How to Build a Team That Gets Better Under Fire

Most teams crack under pressure. 

What if yours got stronger every time things got hard?

In this episode, Dr. Dave breaks down how to lead like James Dyson—turning 5,126 failures into an 8 billion-dollar breakthrough. 

If your team avoids hard conversations, stalls under stress, or crumbles in complexity, you’re not alone. 

But surviving isn’t winning. 

This is your blueprint for building a business—and a culture—that grows sharper, faster, and more focused because of pressure, not in spite of it. 

What You’ll Learn: 

• Why Resilience Isn’t Enough - Discover the difference between fragile, resilient, and anti-fragile businesses—and why aiming to "hold the line" is costing you growth.
• How to Build Leaders Through Pressure - Learn how to stretch your team strategically—so they develop confidence, not co-dependence.
• The Culture System That Transforms Setbacks Into Strength - Walk away with a plug-and-play ritual to turn breakdowns into better systems, tighter teams, and faster momentum.

▶️ Hit play now—and learn how to build a business that thrives in chaos and leads with power.

Ready to install the 90-day system behind Flow-Driven success?
Book a complimentary Strategy Session with Dr. Dave to explore the Flow-Driven Profits Method and see if you're a fit.

👉 Only for entrepreneurs who care deeply about performance and people.

Transcript

Prototype, 5126 failed again. James Dyson stood in his garage just him a sketch pad and a vacuum that didn't work. No applause, no investors, no fast track, just another dead design and one more lesson in the pursuit. But he didn't call it failure. He called it iteration. See, most people would have stopped at the first few setbacks, and some might have made it to 50, maybe 100 James kept going past 1000 past 2000 5126 prototypes, and on the next, one prototype, 5127 something clicked. The airflow held. The suction worked. The design didn't dysfunction. It flowed. That moment became the foundation of Dyson, now a privately owned company valued at over ten billion but that's not the point. The point is what Dyson became in the process. He didn't just engineer a better product, he engineered a stronger version of himself through the discipline of design, the tension of trial and the humility of feedback. Later, he would say, what I learned from running this company is the time to push hard is when you're hurting like crazy and want to give up. Success is often just around the corner, and that corner didn't appear on version five or 50 or 500 but it eventually came because he built the capacity to meet it. That's what this episode is all about. How do you lead like that? How do you build a business and a culture that gets stronger through stress, not weaker? If you've been feeling the weight of complexity, the pressure of growth, the tension of responsibility, you're not doing it wrong, you're just building the next version, and you're in the right place, because today we're talking about how to lead with anti fragility. Let's get into it. Hey there. Welcome to flow driven the podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs who want to lead high performance, high profit workplaces. I'm your host and coach, Dr Dave Maloley, and here's what I believe. I believe that entrepreneurs are athletes and their business is the field of play. Every day is a game. The only question is, are you showing up to win? At the core of this show, of course, is flow. That's the razor's edge state where you're fully focused, wildly creative and executing at your highest level. And when the whole team hits that state together. That's called group flow, where productivity, morale and innovation skyrocket. I dream of a future where flow isn't just a state that you stumble into, it's at the core of every business. This is where teams operate in sync. Challenges trigger collaboration, and human potential isn't wasted. It's unleashed. This podcast is built on five pillars. The first pillar is mental optimization. Sharpen your mind to lead with clarity. Second is flow orchestration, structure your business like a well tuned machine. Third is courageous communication, build trust with real No, Bs, conversations. Fourth, we have team transformation. Create a culture that unlocks collective genius. And fifth is lifestyle integration, recharge, reconnect and design a life that you actually desire. These five pillars are your edge in the AI accelerated transformation age, and today, we'll be looking specifically at that fourth one, Team transformation AI is getting twice as smart every six months, and customers are getting pickier by the minute, and somewhere maybe in your town, a hungrier competitor just opened their doors. Let me shoot you straight. If your business doesn't flourish when times get tough, you're building something that won't last. It's not about having the perfect game plan anymore. It's about having a team that gets sharper under stress. It's about having a company that can pivot when the unexpected hits, a business that keeps moving when everyone else is stuck. Anti fragile isn't just some buzz word, it's your new operating system in 2025 Peter Drucker put it this way, the greatest. Danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it's acting with yesterday's logic, and right now, most business owners are still using last decade's logic, wondering whether teams are stalling out and profits are so unpredictable. So let's clear