Turn your failures into your secret weapons with Fiona Macaulay

The most successful people aren’t the ones who manage to avoid failure. Entrepreneur and author Fiona Macaulay says they’re the ones who learn how to fail forward.

“When we have a failure, it doesn’t make you a failure—it’s simply having a failure. The real question is: what strategic intelligence can you learn from it?”

-  Fiona Macaulay

In this episode of Standing Up Strong, Dr. Jillian Coppley sits down with Wild Network founder Fiona Macaulay to talk about the truth behind success that most people never see: the long trail of setbacks, pivots, and lessons that make it possible.

Fiona shares how perfectionism nearly derailed her early success—even landing her in the emergency room with a panic attack while her company was thriving. That moment forced her to rethink what failure really means and how leaders can transform setbacks into what she calls “strategic intelligence.” Fiona explains why talking openly about failure can be liberating—and how it helps people move from shame to learning.

Dr. Jillian Coppley is a visionary executive recognized internationally for her expertise in character strengths, wellbeing, and organizational transformation. With deep experience in positive psychology, strategy, and change, she has led large-scale collaborations, built global programs, strategic partnerships, and thriving organizational cultures that empower individuals, teams and organizations to flourish. Her leadership blends strategic vision, research-based innovation, and deep personal care for others —creating environments where people and programs thrive and where meaningful, lasting impact takes root.   

Fiona Macaulay is a leadership expert and keynote speaker who designs immersive learning experiences that drive lasting behavior change for Fortune 500 companies, global nonprofits, and professional associations. With 25 years of experience, her approach combines practical frameworks with real-world application, ensuring participants leave with tools they can use immediately. Fiona is Founder/CEO of The WILD Network, connecting 25,000 purpose-driven leaders across 100+ countries in global development and social impact. In the academic world, Fiona serves as Adjunct Professor and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

This series is part of the Cynthia & Harold Guttman Family Center for Storytelling at the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the science of character strengths is integral to our work creating a community of upstanders.  https://www.holocaustandhumanity.org/  https://www.youtube.com/@holocaustandhumanity    

Our thanks to the Mayerson Family Foundation and the VIA Institute on Character for their support of this series   

https://www.mayersonfoundation.org/  https://www.viacharacter.org/    

Episode Resources

Follow Jillian and Fiona on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcoppley/  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fionamacaulay/ 

Buy Fiona’s book, “Aim High and Bounce Back” https://a.co/d/0eqsJg3m 

Take your free character strengths quiz 

https://www.holocaustandhumanity.org/upstander/assess-your-character-strengths/  

Transcript

Jackie Congedo: 0:02

Inside you lie unique character strengths just waiting to be used. Standing up strong is where we harness them to build resilience, spark hope and inspire courage. Lean into the best parts of who you are and lift others as you rise.

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 0:18

Hello, I'm Dr Jillian Coppley, and welcome to Standing Up Strong, the podcast where we get to speak to some of the biggest hearts and biggest minds in positive psychology, true global luminaries in the field of human flourishing. And today is a special treat. I am delighted to be able to welcome Fiona Macaulay as our guest, and I am so eager to share so many things about Fiona with you, I'm going to share just a few to get us started. Fiona is the founder and CEO of the Wild Network connecting 25,000 purpose driven leaders across 100 more than 100 countries. She is a three time entrepreneur who scaled her first social enterprise to work across 80 countries before a successful exit and being named as one of the top 1% of women entrepreneurs in America by revenue. She is an adjunct professor and entrepreneur in residence at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. And what I know about Fiona personally is the extraordinary experience of having her deliver a keynote, and when she does, the room is absolutely wrapped, and when she exits the stage and talks to you, it's as if you were the only person in the room. So I am delighted to be in conversation with her today. I know we're going to learn so much from her. Welcome Fiona.

Fiona Macaulay: 1:44

Thank you so much. Jillian, it's a great pleasure to be here with you in this like virtual environment on these important topics.

