Ep. 138: The Courage to Live- Let Them Fail

In this episode, Josh and Jenna break down one of the hardest parts of leadership: allowing your people to fail. Drawing from real training scenarios and on-the-job experience, they explore how stepping in too quickly can limit growth, create dependency, and weaken teams. They also discuss how to balance mission requirements with development, build trust, and use failure as a tool to create stronger, more capable leaders. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to the Courage Lib Podcast. My name is Josh Bitsko and I'm a retired police captain with 24 years of experience out of Las Vegas. Currently I travel the country and I teach people about courage, resilience, and leadership. So um long day of recording.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Yeah, and you're joined by your wife.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Oh, and I'm joined by my man. You know, I did really good in the first like 30 of those, and now for some reason I don't think about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Welcome to the Courage of the Button. I'm joined by my wife and co-host Jenna.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Hi.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Um no, because I I forgot because I was so excited. I'm excited to go see Project Hail Mary. Um, I read the book. It was by the same author that wrote The Martian Andy Weir. Remember.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

I don't I don't know. I remember.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Um I've read a couple of books of his, and uh, but Project Hail Mero is excited for the book. Excited for the movie. We'll see how it is. I know you're you love sci-fi so much, so I know you're super excited about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

It is my favorite movie genre. And I did get a full rundown of what the book was about, so I know what the movie's about. And I can already tell you that Ryan Gosling is not who I would pick for that character. I was thinking more Paul Giamatti.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Like having a hot middle school teacher save the world is I mean, I'm not gonna complain about it, just like not what I would imagine.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Well, maybe it was intentional for maybe to get the wives to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

That's probably pretty smart.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

But there are women out there that like sci-fi too. Maybe there's women out there that like sci-fi and Brian Gosling.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Yeah. I mean, I think those are the same girls that read you know, romanticy or fantasy, Court of Thorns and Roses. I made it through book one and a quarter of book two and said no, thank you. Bye.

unknown 2:00

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

No shade.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, no, don't we're losing followers.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Don't don't at me.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Um okay, so in today's podcast, you know, we we we've talked about failure and how you learn uh when you fail, but today we we kind of wanted to get into as a leader allowing people to fail and what you can do or what that causes and how you can overcome that to help develop your people.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah, why it's important.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah. And we well during one of the training exercises we did, uh, it was an interesting scenario because the sergeant of the group of officers had knew the scenario, right? Because he was part he was part of some of the creation, but he also had to go out there and work it with them. And you know, his some of his officers were struggling and watching him like, okay, I don't I don't like letting them fail, but I also can't get involved because I know the scenario, and that wouldn't be fair, and it would rob them of training. He actually did a really good job of balancing that. Um, but you know, you could see like he was he was definitely definitely upset afterwards, right? And but he opted to allow his um team to learn, make mistakes, make mistakes, uh, over his own ego. And oh yeah, my squad did great. Uh you know, and that's and listen, we we've had we all want that, right? You're your your employees are are a reflection of your leadership. It doesn't mean everyone's gonna be perfect or anything like that. If you're an amazing leader, you have to allow people to make mistakes. But like I I've had time, I have had times where teams did great, and someone called me, it was like, hey, you you guys are you know firing all cylinders, and that feels really good. Um, but at the same time, if we're not allowing our people to fail, are we are we allowing them to learn?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Right, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Yeah, and I think that um, you know, we did a whole whole podcast on how you learn through failure, and you know, I talked about jujitsu jujitsu tournaments and work and you know all these failures, but I learned so much from those failures, and I talk about it in my class, but then you go to a leadership position, and you know, you you have to balance obviously the mission and operations of the team and day-to-day operations, um, and training and making sure that people are training, you're putting on scenario training from them. Um, but you know, you also need you don't want them to fail to the point where it's going to affect their careers or you know, like impact like if her policing impact the community or something like that, or even training, you know, fail so bad that they get nothing from the training, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Um which I think is really cool about the way that you set training up. It's always for people to learn, but never for them to fail so much that they walk away questioning their abilities, right? Like it's allowing them to make mistakes, but not to the point where they're gonna walk away and think this was a stupid training, I learned nothing, or I'm really terrible at being a cop. Like maybe, you know, yeah, I think that you do a really good job balancing that.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

