Steve Graves 2 Edited
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[00:00:00] Richard Ellis: According to the Harvard Business Review article, why leaders don't learn from success. Success can breed failure by hindering learning at both the individual and the organizational level. We all know that learning from failure is one of the most important capacities for people and companies to develop.
[00:00:18] Richard Ellis: Yet surprisingly, learning from success can present even greater challenges. Today, we explore the dangers of success and how failure can help refine leadership for long term growth.
[00:00:38] Richard Ellis: Welcome back to Some Goodness, where we engage seasoned business leaders and experts to share practical guidance and tips to help new and future C level leaders maximize their impact. My guest again today is Steve Graves, a strategist. CEO, advisor, and author. He's worked with thousands of leaders, all with a mission to help them flourish in their life and work.
[00:00:59] Richard Ellis: [00:01:00] In our latest episode, we discussed the five essential tasks of leadership. And today we'll dive into this new topic, handling success and failure as a leader. All right, Steve, so excited to dive into another topic with you today. This time, of course, as we said in the intro, we're going to talk a little bit about success and failures.
[00:01:22] Richard Ellis: So you've had a number of writings on this talking about people often handle failure better than success. Let's just start there. What do you mean by that?
[00:01:30] Steve Graves: Well, yeah, and I don't have a lot of data, I have not done tons of empirical research on it, but I've worked with thousands of leaders over the last three to four decades, and I would say that some people actually, it's harder for them to digest.
[00:01:45] Steve Graves: Success than it is failure. And I don't know why. And of course, we all know that they're examples of the opposite. We definitely know that failure has just collapsed many, many folks along the way. But the idea that the success doesn't carry with it any prickly [00:02:00] porcupine sharp edges to it is just not true.
[00:02:03] Steve Graves: You know, success can actually become harder to over time digest. And build into our system. And that's the reason why often we work with a lot of family offices and have for years. And that's the reason why when you're transferring generational wealth. It's such a tricky, tricky thing going from Gen 2 to Gen 3 to, you know, G4 all the way through that thing, because what you're doing is you're transferring primarily all the upsides of success.
[00:02:29] Steve Graves: And if you're not careful, you haven't really transferred any of the hard, enduring, painstaking examples. A failure through the lives of those family members in the company. So the premise is that often handling and digesting and sustaining success is just a lot of times harder for people than it is handling failure.
[00:02:50] Richard Ellis: And when you think about, I think you call them the four dangers of success, right? Overinflated abilities, entitlement, addiction to success and [00:03:00] complacency. On the surface, I was like, Oh, I don't know if I would have been able to come up with those, but reading those, it's like, okay, that makes sense. And that starts to get my gears turning a little bit, but let's talk about a couple of those.
[00:03:11] Richard Ellis: Um, when you talk about a sense of entitlement, I think you mentioned that that can even harm relationships. Tell us a little bit about success leading to entitlement in the context of the business world.
[00:03:23] Steve Graves: Yeah. Well, you know, if I'm not careful, I can begin to, and actually the first one and the second one could go together with this particular question, because if I'm not careful and if I'm successful, I could begin really rearranging all the formula and all the factors that went into me being successful.
[00:03:42] Steve Graves: What really took place and pretty soon I can say, you know, I'm just a freaking genius is what that, you want to know how we won? I'm just an unbelievably piece of talent. Like I'm just better than everybody else. I mean, like just, and you know what? I might be smarter than you or three other people on my team, [00:04:00] but if I'm not careful, I will begin to displace all the supporting characters that really came together and the environment and the situation and the timing and things that I had no control of.
[00:04:13] Steve Graves: And I will begin to displace those and I will begin to inflate. Me and this big image of myself and all of a sudden there's only one spotlight and there's only one person on stage and what we got going on is a giant monologue and I'm the reason that a whole thing was successful, not, you know, this team around me that happened to be it.
[00:04:32] Steve Graves: And when I began to do that, sometimes what happens is then I begin to think, well, since I was the reason that we were successful, I probably need a little bit more of this and I need a little bit more of that. And don't bother me with the details about that. I'm above that. I mean, don't mess with me worried about that.