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 1:51

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so Fiona. Let's just jump right in, because you have done this wonderful thing in terms of talking to more than 1000 women across the globe, 60 countries, I think they're representing, and you've captured all of that information in a new book, and it's called,

Aim High and Bounce Back: 2:10

A successful Woman's Guide to Rethinking and Rising up from Failure." Just amazing. One of the many, many insights that you have shared in that book and that I know will stick with me for a long time, but this one is really at the top, is that behind every successful woman is a string of failures. And I have to tell you, when I read that, I found it so heartening that I just want you to talk a little bit more about that and and how you came to that and what that means,

Fiona Macaulay: 2:44

absolutely so when you see, perhaps at a conference, like where we met, or on social media, or when you join a dinner party with people for the first time, and you're meeting successful leaders, impressive resumes, many accomplishments. The first thing that goes across our mind is not, oh, that person must have had a lot of failures, you know, Oh, wow. Wonder what setback they had this week that they're like, secretly, like, you know, feeling shame or concern or self doubt about. And the reality is, every successful person has had a string of failures. And the reason that my co author, Deb Riegel and I wanted to write this book is because it's not discussed or under discussed, the lead the failures that people have, and most importantly, how do they come out of those failures, and how do those they use those failures as strategic intelligence that can help them to be successful, versus setbacks that hold them back. And I'd love to share a story from my life.

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 3:53

Yeah, please.

Fiona Macaulay: 3:54

Is that with my first enterprise, just at that point that we hit about a million dollars in annual revenues, I woke up one morning in the emergency room like my heart was pounding. I had an IV in my arm, and I thought, you know, am I gonna die? And a doctor walked in and she said, like you're having a panic attack. Is something wrong? And what was so wrong was that I was every day, every night, when I woke up in the morning, I was so afraid of failing. And the thing was great irony is that everything was going well, you know, profitable company, good reputation, more opportunities in the pipeline, having a lot of impact. What was going on inside me is that I was I felt like I had to be perfect, flawless, and that any mistake that I made would mean that all of the success would come crashing down, and people would see me for a fraud, and that I would never be successful again. And that kind of perfectionism that I thought by doing everything perfectly, I was preserving the success and impact I was having, it was actually eating me from the inside out. I mean, I mean that and that I had two root canals in two years from grinding my teeth. And while not everyone out there is suffers from perfectionism, or as I like to call myself, a recovering perfectionist, many of us do have a lot of feelings of shame around failures and setbacks, and so this book is really about letting people know, giving them tools, strategies, role models, for thinking about failure as information, as data that is inevitable on the path to success, and in fact, can help us to be even more successful.

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 5:55

Wow, so much to unpack in what you just shared. Fiona, I'm sure people's ears are just leaning in right now thinking, wow, that was spot on. It's just something, you know, we've all experienced in small ways and big ways in our life. You know, I'm going to start with this notion though, of you know, you experienced, you know, what was going on in your life in one certain way. But you talk about the fact that you know people who you know tend to be successful in dealing with failures, really look at it very, very differently. And you started to talk to us about this notion of a strategic advantage, and tell us a little bit more about what is that difference? What is that way of of working with a setback, of working with a challenge that actually allows us to grow and benefit and find, again, a strategic advantage in that?

Fiona Macaulay: 6:45

Well, that's a great question. So when we have a failure, it doesn't make you a failure, it's having a failure. So that's a very you know, those are two very different mindsets and what people are able to do, who bounce back the quickest from failures bounce forward are those that can use it, as I mentioned, as strategic intelligence. What did I learn that informs me that I need to start, stop or continue doing now that failure becomes really useful information. Do you have a client or a customer who is critical about something? Well, if they're critical about something, there's probably a lot of others out there who, unless you make a change, are going to be critical too. So thanks for that, you know. Thanks for that criticism. Thanks for that feedback. I can use that in order to be able to better achieve my goals. What if you end up in a situation where, and I'm sure we've all had these, where you end up sort of in like this situation that was bound to fail, not by because of any direct decision or behavior of your own, but you know, you just walk into a situation which is like has a core foundation from the beginning, like I have a friend who is headhunted to be the CEO of a not for profit organization, and what nobody shared with who at her in the interview process was that there was not enough funds in the pipeline, that the board had a lot of infighting, that two of the senior staff were about to leave. So she took a job and walked into a mess, into really a turnaround rescue situation, which she didn't know about. And she was expected to fix all that in three months. And of course, fixing this kind of situation takes something more like 18 months. So being able to take us to take a step back and think, what is it that I can control? What is the greatest priorities? I'm going to focus on that? What can I learn about the mistakes from the mistakes that my predecessor made? Okay, I'm not going to do those. That's where, when we see these situations that are either from our making or that are because of what we call circumstantial failure, allows us to draw key data, key information, that, in fact, is going to allow us to build a more solid foundation and build from there,

