the if the organization’s culture is going to embrace, you know, failure is learning, the leaders of that organization in every department, you know, every team have to model that behavior and it has to be sincere. It can’t be punitive, it can’t be ostracizing, it can’t be, saying the words and you know, giving lip service to it and not doing it. And so, the number one thing that leaders can do is go first. And by that I mean, sitting down with your team and saying, okay, we’ve got this big project. We’ve got some big goals for this year. In order to get them, we’re gonna have to stretch. We’re gonna have to really I mean, you know, and and Carol Dweck in the growth mindset said 1 third of the time it should feel great.

Kelly McDonald [00:31:45]:

One third of the time it should be challenging, you know, and you should be kind of questioning yourself and and your entire approach. And 1 third of the time, it should hurt like hell. Right? Whether it’s because you failed or because it’s just really hard, you know. And so the best leaders are the ones that start with those conversations and say, let me tell you about a time in my career at this company or some other where I failed or we failed.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:13]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:32:14]:

And what happened and and what we learned from that and how important that was for our growth going forward. What did we learn from that? So leaders have to go first, and they have to actually share that they themselves have actually failed because we all have. Yeah. What we learned from it, but then also showing that vulnerability and making it okay for someone on that team to go to them later and go, I’m in that hurts like hell phase right now and we’re struggling and and and we’re kind of at, you know, a crossroads and we don’t know what to do. Because people need to know that it’s okay to ask for help, it’s okay to admit that things aren’t going very smoothly right now. And that doesn’t mean it’s failing. It just means that’s the process.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:56]:

Mhmm.

Kelly McDonald [00:32:57]:

And, but the leaders have to model that, and they have to model it consistently. You can’t have a kickoff team meeting and talk about failure as as learning and talk about it. And then a month later, when somebody does fail, say, well, you know what? I guess, you know, I guess Joe wasn’t the right person for the task here. You know, I mean, they have to be able to consistently show up and model that behavior. Say the right words, do the right things about like, okay, we didn’t get what we thought we were gonna get from this. Now what? What did we learn? How can we use that learning to apply to try again? Either try again in a different way or try something else. That’s all you can really do when you fail. I say, but you can either pivot and say, okay, we’re just gonna go in a different direction entirely, which is a strategic decision and it’s not wrong.

Kelly McDonald [00:33:47]:

Or we’re gonna try again. What did we have to modify what do we need to modify and change? What did we learn from that?

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:54]:

Yeah. What’s the

Kelly McDonald [00:33:54]:

The learning is where the gold is.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:56]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it is it’s that, coming back to your idea of the growth mindset and having a learning organization as opposed to that fixed mindset where it’s like, oh, that didn’t work, and let’s sweep that onto the carpet or let’s point fingers or whatever it might be. And I have worked in both of those different types of organizations where it’s been finger pointing. We used to call it cover your arse.

Aoife O’Brien [00:34:22]:

So everything needs to be documented, have everything on an email because just in case something went wrong, you had to prove that you were not the person responsible. And then I’ve been in organizations where, yeah, it’s actually it’s okay, and let’s learn from this, and what do we need to do differently next time? And another thing that I’ve learned over the years as well is that oftentimes, it’s not the people that fail. It’s the systems and the processes that we have in place Exactly. That break down in some way that causes the failure. So we blame ourselves as individuals, but actually it’s it’s the processes that we’ve been following.

Kelly McDonald [00:35:02]:

And that’s a great point. It’s a fantastic point is that maybe we didn’t have the quite the bandwidth that we thought. I mean, that metaphorically. You know? Maybe, our infrastructure, we found out we have some problems here that we’ve never actually realized before because we never tried this approach before. You know, whether it’s technology or whether it’s, you know, the size of the team and the and the number of people working on it, you know, maybe we’re understaffed or overstaffed on that. I think that’s an outstanding an outstanding point, which is what from an infrastructure are some of the barriers because that pops up all the

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:38]:

time. Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:35:38]:

You know? I mean, look at the Taylor Swift era’s tour when when Ticketmaster was the preferred, you know, the the number one place to get those tickets. And the day that those tickets went on sale globally, crash. I mean, that was literally a a a technology problem

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:56]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:35:56]:

That completely made the launch of that tour fail initially. Obviously, they recovered, but I’m just saying, like, it was so bad. It was so bad. And it cost that magnitude before. Yeah. Correct.