I appreciate that. Uh, and I try to do that both in like live exercises and even tabletops. Like, I don't make it so hard, but at the same time, I want to make sure that you know they they learn, they're challenged, they're a little stressed. Um, but I always have it set up to where it is everything's win winnable, I guess. Um, you know what I tell people my goal is to leave with your eyes a little open and a little more prepared. Yep. Like, oh, maybe these are some way areas of improvement. Um, but at the same time, now I feel a little more confident going into a scenario. And it's you know, it's the same thing for the live exercises, is you know, I want you to feel a little bit, I don't want to rob you of that experience of learning. Um, and if you don't, then great, that means you are um a you know expert in your field and you put a lot of time and effort into being successful. Um, but again, uh training training should be hard. And I I need to put my money where my mouth is because in every class I say, like, you know, when trying to get people over that tactical paralysis is you need to you have to have the ability to fail in training to learn. But when we come in as a consultant creating training, you you know, there's this desire to want everybody to leave all you know, yeah, butterflies and rainbows and unicorns, and that was the most amazing training. But if you didn't do great, it's gonna be hard to like have that feeling.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yeah. Well, and I think so, as leaders, I feel like people, it's hard to allow your people to fail because well, for multiple reasons. One being it makes you look bad, or there's the thought or you know, stigma that, oh, if I let if my team, if I let my team fail, it's gonna come back on on me poorly, that I'm a poor leader, I can't do my job. And I think that if you're allowing people in training scenarios, in so and outside of policing in um in trainings or in on a project or something like that that isn't high stakes, that will enable them to make the correct decisions that they need to make when that scenario happens again, when it's when it matters, right? I mean, we have a friend that's a dentist, and I think about like, okay, I am sure that during dental school dental school, she made mistakes, right? But those were in training scenarios so that when she's in real life doing a root canal, she's not making those same mistakes that she made during training. All of that to say, it doesn't have to be specific to policing, it can be other fields too. The point is allowing people to fail in those moments that aren't high stakes, so that when they are, they're able to perform, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yeah, and I even think in there is at times some opportunity to allow people to go off on their own and have the ability to fail, even outside of training. And I mean, I'm not saying like an active shooter or a mandatory arrest or something like that, but you know, you give someone a project and you give them the parameters for the project and then let them go. And there's that chance that they're going to fail. And that's when the real leadership happens. Is it am I going to take and develop this person? You know, I gave them the opportunity to be creative and go off on their own. And you know what? If they knock my socks off, great, great, that's awesome. And they're gonna have more confidence. And I got to delegate and didn't have to be involved in every part of it. Um, but at the same time, in just allowing them the space to go do, like I said, I'm talking like a small project, like a you know, a COP project or like a community project. That you know, it's like maybe an event where you have like we used to have like kid boxing events, not like kids fighting like fight club, but like we would have like sportings, like we'd have different gyms that had kids that boxed, and you know, it was a heavily Hispanic area, and we'd have a big event, or so it's not child fight club. So there's there's these opportunities where it's like you know, not life or death that you give someone a project, let them maybe it's the first time they've done it, let them go out and and work it, and knowing they may make mistakes, they may fail, and then as a leader, you come in and then use that as a growing opportunity. Like, how am I going to develop you this person now? Because they made this one, it wasn't life or death. I'm not gonna chew you out or write you up or anything like that. You know, if it was that important, I would have been more involved and then progress through there, like that. So I do think there's opportunities outside of training. Um, you have to allow people to fail because if not, there's a couple things that can happen, right? That the first, everyone, everyone that's watching this know uh micromanaging, right? Is okay, I don't want them to fail. Um, I don't want to look bad because usually micromanaging comes out of fear or ego. Um so I'm gonna be you know involved in every part of this because it can't fail. And you know, if that causes burnout for the leader too, but then you know the employees they don't they don't ever grow, they get used to their supervisor coming in and holding their hands and having every answer for them.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Well, yeah, and that that translates to if you're stepping in as a leader to correct every single, you know, little thing, what does that do when it's an active shooter? It turns into a Uvaldi, right? You're waiting for leadership to step in and say, Okay, now do this, now do this, now do this, instead of acting and doing what you know you need to do. Well, you don't know what to do because you've never had you've never really had to know. Nobody's given you the opportunity to know.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, right. Well, and I think again, like that can also translate outside of policing, just in, you know, if you're that boss and you're coming in and making sure everybody's doing everything right all the time, and you have to then they're you're never gonna be able to delegate anything to them, you're never gonna, they're not gonna develop into somebody that then could be a leader because they don't have to learn themselves. Yeah, just yep, you're gonna come in and do this for me. You like train them to expect that. So you know, I think that's a big thing that happens with um leaders that that that micromanage or get too involved, and you know, it it just it halts that development of people, and I remember like so many times that you know, my my my squad, my and I'm going mostly as a sergeant, but I had the same thing as a lieutenant and as captain. But as a sergeant, I'd have a cop come to me so excited with a plan. Hey, I want to do this. I'm like, okay, that sounds fun, let's do it. I might I might have thought it was a dumb plan, but see them excited to take the risk and step outside their normal job. Like I remember we uh I was uh PSU sergeant and plain clothes unit, yeah. Plain clothes, problem solving unit. And so it was a big deal. It was called apple picking.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Um remember it.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Yeah, and you know, this was 2000. Oh no, I was a sergeant, so 2010, 2011. And you know, my we we had a couple of cases where we had people that they would basically walk into a coffee shop or restaurant, people would have their phone sitting on the table, they'd snatch the phone run out. Sometimes they'd snatch it out of somebody's hand, and then they go to the little um, you know, at that little electronic store and they'd take it apart and sell it for parts. And so, you know, we had a couple of these cases, and it was we uh tied like a hundred to this little group of you know 19-year-olds.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