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 9:21

yeah, oh my gosh, such good advice. I mean, I hear you saying, yeah, just step away. Depersonalize that and consider it a learning experience. And just what can I gain here? I mean, I think of all of our friends out there who have the VIA character strength of love of learning as one of their signature strengths are probably heating this up right now, but for so, for all of us really so much to to think about there in terms of looking at it from a neutral space, emotionally as truly, just an invitation to learn something really important. It's it's so good, so good. The other thing that you you hit on in sharing your story with us and and who you are as as a recovering perfectionist, one of the things that you've shared is this notion of just talking about it. You know, we feel like we have to, I don't know, keep things, you know, hidden. Maybe our imperfections hidden, and just naming it can normalize that, maybe even take some of the edge off of, I don't know those, that's my word, not yours, but take the edge off being a perfectionist. But I love for you to talk to us about that, because I know you know that's just a pervasive challenge in life for many people, 100 100%

Fiona Macaulay: 10:39

so one of the things that my organization, the Wild Network women for impactful Leadership and Development, something that Wild does every year as part of our leadership for social impact forum, is that we have a component called the Leadership Fail Lab. Okay? We are celebrating failures. We have female leaders who are incredibly successful by any measure, stand up and talk about a massive failure that they experience, what they learn from it and and that what the rest of us can learn from them too. When we do this in an online setting, which usually has about 1500 people from over 100 countries around the globe. What do you think is the most common comment that people put into the chat as they're listening to these super successful women talk about a failure?

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 11:31

I think what I know, what I'd want to say is, oh, my God, thank you for sharing. I feel better.

Fiona Macaulay: 11:39

Yes, absolutely, that's it, Jillian! and other versions of that, and a common one is me too. Yeah. Oh me too. Oh me too. So everybody is experiencing failures and setbacks, and as I said earlier, we're just not really talking about it. And the act of talking about it normalizes it, and then we can get into the learning and to help other people not make those same mistakes. Or if they make them really realizing this is normal, you're going to get through it. And one of the things that I've learned from those working with those leaders who talk in the Leadership Fail Lab, and like hearing from women who talk about what an impact it has had on their life, is that it feels freeing to just have it out there in the open that leaders are failing, that they're not perfect, that they're making these mistakes, and that they're that they're coming out of them wiser than they were before,

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 12:41

yeah, oh my gosh. Must be such a gift to all of those participants. I mean, I feel my own shoulders just relaxing as you're talking, thinking, oh, right, right. That's all of us, right, experiencing these things, both celebrating successes together as well, as, you know, sharing the challenges of that we all experience. Right?

Fiona Macaulay: 13:01

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And one thing I'd love to share is that in the field of entrepreneurship, so every leading University's entrepreneurship program, every incubator, the methodology that they're teaching startups, is that you will learn by failing. That whatever your idea is for how to solve a problem, you know through a product or service that your goal is worthy, but the assumptions you're making about who your customer is, what price they're willing to pay, how they want that product or service delivered, is 99% wrong, but you've got to get out there in the market, on the playing field, and you need to be strategic about learning from your failures and then making a series of small pivots. So I love sharing that there is a whole body of work out there that basically acknowledges, when you start doing something bold and new, you're going to be failing and we talk about failing forward. So I think for those of us in different kinds of employment, we can learn a lot from the entrepreneurial sector and just just go in from the beginning, recognizing that your goal is to fail forward, and your goal is to harvest those gems of knowledge from each failure, because that those are the gems you're going to stack up to be more and more successful. Now I don't want to say failure doesn't suck, because, Jillian, failure does. But wishing more failure on anyone but somebody who's out there, pioneering, who's looking to make your mark in the world, who's looking to make significant dent into some of the world's toughest challenges. You know, you better be failing. You better be having a series of small failures and setbacks. Because otherwise you're really not pushing the envelope, and you're probably not going to have the greatest impact that you can and so how do we have the courage, like, how do we have the process so that all of those setbacks and mistakes propel us forward rather than take us back? And that's about, really, as you were saying, deep... perfect, depersonalizing, it, drawing on your continuous learner skills and drawing on your strategic analysis of what am I learning here? How can I take strategic risk so that I'm failing forward? Yeah.

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 15:33

Oh, I love that. Absolutely love that when you were you were talking so eloquently, it brought to mind the simple adage of hard won wisdom. You know, it feels like that's what we're talking about, right? That? Yeah, you're making your best guesses out there, and you're just adding to it and learning and setting back and stepping forward, and that's in the end, that's the hard won wisdom. Love that. So you've talked about the with the women that you have interviewed around the globe and that you work with on the regular basis, formulated this model, really, when we face our greatest setbacks, and you're in that kind of moment, hopefully we don't show up at the hospital, but some of us do, but that There's a simple framework that you've offered that helps people kind of get themselves grounded in and what to do about that in that moment of deep setback. And it's"Ground gather, go." Can you just walk us through that?