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:10]:

And so underestimated the popularity of Swift. Right.

Kelly McDonald [00:36:14]:

That had nothing to do with marketing. That had nothing to do with, you know, sales. It had to do with execution, you know. I mean, can we actually sell these tickets? And so that that’s, that’s a very good point. The other thing I want your audience to know is that the growth mindset has been proven. This is not just a theory and it’s a nice little buzzword and a good concept. It’s been proven that the companies that operate this way do better. It’s been proven.

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:39]:

Love that. When it comes to individuals and the growth mindset, like, this is a personal perspective that I have in relation to it. It could it be the case that I have a fixed mindset in certain areas and a growth mindset in others? So if I think like, I’m quite good at maths, but but there could be someone who’s not that good at maths and they say to themselves, I’ll never be good at numbers. I’m just not good at numbers. And that’s a very fixed mindset to

Kelly McDonald [00:37:07]:

have. Absolutely.

Aoife O’Brien [00:37:08]:

But there could be other areas in my life where I’m fixed. And, again, there could be other areas in their experiences where they’re like, oh, actually, I didn’t do that well in that, but I know that I can improve, and I’m only a beginner, and I know I can improve with time. Have you seen that kind of come to life where, as an individual, I can, see myself like, it’s basically the growth mindset is presenting itself in different ways across different, aspects of what it is that we feel we’re capable of doing.

Kelly McDonald [00:37:39]:

Right. And absolutely, the growth mindset is the the the proven core is that we are not fixed, you know, from birth or our experiences. Our our our our talents are not fixed and therefore limited. Our abilities are not fixed, our intelligence, etcetera. And so the growth mindset proves and has been proven that with effort, and it starts with effort, okay, so nobody just like gets an easy ride, is that we can actually improve our talents and our abilities. We can and our intelligence. We can actually get smarter by embracing the growth mindset. So the fixed mindset is, to your point, I’m just not good at math.

Kelly McDonald [00:38:30]:

So if we practice math over and over and over and we force ourselves to do more, guess what? We get better at it. I mean, it’s really obvious in that example that someone who says I’m not good at that is is going to never get good any better at it because they’re not even gonna try. They’re not gonna put themselves in those positions where they have to do that, but the growth mindset proves that with effort and learning, so it’s 2 things and those are two sides of the same coin. Yeah. You don’t get a you don’t get growth and success without the effort. The effort is is imperative to results, but it doesn’t mean and I think this is an important distinction that just because you put in the effort you will be successful. Yeah. That doesn’t mean that because there’s a lot of people who work really hard Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:39:14]:

And they don’t succeed. Mhmm. But you can’t succeed without the effort, if that makes sense. You know? So I

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:21]:

think yeah. Both of them are really valid points because I think there’s this perception of overnight success with social media, with YouTube, with TikTok. People have this perception that you can just start something and be an overnight success. I think that Right. This is the perception.

Kelly McDonald [00:39:36]:

I got discovered.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:37]:

And you can try. You can try. You can try. You can put in all this effort, but you still you’re not guaranteed to be successful.

Kelly McDonald [00:39:45]:

Of course, and I think it’s important to realize on social media that people present what they want to present. They’re not presenting all the failures and then going it finally worked. Yeah. Right? They’re going here I am.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:58]:

Yeah overnight success. It only took me

Kelly McDonald [00:40:00]:

a few years. Overnight success, well exactly and there’s no such thing as an overnight success and, you know, you see that certainly with like musicians who, you know, have been around for literally decades and all of a sudden they get one monster hit, you know, like a really big breakthrough hit and everybody is, hit, you know, like a really big breakthrough hit and everybody is like, you know, all the interviews they’re like, oh my gosh, what does it feel like to be an overnight sensation and they’re like overnight? I’ve been playing in basement bars for 32 years, you know, and I’ve been waiting for a break like this. This is you know, there’s nothing overnight about it. Yeah. You

Aoife O’Brien [00:40:29]:

know? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Kelly, I’ve so enjoyed our conversation around, like, failure and the growth mindset. Anything else that you wanted to add into the conversation relating to that or or relating to what we were talking about earlier in relation to people not like me?