[00:04:50] Steve Graves: The air conditioner is broken. Like go find somebody that messes with air conditions. I'm up here doing the big stuff. I'm up here at the top of the organization or whatever. And so we've got to be very, very [00:05:00] careful. So, failure has a way of making us come to grips with our humanity, and it makes us realize that we're just kind of one keg in the wheel, and that's among the things failure can do for us.
[00:05:13] Richard Ellis: Yeah. Failure can certainly be humbling, right? Yes. Yes. And maybe help to create a little bit of self awareness where there may not have been some there in the beginning. Well, let me flip it around a little bit, the opposite of entitlement. And what I mean by that is, I've had the privilege of working with some really great leaders.
[00:05:29] Richard Ellis: And they'll be the first to say, Hey, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. Part of my success is surrounding myself with people smarter than me. Right. So if you think about those leaders with the right and great perspectives, very others focused, what are some dangers or pitfalls that they should watch out for?
[00:05:46] Steve Graves: You know, I'm tempted to push the question right back to you because I know you have worked with a ton of folks as well. And so feel free to jump in on the backside after I give a comment or two, because again, I know you have worked with tons of great leaders as well. I do [00:06:00] think that it's really important that if I hire someone who's very capable, that I actually empower them and I give them the ability to lead at the level that they are able.
[00:06:11] Steve Graves: And I've got to be secure enough to actually work with strong, capable people. You made a reference to it and inferred it. A lot of people will make that statement that, you know, I'm going to always surround myself with smarter, more capable people, but they really don't. What they really do is they end up surrounding themselves with people that only make them look bigger and stronger because it takes a much more secure person to actually hire someone below you.
[00:06:38] Steve Graves: That is really smarter than you. You know, crazy thing about Richard is we know this is true with all things technology. If you happen to be anywhere close to my age, and I'm 68, but if you have to be anywhere close to, you know, an aging baby boomer, the two year graduate out of college does more about technology than we do.
[00:06:57] Steve Graves: So just admit it and lean into it. The [00:07:00] score and the task of any great senior leader is not being the smartest person in the room, or it's not being the hardest worker in the room. It's not being the most agile, necessarily strategic mind in the room. No, it's not. It's the leaders playing the role that the leader is supposed to play.
[00:07:16] Steve Graves: And often you have way more talented people around you in the organization than maybe you were originally comfortable with.
[00:07:24] Richard Ellis: Right, right. No, that's great. And one thing that comes to mind is, and I've seen this in others, and I try to do this myself is leverage others to help me see my blind spots. Then once we understand those, then that could be a skill gap, uh, that I have, and we can replace that or augment it with others or just an awareness, right?
[00:07:43] Richard Ellis: That we can then address. And so some of the other leaders that I've worked with are really good about. You know, getting those pulse checks or those temperature checks from their direct reports, but then also several levels down to just say, Hey, is there anything we're missing as a leadership team?
[00:07:59] Steve Graves: Yeah, this [00:08:00] morning I actually had breakfast with our chief people officer of the holding company that I'm chairman of and we were talking about the 360s that we're about to do with our leadership team across the board and We were literally talking about everything if I don't have a culture that really invites honest objective feedback That I can pass out of 360, but nobody's going to really give me anything.
[00:08:24] Steve Graves: Nobody's going to take the risk of saying, Hey Steve, you know, I think you got a blind spot as it relates to very assertive personalities or something when I was making that one up. Okay. And so for sure, for sure. If a leader really is interested in growing and developing their own journey in a continual, sustainable way, getting real, honest, objective feedback from the peers that they work in and around every day, that's just a goldmine.
[00:08:51] Steve Graves: And it could do exactly what you said. It could help us fill gaps and fill in blind spots. And the thing about blind spots is if we knew them, they wouldn't be a blind [00:09:00] spot. If I knew I had a problem with a certain kind of worker, I wouldn't have a blind spot. And so, it's other people helping me realize that I really have a blind spot, I just don't see something.