And who, by the way, were selling them to these like you said that they would fix your laptop, fix your whatever. But then I figured out that they were laundering those to the Chinese.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

You did?

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Yes. That was actually a published article by the FBI.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Oh shit. Yeah, shoot. Shoot.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

That's my that's the one good thing I did for the FBI. I don't think I ever knew that.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

I don't think they ever told me that story.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

I was pretty proud of that.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

It is, that's awesome. And so then I had my you know, my one of my guys on my squad came to me and it's like, hey, we should do like public service announcements and like all of this, like we should like do a blitz. And this was like a young cop. Now I talked about like looking at problems bigger as you know, as their boss, but this wasn't even my idea. I'm like, sure, well, how should we do this? He's like, Well, let's call the PIO. They call the news. We did like a little, like I think this is so far outside of policing, but like acting, like where someone would snatch a phone and it was like a PSA. And it ended up getting picked. Those I showed it on the local news, and it ended up getting picked on the national news. And it was just like it was kind of cool that again, not not me. And I just I guess you guys run with it, all make sure that you have what you need, and just kind of stepped out of the way. You know, just really cool to see, like, like, and that was my that the reason I bring that up, obviously I had other things that I delegated, but that was like the first one. I was a newer sergeant, as maybe a two-year sergeant.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

But you were allowing them to try, yeah, and maybe fail, but they didn't, yeah. But you allowed them to try.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

They also saw me lose my temper on that case because the DA, and I know the DA's name, I remember, and uh and uh he like dropped 50 Larsine from persons to like uh like some you know, Gross Miss one in probation and uh and I was on the phone with the DA because I I could hear one of them on the phone with the DA. I'm like, give me that phone because I knew what was happening. And I and I was like, I and I lost my temper and I uh threw his phone and broke it. And did you buy him a new phone? It was a department phone.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Oh, okay. Oh, watch out. Uh Tim Tom, whoever he is, he's gonna get you for that one.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

He did not like the story about Mickey Mouse being torn up by Loki. Remember that?

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Well, hope you're having a better day, Tim or Tom or whatever your name is.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Well, the Statue of Limitations is up on that. It was a broken cell phone, and it was a flip phone.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

That's why people don't like the police.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yeah. That's what he said. Oh, yeah, because the doc. Well, this was our this was our phone, but yeah, whatever. Anyway, I I got so mad, and then um then I ended up calling his boss, and it was just a whole thing. But anyway, long story short, uh, we got a little off track. Um we aye, right? But I I do think there it was the first one I ever did. I was just super excited to like see them, you know, go out and do something and could they fail? Yeah. And but they didn't. And you know, I but I think there's value in allowing people the leash to succeed or fail. Because if they succeed, great. And you have a story that 20 years after I'm still talking about, or 15 years after, and then and if they fail, they have lessons that they will never forget.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

So I I do think that there is value in allowing people to fail and fail in training, and it just ultimately just helping um develop people because that's your job as a leader, too.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Well, yes. And are there any other things that you can think of that it benefits you as a leader to allow your people to fail?