Kelly McDonald [00:40:46]:

I think thank you. I love this conversation too. I think the thing that I would leave your your audience with is people not like you is where the magic is. Because if you’re just gonna continue doing what you’ve always done with people like you and the challenges and issues, you can still be successful. You just won’t be as successful as surrounding yourself with people who are not like you or reaching out to the customer bases that are maybe a little different and new. But people not like you is where the magic is, and organizations have have discovered this. And so that’s also been proven.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:25]:

I have a follow-up question now based on what you’ve said, and it was something that that I thought about earlier as well is if people are not like us, is there more likelihood for conflict, and how do we address that then? So if someone is like me and we get along very well, it’s likely that we’ll think the same things and maybe won’t have that much conflict. And if someone doesn’t think like me, and I’m I’m nearly answering my own question here because I’m like, oh, positive conflict is so important. But what do we do to address those issues of, like, we don’t automatically gel with someone, we don’t automatically click with someone. Sure. That’s real. Scenario. Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:42:06]:

That’s a very real part of per working with people not like you because and I don’t like the word conflict as much because in in at work, I think it’s less about conflict and more about friction.

Aoife O’Brien [00:42:15]:

Okay.

Kelly McDonald [00:42:15]:

You know, I don’t mean to, like, be splitting hairs, but to me, conflict sounds more aggressive. Like, we’re just, you know, we’re arguing all the time. And sometimes it’s not bad. It’s just that we don’t see things the same way. And Yeah. I don’t really get the way that you like to work. You know? Maybe you have a need for far greater communication than I do and it’s driving me nuts because you’re sending me 30,000 emails, you know, and, yeah, I mean

Aoife O’Brien [00:42:39]:

see me on everything.

Kelly McDonald [00:42:41]:

Yeah. So, of course, if we’re working with people who are not like us, there’s gonna be friction points just because we don’t see things eye to eye. And we tend to live in our our own world there and kind of go, like, I can’t believe you can’t see it my way. What’s wrong with you? You know? So number 1, expect it. It’s less scary to be, to, you know, to expect things and then they come to to light as opposed to, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m in this situation with you, you know. So expect friction and understand too that you’re not doing it wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you and it’s it’s it’s a it’s a friction point, and it’s okay. Friction is okay.

Kelly McDonald [00:43:17]:

It’s you’re not gonna die from it. It it makes it a little more uncomfortable in the moment to have those points of friction, but that’s often, again, where the magic is, you know? So lean into it as opposed to just avoiding it. And thirdly, if you don’t if you just don’t gel with someone because you’re different, understand that you don’t have to have this person over for dinner. You don’t have to go on vacation with them. You just have to work with them. And the example that I’ll give a lot of times at a conference is I’ll pick somebody from the audience, you know, somebody sitting in the front row or whatever, and I’ll say, okay. Samantha, you and I don’t like each other. Okay? We just don’t.

Kelly McDonald [00:43:58]:

You know, we just rub each other the wrong way. It’s nothing really, like, super personal. We’ve just never really, like, you know, gotten along all that well. And I’ll say, you know, go with me here. And I’ll say, so, you know, you don’t like me and I don’t like you or or whatever. We’re not we’re not that great. But do you think that you could you and I could sit down and do a budget forecast? And inevitably that person will go, yeah. And I’ll say, right.

Kelly McDonald [00:44:23]:

Because it’s a task. Mhmm. We don’t have to have feelings about it. Yeah. If I sit down with you and I’m trying to do a budget forecast for next quarter, I need your help to do that. You have the experience, and we’re gonna, you know, do this together. It’s a task. We can sit down together.