Fiona Macaulay: 16:36

You got it? Jillian, exactly. Ground, gather, go. So you know those times where you have just had a, you know, a massive failure or setback, and whether it's public or whether it's private, if you're really feeling like I failed at something, it's usually because that there are values of yours which where you feel Like have been let down like you, have not met the values that are important to you. And this can be a time when your brain is really swirling. We can often feel high anxiety and we're unsure what to do. So ground, the first step in the ground, gather, framework, the key thing to remember here is no sudden moves. Often at that ground stage is where we need to surround ourselves with family, friends, people who we know are in our corner, and there's sometimes some grieving that needs to take place, right? We need to like, grieve that we have not lived up to our values or in a situation that does not align with our values, and all of that is well and good. Gather is the second stage where we can begin to take a look at what am I learning here. You know, what is the strategic intelligence? What are those things I need to start, stop, continuing. Take advice. Talk to people you trust, tap into your close inner ring, in your professional, personal network, and this is where you're like. Gathering up the intelligence, gathering up the courage again, to three go. And the go is really important, because one of the best ways through is to take action. You heard me say a moment ago, no sudden action, and that's true in that first grounding phase. But as you move through and think about intelligence, steps that you can take then go is your place for now, like you're moving forward again, you are failing forward. You're taking stock, you're taking the lessons, you're taking the data and intelligence about about that failure or setback. But now we need you to go again, because we know that you're out there making your mark in the world, and it's really important that you also go again, because one of the things that we, you know, learned in the research that we did, and that's out there in the social and you know, the social science research, is that it is often that fear of failing, what prevents people from doing, what is most important to them. So that "go" phase is really important. And if we have someone listening to us, you know, who's experienced a failure recently or some kind of setback, just to invite you to go through the process that you need to and to go again, keep aiming high and keep going for that impact, going for that legacy, which, you know is important for you to have,

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 19:44

yeah, oh my gosh, you've just made something so, I think unsettling, and, you know, difficult for all of us, so simple, right? This notion of"Ground, gather, go," because we can all remember that. And I love the intersection with, at least how I see the activation of our character strengths, you know, grounding in like who I am at my best, knowing that as part of my resources, I bring these strengths right that I have resources around me, but also within myself, I see lots of resonance there with with how we think about the science of character strengths. So I love that. I love that possibility.

Fiona Macaulay: 20:22

Yeah, really, yeah. Thank you so much for making that connection. And Jillian, I wonder if I can ask you, when you have failures or setbacks, what are those character strengths that you know about yourself that you're drawing on?

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 20:32

Yeah? I mean, I think if you know, oh gosh, I haven't been asked a question in this, these conversations before. So thank you. I love that. You know, I would say probably two things come to mind quickly. So my two of my signature strengths are creativity and an honesty. And I think the honesty part, especially as you describe it, is so highly relevant to me about getting real about really, you know, how bad is this, getting real about who I am and what I need and want, and therefore, what of this actually matters in the way of this terrible setback? And then I would say, you know, this notion of, okay, let me look at those resources and get as creative as I can to reconfigure what's going on here so I can start stepping out of the hole. Those really come to mind very quickly, certainly the others rounded out for me, which is perseverance and love of learning and appreciation of beauty and excellence in the way you describe your model, I can see how I would activate all of those in inside what you're talking about and and I know for each one of us, we would go about it differently, right, depending upon our signature strengths, but, but that would be my take on it. Oh, thanks for asking. I love that question. Thank you.

Fiona Macaulay: 21:57

Jillian, I'm always learning from you. I find the VIA character strengths is so such a critical tool to have those self insights. And it's I love hearing you talk about how you use them, because we share that. And creativity and continuous learning is are also two of my strengths, and so is perseverance. And of course, everybody has their strengths to draw on, you know, in moments where they've got those setbacks.

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 22:20

Yeah, absolutely kindred souls. Indeed, my friend. So Fiona, obviously this work resonates deeply as we're talking and I'm curious what you think about why this message is so important now. I mean, you've done so much beautiful work, have this gorgeous portfolio of a career. But why this work in this moment for the world?