[00:09:12] Steve Graves: And if somebody doesn't give that to me, then my growth has stalled out a little bit, at least in that particular area.
[00:09:19] Richard Ellis: Sure. And I think we can't just expect people to be bold enough to come and share. Our blind spots, right? We have to invite that and have an intentionality around seeking those blind spots out.
[00:09:32] Steve Graves: Yeah. And they got to be comfortable with it. They're not going to get spanked. You know, they're not going to get called out, but they're not going to get embarrassed. I'm not going to come back and poke them in the head. And I'm going to say, well, you know, Richard, like, glad you really brought up blind spots.
[00:09:43] Steve Graves: Cause now that you got one for me, let me get three for you. I've been waiting for you to like. What are we, a couple of sixth graders here? What's going on, man? You know, I thought you were a mature boss.
[00:09:52] Richard Ellis: Yes, exactly. Another caution of success that you've highlighted is just this idea that success can be addicting.
[00:09:58] Richard Ellis: Right. And that [00:10:00] sometimes just that, that hunger or that chasing success after success, I think about dopamine hits. That are, that might cause us to compromise some of our values. What are some learnings or insight you can share with us about that? Yeah.
[00:10:12] Steve Graves: Yeah. There's no question. Lots and lots of scientific research has been done in the last decade for sure.
[00:10:18] Steve Graves: It was done before that, but you know, lots more has just really piled into the market in the last decade or so. Around this idea, both dopamines and stuff that you mentioned, what can happen with us when we win, when we succeed is that we get a shot of Red Bull, we get an internal juicer effect about all things.
[00:10:38] Steve Graves: I mean, everybody's making the case that that's all negative because that's not true. We all need to win. And some things, but what happens is, is I've got to be careful a, that I don't get over addicted to outcomes and results that are only wins, because I don't care who you are. Nobody wins every time, every [00:11:00] day with every encounter.
[00:11:02] Steve Graves: You just don't. Most of life is built around somebody winning and somebody losing. And in order for somebody to win, often somebody has to not win and call it whatever you want. Right. And I've got to get used to that. So there's kind of an expectation that can begin being built. And then as something you mentioned earlier, which I couldn't agree with more.
[00:11:23] Steve Graves: Is often what happens is I begin to allow myself to change the way of how I think about my own sets of boundaries, my own sets of values, my own sets of expectations. And that's where actually a lot of people begin to have moral failure in their own life. Um, because they didn't set out to say, well, let me just be a failure, but they set out becoming more relaxed with.
[00:11:51] Steve Graves: Some boundaries or some convictions in their own life. And a lot of that ties back to when we went, when I was successful, [00:12:00] I began to think I'm somebody I'm better than you. I'm bigger than you are. I'm immune from, from any kind of danger or challenge or whatever. And that's just not true. And that's the reason why.
[00:12:11] Steve Graves: It's so important through life that we take our wins and our losses, we take success and our failures, and we let all of that kind of help make and form who we are as individuals. I've got a little idea that I've been working in the last, oh, the last four or five years in all of our CEO and business owner coaching, and it's around the concept of formation.
[00:12:33] Steve Graves: I think that it's really important that leaders grow who they are at the same rate of what they're doing. They grow. And what, and what happens a lot of times is somebody will find themselves jumping three or four quick steps and they will find themselves becoming a VP or an SVP or a C suite leader or a CEO, whatever.
[00:12:54] Steve Graves: And what happened is that they never really grew who they were. They're the same leader. The same [00:13:00] person, or they might pick up a little more intelligence about money or economics or reading a P and L or balance sheet, or they might've picked up a few more skill sets and how to approach a competitor or whatever.
[00:13:10] Steve Graves: But as far as the formation and the constitution of who they are deep within their being, they haven't grown who they are. And I'm a huge believer that it's critical for a leader to grow who they are. At the same rate of what they're doing in kind of a general symbiotic concert. I'm stringing a theoretical concept, I know, but the idea I really think has some weight.