Kelly McDonald [00:44:40]:

I don’t have to like you to be effective in that role. So, let yourself off the hook relative to that friction point. You know, we do have to be respectful and we do have to be professional at all times, but nowhere does it say that we have to like everybody that we’re gonna work with.

Aoife O’Brien [00:44:56]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:44:57]:

And then another big tip that I can give your audience is when you’re sometimes at those friction points where you’re you’re just not getting where this person is coming from and they’re saying this, this, this, that you can say, I see it differently. And I see it differently is so much better than agree to disagree. Many of us have been taught that when we don’t agree and and we’re not going to, that we should say let’s agree to disagree. But the problem with that is if I say that to you and you go fine, Kelly, then this conversation is over.

Aoife O’Brien [00:45:31]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:45:31]:

And we didn’t get anywhere, but it’s over. I say let’s agree to disagree and you go fine. And we part ways. So I see it differently is a conversation extender. And I promise you that if I say to you I see it differently, that you are going to say something along the lines of well, tell me how you see it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:45:50]:

Yeah.

Kelly McDonald [00:45:50]:

And we’re gonna have that conversation go a little further, and we might not still agree. Okay? I’m not but it’s a neutral statement. I’m not trying to persuade you over to my point of view. I’m not arguing. I’m not saying I’m right and you’re wrong. Nothing. It’s a neutral statement of just I see it differently. But no one is ever gonna go, you know, if I say I I see it differently, you’re not gonna go, I don’t care.

Kelly McDonald [00:46:10]:

Yeah. I don’t care

Aoife O’Brien [00:46:11]:

or conversation over.

Kelly McDonald [00:46:12]:

Yeah. I mean, you’re gonna say I promise you, you’re gonna say, well, tell me how you see it. Yeah. And there’s benefit in that. Again, we might not still agree, but you’re gonna understand more about what I am thinking and seeing in this process than if I just say, let’s agree to disagree. We’re done.

Aoife O’Brien [00:46:28]:

Yeah. Conversation over. Love that. Love that as an explanation. Kelly, the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being happier at work mean to you?

Kelly McDonald [00:46:39]:

I think being happier at work means being heard, being fulfilled, gratified with the work that you do, finding purpose in it and enjoying it. Not we won’t always enjoy it, but generally we we enjoy what we do. And, being heard at work, being seen and heard, and and valued for the contributions that you bring to that work because most of us bring our a game every day. So I think it’s about the internal gratification that we get that is externally fueled by feedback and being heard and valued for our contributions. That’s what happier work is.

Aoife O’Brien [00:47:15]:

Love that. And if people want to find out more about what you do, if they want to connect with you, if they want to look into your your 4 different books, what’s the best way they can do that?

Kelly McDonald [00:47:25]:

Well, my 4 book my 4 different books are all on Amazon. And if you just put in Kelly McDonald Books, they come up. And, this is my number one bestseller, how to work with and lead people not like you. So you can find me very easily on Amazon. Also, barnesandnoble.com and also any independent booksellers. I love our independent booksellers in the world, so I gotta give a shout out to them. And, if they want to find out more about me, the 2 best ways, I’m on all the socials, but the 2 easiest best ways are my website which is mcdonaldmarketing.com and, my LinkedIn which there’s a million Kelly McDonald’s out there. So I’m Kelly c McDonald.

Kelly McDonald [00:48:07]:

Yes. C as in Christine, Kelly c McDonald or you can just put in Kelly McDonald Denver and I’ll come up.

Aoife O’Brien [00:48:14]:

Love it. Brilliant. I’ll have to connect with you after this conversation as well. Yeah. Definitely. Thank you so much, Kelly. I really, really enjoyed this conversation and I don’t think it’s something that we’ve we’ve really touched on on the podcast before. So I really, really appreciate your insights.

Aoife O’Brien [00:48:28]:

Thank you.

Kelly McDonald [00:48:29]:

Thank you so much for having me, and thank you to your audience for, sharing their time.