How to Get a Return on Failure | The Power of the Debrief

Failure is not a leadership flaw. It is a leadership guarantee.

What separates strong leaders from stuck leaders is what happens after the miss. Do we hide, blame, and move on too quickly, or do we slow down and learn?

In this episode, we lean on John Maxwell’s How to Get a Return on Failure and a military practice called the debrief. High-performing teams review the game tape, walk back through what happened, and ask four simple questions:

What happened?
Why did it happen?
What did we learn?
What will we do differently next time?

We talk about why the best debriefs are built on honesty, psychological safety, and facts over ego. Then we translate that process into business leadership and everyday team life.

If you have ever led through a mistake, setback, missed goal, difficult conversation, or disappointing result, this episode is for you.

Subscribe for more practical leadership coaching, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review if it helps. What failure are you ready to debrief this week?

The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact.

If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team.

Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources.

Work hard. Tell the truth.

Transcript

Welcome And Leadership Purpose

TJ 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Buzz with Lloyd Buzz Buzzell. Buzz is an international coaching federation, ACC credentialed coach, disc practitioner, and retired Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. This podcast is for leaders who want to align behavior with values and grow in self-awareness. Each episode features one book, one idea, one story, and three coaching questions to reflect on your leadership. Work hard. Tell the truth. Here's Buzz. Let's roll.

Buzz 0:39

Hey, before we jump in today, I just want to say thanks to everyone who has reached out, shared feedback, and supported the podcast. I'm trying to keep improving these episodes, make them more useful, and continue bringing you ideas to help you lead better. I appreciate you being part of this journey, and look forward to more feedback and getting better.

Failure Is Part Of Leadership

TJ 1:00

Failure is part of leadership. Every leader makes mistakes, faces setbacks, and goes through difficult seasons. But the best leaders do not waste those moments. In his newest book, How to Get a Return on Failure, John Maxwell argues that failure only becomes final when we refuse to learn from it. On this episode of the Leadership Buzz, Buzz talks about why leaders need to review the game tape, tell the truth about what happened, and use setbacks as opportunities to grow stronger. Over to you, Buzz.

Buzz 1:35

Today I want to talk about something that every leader deals with, but not enough leaders do well. That's failure. Not because leaders want to fail, but because failure is part of life and leadership and part of business. It's a part of being a team and part of families. It is part of trying to do something difficult. The question is not whether we will fail. The question is what we do after it happens. Do we hide from that, blame someone else? Do we move on too quickly or pretend it didn't happen? Or do we stop, review it honestly, and learn from it? John Maxwell's new book that just got released this week, How to Get a Return on Failure, really got me thinking about this. One of the ideas in the book is that failure only becomes

The Military Debrief Explained

Buzz 2:20

useful when we are willing to learn from it. Failure is unavoidable, but it does not have to be wasted. The idea connected with me immediately because it reminded me of something we did in the military and the Air Force all the time. That is the debrief. In fighter aviation, weapons cool culture, and the ICBM world, the debrief is one of the most important parts of the mission. Sometimes the debrief is longer than the mission itself. Think about that. You might fly for an hour or do some type of operation in the missile field in a very short time. The actual engagement might only last a few minutes, but the debrief could take an hour, sometimes longer, a better part of the day. Because that's where the learning happens. That is where people slow down, review the game tape, as John Maxwell puts it, and that's where they look at the facts, stop assuming things, and that's where they figure out what happened, why it happened, and how they can improve.

TJ 3:21

Buzz, can you tell us when does debrief usually occur?

Buzz 3:25

Debrief usually comes right after the mission, while everything is still fresh. People gather together, the mission lead, the leader, walks back through the objectives. What were we trying to accomplish? Did we meet all those objectives? Where'd things go well and where did they break down? What happened that we did not expect? Then the discussion gets much more specific. People walk through that mission chronologically. They look at the sequence of events and reconstruct it. What did we miss? What did we see? What did we assume? What decisions were made? Why did we make them? And what was in our mind? What were the mistakes caused by perception? Poor decisions, or just execution? And then becomes the most important part. What are we going to do differently next time? That's the real purpose of the debrief, not blame, embarrassment, or punishment. It's learning. Because if you do not stop to learn what happened, you are much more likely to repeat it. One of the strongest things about a good debrief is there's no rank. An airman can point something out a colonel missed. A young pilot can point out something a squadron commander could have done differently. Because in a good debrief, facts matter more than titles. Improvement matters more than ego. Nothing's personal. The purpose is to get better, and that's hard for some leaders, because leaders often feel pressure to have all the answers and be and to appear to be the smartest person in the room. They feel pressure to protect that image and pressure to appear confident, capable, and in control. But one of the strongest things I think a leader can say is,