[00:13:33] Steve Graves: Let me give you an example and I'll stop. But the idea would be is that over time, success and failure test through I am at my core. It tests the formation of what it is. Of what I've built, who I am about. Like for example, if I've drawn a line that this is my personal lifestyle, no matter how much money I have, then the money doesn't change me.
[00:13:56] Steve Graves: That doesn't mean I don't get a new car. That doesn't mean I don't update my [00:14:00] house. That means I don't buy a second house perhaps, but it does mean that I'm not just every time I make another 10, 000, my whole lifestyle keeps jumping up and up and up and up, and I'd never ever have to deal with the concept of contentment.
[00:14:13] Steve Graves: Contentment is a formation. Construct in life. And it doesn't matter what your values are. Your faith is it doesn't matter in contentment is the ability to say I got enough. Let me share with people who don't have enough, or I have enough, let me do something else other than just personal consumption with what I have.
[00:14:34] Steve Graves: So it's all about that idea of formation and formation is the thing that comes to bear. It's the thing that is highlighted when we either experience success and or failure over and over and over is the idea.
[00:14:48] Richard Ellis: That's excellent. That sounds like either a book I haven't read of yours or one that you have coming out soon.
[00:14:54] Steve Graves: Well, I know it's not the first one because I haven't written it, but I have been [00:15:00] thinking about it. Maybe it'll be something way out there eventually I'll work on, but it's just something that we've built back into our model of coaching CEOs and business owners and entrepreneurs to make sure. That there's at least some effort and, you know, it's not new Harvard business review started at least 10 years ago, maybe longer where they talked about managing myself, managing me, you know, managing who I am.
[00:15:23] Steve Graves: And so it's not like it's a brand new concept. It's just the effort to actually do it. Put an effort on that as much as you are the effort to go double your business or to make, you know, two more percent profit. I mean, like, what am I really doing to grow who I am as an individual? That's kind of the question at play.
[00:15:41] Richard Ellis: Well, yeah, and there's that proactive progress direction about it. But there's also, I can picture in my head just many ways where if who you are. And what you do become misaligned, there's going to be a lot of conflict, right? And there's going to be a lot of just struggle and [00:16:00] other ramifications or applications for that.
[00:16:02] Richard Ellis: So I just like this idea of the formation of who you are, what we do. And you're going to have me thinking on this for the rest of the week. I assure you,
[00:16:08] Steve Graves: man, work on it, roll it out, work on it.
[00:16:11] Richard Ellis: That is good. Well, let's talk a little bit about failure. So we've talked about success, right? And you mentioned just there previously that we can't always have successes all the time right at some point we're gonna have failures and so Um, you know, we serve leaders and we focus on the revenue engine, right?
[00:16:30] Richard Ellis: So marketing leaders sales leaders channel leaders And there's a lot of times where you have a down quarter or a series of down quarters, et cetera. So do you have any just kind of insights or advice for when we're going through a particularly challenging time of some quote unquote failures?
[00:16:46] Steve Graves: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:47] Steve Graves: Well, you know, one statement I remember hearing someone say years ago, and I don't even remember who it was, you know, there's a difference in a data point in a trend line. If I happen to have a data point. A failure data [00:17:00] point where I was down this quarter or down this week or one cell didn't make it or one employee ended up leaving or whatever, that's one thing.
[00:17:07] Steve Graves: I'm going to marshal my solve or my reflection or my analysis toward that one way. If I have a trendline, You know, if I'm constantly quarter over quarter over quarter, not making my goals, then maybe I'm too ambitious with my goals. Maybe I'm too ambitious with my team. Maybe I'm too ambitious with my product or service.
[00:17:27] Steve Graves: Maybe I need to realign and get more of a realistic view of what those things really ought to be over time. And so I do think it's important to kind of separate the idea of a data point and or a trend line applied to the concept of failure. That would be point one. Point two is I do believe it's really important to do some self reflection, some kind of looking in the mirror when you do have a failure.