Fiona Macaulay: 22:46

Well, it really stems from two things. One is those leadership fail labs that I mentioned. You know, in the entrepreneurship world, I have something, excuse my language, but called fuck up modes where entrepreneurs come and they just like, talk about startups that crashed and burned, right? And there's always a lot of laughs, there's sometimes some tears, but, you know, people are laughing with the speaker, right? People are crying with the speaker. And I know from having attended those how cathartic it is, because every entrepreneur is like, hopefully failing forward all the time, and definitely failing. So when I adapted that idea for the leadership fail lab, and just heard from, I mean, literally around the girl the world, you know, women in Thailand, women in Senegal, women in Peru, women in Canada, women in America, women in Norway say, the most important thing that, like kind of I experienced during the two day leadership for social impact forum was the fail lab. You know, people like, it released me. Like, for years, I felt the shame, like, released me. Or for years, you know, the fear failing had held me back. But this thing I really want to do, and I'm just going to go for it now and and I just realized, like, all this potential that could have been kept under this lid of fear of failing, we just needed to, like, take, take the lid off that pot, right? So, you know, everyone could really, you know, live up to their fullest potential. Yeah, so that was something. And then, when we first embarked on this project, and we decided that we would start off by doing a survey. I had hoped that maybe two or 300 women would respond to the survey. Over a couple of months, we had over 1000 respondents in 30 days.

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 24:31

Wow.

Fiona Macaulay: 24:32

And when people had the option to tell us more about their failure, kind of get into the details with us. I mean, women had so much to say and actually met, you know, men as well, because fear of failure is gender agnostic and and we need everybody contributing their value, pulling us in the right direction. And so I feel like. This book, my hope for it is that it will offer role models of people who have failed and come back from failure. We have stories of women from you know, across the globe, from different kinds of backgrounds and different industries, people you've heard of, people you've never heard of. So I think that's very helpful to realize you're in great company. We also wanted to ensure that we included the social science research so people could gain a greater understanding about perfectionism, right? And that perfectionism is not about quality. It's like about fear and anxiety. And so to be able to distinguish between having a quality orientation, which I know you and I do, and from being perfectionist, which, as I say, you know, I'm always trying to keep that at bay. And then we also wanted to include a lot of like concrete tools, like the"Ground, gather, go" framework, because in that moment where you can't think straight, it's useful to always have like guidelines and a checklist of something that you can pick up in that moment of feeling like a failure, like, Okay, what am I doing here? And the other thing I just wanted to share was for my entrepreneurial friends, entrepreneurial thinkers, initiators out there, Jillian, you'd be one of them with that creative strength, is that when you start a project in you know, in the middle, you're sometimes thinking, what going on here? Like, I'm lost. This was a bad idea. I can't believe I started this. I just like, stop. And we call that the messy middle. And the best way through the messy middle is to draw on those character strengths. That was that we've talked about, you know, and of course, just to keep going one small step in front of the other. So my hope is that these practical frameworks and things that are accessible to everybody is going to help people to keep moving forward, keep being able to make the greatest contribution and to be able to enjoy, enjoy the your enjoy your ambition, enjoy your creativity, enjoy your aiming high, maybe even find some joy in those setbacks. Because you're like, look what I learned. You know, rather than this is so embarrassing, and I can't do this.

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 27:09

Yeah, I love that. I mean, when I think about, at least for myself, Fiona, as you're talking until, until everyone gets to read the book, the one thing that you might ask people to just remember or take away or act or do upon it, do the thing that you just said, If I enjoy in the setback, it's like, oh, wow, that's That's beautiful. That's what I will take away. But I'm curious what you would, what you would invite us to take away, the one I don't know, encouragement until everyone gets to read the book.

Fiona Macaulay: 27:44

Remember, everybody out there is having failures and setbacks, and what's going to set you apart from many people is that you see it as a strategic advantage. You find the learning. You grieve a little bit if you need to. I mean, I think having your kitchen cabinet or people around you you know who love you and want the best for you there. Cry with them a little bit, or complain to them, by all means, and then take that new data that you've gained and aim high again.

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 28:14

Love, that love that I feel fully inspired. Fiona, thank you so much for being with us today. What a pleasure to talk to you as always. But thank you for sharing your thoughts with our with our listeners. I deeply appreciate it.

Fiona Macaulay: 28:29

Jillian, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this conversation,

Dr. Jillian Coppley: 28:32

and thank you to everyone who has listened in. Remember to keep standing up strong, to showing and showing up, looking for the very best in yourself and one another, and that's how we'll make the world a better place.

Jackie Congedo: 28:44

Standing Up Strong is a production of the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center in partnership with the VIA Institute on Character. Find the link in the show notes to take a character strengths survey for free. Managing producer is Anne Thompson. Technical producer is Robert Mills, and Technical director is Josh Emerson. This series is part of the Cynthia and Harold Guttman Family Center for Storytelling and is generously supported by the Mayerson Family Foundation. It is recorded at technical consulting partner studios in Cincinnati, Ohio.