up a dangerous myth. There are three types of businesses. First you have the fragile ones. They fall apart when things aren't going as planned. Then you have resilient ones that survive, but they don't necessarily improve. And then there's anti fragile businesses that get stronger every time they're tested, too many owners are aiming for resilience. Right now. They just want to hold the line. But surviving isn't winning. It's treading water, and eventually those businesses will drown. Charles Darwin put it this way, it's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it's the one most adaptable to change. Last year, a survey by PwC indicated that 45% of CEOs globally expressed concerns about their company's ability to survive the next decade without significant reinvention. This highlights the importance of anti fragility in this economy. So most businesses are hoping for calm seas, but we are sailing into a storm, and what leaders tend to do is over control everything and wonder why their teams can't think for themselves. They also avoid discomfort, so problems linger, accountability disappears and standards drop. And of course, they fear risk, so they play small, move slowly and get passed by the truth, most teams aren't broken. They're just not built for challenge. I'm willing to bet that if you're listening to this episode, you're not trying to be average. Am I right? You want your business to grow, you want your people to lead, and you want a life that feels like it's working for you, not against you. And that's really where anti fragile leadership comes in. You probably don't need more systems. You probably don't need more rules. You need a business that builds its muscle every time things get messy. So let's talk about what that might look like. First, let's shine a light on transformational leadership. This combines the purpose and the people. You cast a vision. You grow leaders inside your business. You create a place where people want to show up and do their best. That's essential, but not enough. We have to add in anti fragility that builds in pressure and progress. You intentionally use stress to sharpen your team. You treat tough days as training, you turn breakdowns into better systems together, these two create a team that doesn't avoid the hard stuff. They get better because of it in a flow driven anti fragile business, team members take ownership. Tough conversations happen on the regular systems improve fast, and pressure reveals potential, not problems. And this isn't just theory. This is something you can install or improve this week. First, add strategic pressure to your team. Give your team something that stretches it a bit, a tighter deadline, a difficult phone call, a leadership opportunity that they're not quite ready for, because if you're always protecting them from discomfort, you're also protecting them from growth. And as you know, growth doesn't come from more comfort, it comes from more challenge. Number two, make post mortems a ritual. The next time something goes sideways, don't sweep it under the rug. Don't avoid it. Gather your team and ask what broke. Then what did you learn? And then finally, how do we fix it so it doesn't break again? No shame, no blame, just people getting stronger. Three, use the weekly challenge skill check. Ask your team. Where did you feel overwhelmed? Where did you feel bored? And where did you feel locked in that locked in zone is flow, and it's your job to help them create more of that. Four install the break, learn, upgrade loop every time something breaks. Say, this good. That's feedback. Then turn the breakdown into a better system. Track the less. Person celebrate the upgrade. Your goal isn't perfection, it's rapid evolution. Here's what I'd like you to take away from this. Most businesses are designed to survive good times, but they fall apart when things get rough. Fragility is what happens when you over protect your team and over complicate your systems. And finally, anti fragility is what happens when your culture is built to get stronger from stress. Nassim Taleb wrote the book called anti fragile, and he put it this way, some things benefit from shocks. They thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder and stressors and love adventure, risk and uncertainty, so let that be your business. So here's my coaching challenge for you this week. Pick one of these. One, give a team member a stretch opportunity or challenge. Two, lead up a post mortem with no blame, just lessons learned. Three, ask your team where they felt flowy this week. Or four, let something break and then find a way to build it back stronger. When we talk about anti fragility, it's not about building the biggest company around. It's about building the strongest, the most agile, the one that adapts the fastest, executes cleaner and never hides from a challenge. Because you don't want a business that avoids stress right now. You want one that feeds on it build something that loves chaos and lead like you were born for this, my friend, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate you. If you found value in this episode. I'm going to ask you to take a moment right now and pay a small fee first share this episode with a fellow entrepreneur that would benefit from it, and secondly, leave a five star review. Both of those actions help us continue the rapid growth of flow driven and until next week. This is Dr Dave reminding you to stay focused and flow driven.