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Yes, because if you develop them through training, through failing and training, or you know, these little small projects, they become better. And then when you delegate things to them, they'll fail less. And so you, as you're delegating out to people to do projects, I now have the confidence.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Well, it builds trust, right? Yeah, it builds trust for them that you're not gonna scream at them or punish them for making a mistake. And it also builds trust with you that you know that you can give them bigger projects, you can give them bigger things to handle, you can you know that they can handle their own if they're a cop or you know, whatever it is. You you can give them bigger things and you have the trust in them that they'll have the ability to do it. And I think too that they will take accountability if they do mess up, because there's the trust there between the two of you. They will feel more comfortable coming to you saying, Hey, I screwed this up, and then you guys figure it out together, as opposed to this culture fear that's created by you know micromanaging and then feeling like you can never make a mistake, and then you're scared to say you made a mistake because then you're gonna get in big trouble, and it just creates this vicious cycle of perfectionism, which we've talked about. Um, but also that cycle of perfectionism then does not allow people to succeed in any kind of way.

unknown 18:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Yeah. And I think it's funny that even through that, you know, you you do all these things, you you build that trust. You still, as a leader, if you give someone that leash to go out and fail, and they do fail, hey, when you get called on the carpet for it, and this is the you know, the Jocko extreme ownership stuff, which I I do really like that extreme ownership um idea, that's still your fault as a leader. So if you when your boss calls you in the office, it's not hey, that was that was them, you don't push it down your people, like 100% my fault.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

And and not only do you say it, you have to believe it.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Well, but on that same note, as a leader, if you're stepping in all the time and micromanaging and you don't have an understanding of what the gaps are, then when they make big mistakes or there are these big gaps, they could have been prevented had you allowed them the space to learn and grow. But you really don't know as a leader that that gives you such a blind spot as a leader if you don't even know what your own team's gaps are. You don't even know what to fix because you don't even know you don't even know what the gaps are.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

You never gave them an opportunity to expose those gaps, so then you can develop in uh in other ways as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Right. So what would your advice to new leaders or even leaders who have a tendency if they're like, ooh, you know what I am? I am micromanaging. What is the first step to I mean, is it just don't? Is it just don't?

SPEAKER_00 20:22

No, I think you really have to have the ability or develop the ability to answer the question, what's the worst that's gonna happen? Like, you know, okay, it's it's it's Yuvaldi, the worst that's gonna happen is a lot, yeah. And so I need I you'll see me switch into in situations like that a completely different style of leadership than I was as a detective sergeant. Yeah, like very two very drastic different styles. So, or what's the worst gonna happen? I screw that up and I might get my butt chewed. Okay, and so but then the payoff is I get my butt chewed and my people build trust and get better, and then it won't happen again. So, you know, you have to be really good at uh uh answering that question. And if getting your butt chewed or whatever is the worst thing ever, then you honestly really need to reevaluate your position as a leader because you know that that's part of it, you're never gonna be perfect. And if you're so worried about that, you won't be what your people need you to be. Okay, yeah, I get because I got my butt chewed so many times by my boss for things that I had already told my people not to do, and they did it anyway. And then I'm just like, oh, take that ass butt chewing from you and take that butt chewing from you, and then I'm gonna go tell them like you need to get it together. But I mean, it's just that's part of being a leader, uh being a good leader.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah. So unless you work for like a great company that does not believe in butt chewing, which I cannot think of one.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

No, it's you it's human nature. Listen, occasionally it's warranted. It's warranted. I would rather have a boss chew me out and then it be done than a boss that's going to hang paper on me and then hold that against me for the rest of my career. Like I've had bosses that might chew me out again. And I'm not saying all the time, and I'm not saying over little things.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

I I'm just saying, where did you work? Well, yeah, you know. I worked at a completely different place. Yeah, I mean, I I had both. Yeah. I had both. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

You know, I've I had bosses that would chew me out, but that's the there's a difference. So the civilian side, there's not as much movement, right? You'll wait work for work for the same boss for your whole career. Yeah. Um, whereas civilians like, I had or I mean commissioned, I had different bosses every two years. I had good ones, bad ones. You know, I had um in between, like you know, and so there's a lot of different it's there's some there's some similarities, right? But there's some differences too. But yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Good job.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Yeah, so well, if you enjoyed the podcast, please share it with a friend. Um, leave a review, subscribe, and I appreciate you guys spending time with us today.