[00:17:52] Steve Graves: But I also believe it's important that you don't just constantly try to over own every possible reason [00:18:00] of the failure. So where something goes wrong, I've got to look in the mirror and say, Hey, do I need to own any of this? And you know what? And I'll say, Well, yeah, I asked the team to grow by 70 percent in the last quarter.
[00:18:12] Steve Graves: And our average has been 19 percent for the last six years. What was I thinking? Like in railroad two, why didn't somebody have enough courage to look across the table and said, Hey, Steve. Not sure what kind of pizza you ate at lunch partner, but like, you know, why would you even think that that's possible?
[00:18:29] Steve Graves: And so I need to look in the mirror, but if I look in the mirror and there's just not a lot that I need to own, then I've got to be comfortable just saying, you know what, sometimes other people just win. You know, it's kind of the old classic. If you like college football, it's the old classic on any given Saturday, you know, on any given Saturday, any team might beat another team that they're not supposed to.
[00:18:50] Steve Graves: Now, the other nine teams are probably going to win. They're supposed to win, but like anything can happen. A leader's ability to guide and to kind of. Champion their [00:19:00] team through failure is really important because if they over indulge on, what did we do wrong? What did we wrong? What we didn't work hard enough.
[00:19:07] Steve Graves: We didn't really bring enough heart. Y'all weren't really serious. Y'all should have worked all weekend. Y'all should have, we gotta be really careful that we don't over index on what I did wrong at the same time. I can't just, you know, mark it off as well. That's just life. And that just happens. Who cares?
[00:19:24] Steve Graves: You know, so there's gotta be a delicate balance of figuring out. What problem are we trying to solve coming out of a failure, if in fact there is one?
[00:19:32] Richard Ellis: I like that. Is it a data point versus a trend? Start with self reflection and then just move forward from there. That's awesome. Well, once again, our time with you has come to a close.
[00:19:43] Richard Ellis: Really enjoy our conversations and I hope this isn't the last time we get to do it. But just like last time, let's close with some goodness outside of the success and failure discussion we had today. Are you enjoying any new book, TV, hobby, anything that's just bringing some joy into your life?
[00:19:59] Steve Graves: Great [00:20:00] question.
[00:20:00] Steve Graves: Love that question. My son actually came to work with me this last year and he worked at Walmart and then he ran an outdoor apparel on and ran an outdoor apparel company for six or seven years and recently just joined our coaching team here. And that's been just a ton of fun. I would have never dreamed that that was going to happen.
[00:20:21] Steve Graves: And so, um, you know, we're learning, we're figuring out how to work together because we've never worked together, but they're going to, that's been a really surprised element in our world for sure at our Cornerstone coaching practice.
[00:20:32] Richard Ellis: Outstanding. Love that. Love that. It's a family show. Well, before we go quick plug for Cornerstone, how can people find you and learn more?
[00:20:39] Steve Graves: Yeah. Two things. You can either go to Stephen R S T E P H E N R graves. com and you can find all my blogs and books and content there, or you can go to cornerstone co CEO like companies cornerstone co. com and you know, you can find everything from our coaching practice to a new thing we've launched called cornerstone [00:21:00] plus, which is a membership based opportunity for a much broader, bigger audience of people who are not just wanting.
[00:21:06] Steve Graves: One on one coaching, but they want to join kind of a peer based cohort of coaching, which is a ton of fun. So either one of those sites, they can find me at any time of the day.
[00:21:15] Richard Ellis: Outstanding. I strongly encourage our readers to check you guys out. And you personally have learned a lot from you, not just in our couple of podcasts, but also the couple of books I had a chance to read, and I can't wait to read more.
[00:21:26] Richard Ellis: So thank you once again for your time today.
[00:21:30] Steve Graves: Richard, my pleasure, my honor. Thanks so much for what you guys are doing and the contribution you're making to the marketplace as well.
[00:21:42] Announcer: Some Goodness is a creation of Revenue Innovations. Visit us at revenueinnovations. com and subscribe to our newsletter.