Truth Telling Builds Team Trust

Buzz 5:05

I missed that. I got that wrong. I could have handled it better. I could learn from this more. That kind of honesty builds trust. It's that psychological safety that we read and hear about all the time. It gives other people permission to be honest too. I saw this in a debrief at an exercise at U.S. StratCom. The general had made a statement right after we finish and just said, hey, I know I made that mistake. I'm going to do it better next time. I realize what I did. And do you guys have any feedback for me? That really built that safety amongst other members of the team and young officers and young folks in the room really took notice of that. If people do not feel safe enough to tell the truth, the team stops learning. They start hiding mistakes, they soften feedback, and they avoid difficult decisions and conversations. And that's something we talked about in a previous podcast. They become more worried about looking good than getting better, and that's dangerous because these moments are going to reoccur in the future. And if you don't learn from them, you're going to create the same mistakes. The moment people stop telling the truth is the moment performance starts slipping. One of the strongest ideas in Bebrief is this basic assumption. Everyone's intelligent, they're well trained, everyone's trying to do their best. They want to improve. That's a powerful way to lead. If you start from that assumption, then you can stop asking who is to blame, and you can start asking what happened here? Why did this make sense to them at the time? And what can we learn from this? That changes everything. It moves the conversation away from ego and toward growth. Now, I don't think you can use a full military-style debrief everywhere. That's impossible. You're probably not going to sit down after every staff meeting, every email, or every little disagreement and do a formal after-action review, a debrief. That'd be exhausting and it just wouldn't make sense and it'd be too time consuming. People would just turn out and you can't turn every moment into a major event. There are times when leaders should stop and debrief. Maybe when a project goes poorly, maybe after a major major presentation, a different difficult client meeting, or maybe you lose an employee. How about a conflict inside the team or a missed sales target? A new product launch, or maybe after a merger, a strategic mistake, or after maybe just a difficult quarter in your business. Those are moments where leaders should slow down and ask, what happened? Why did it happen? What did we learn? And what will we do different next time? I think businesses would benefit more from this. Sometimes I think this may

When Work Needs A Debrief

Buzz 7:50

be done organically, but I think too often organizations either move on too quickly or they turn failure into blame. Somebody gets singled out, then they're embarrassed, then they get labeled as the problem. And once that happens, people really stop being honest. They stop taking risk and they stop speaking up. They stop telling leaders what is really going on. And eventually the organization loses the ability to learn. And that can be one of the biggest dangers in leadership. Because if people are afraid to speak honestly, leaders are making decisions without the full picture. I saw that in one unit where the team was afraid to bring issues to the boss, and eventually she was fired because she didn't know all the issues. Nobody would bring stuff to her because she reacted so adversarial whenever something was brought to her. I think this is true in business, this is true in families, it's certainly true in the military, and of course in coaching. And that's why debrief matters. A good debrief creates a safe environment where people can be honest and not rude, personal, emotional, just honest. What worked, what did not, what got in the way? What assumptions did we make? How should we keep going? What should we keep doing? And what should we stop doing? What do we need to do different? This is where really growth really happens for a team. And one thing I have seen over time is that the best leaders are usually the first people willing to critique themselves. They don't wait for someone else to point it out. They say, hey, here's what I missed. Here's what I should have done differently, and here's what I learned. That really creates a culture where people can be open. I've seen this time after time in debriefs following an exercise, where if I'm the first one to speak up as the leader, it really gets people talking and people really enjoy that piece too. Because it open cultures learn faster. I mean, those closed cultures will hide things. They create blame and then you see mistakes repeated. One of the reasons debriefs are so effective in aviation is because they're built around the facts. People review the game tape. They look at what actually happened, they look at the sequence of events, and they don't rely on memory, and they don't certainly don't rely only on emotion. That can really get you in trouble. They do not rely only on assumptions. They ask, what do we know? What can we prove, and what can we learn? Business leaders can do the same. Look at the data, the timeline, feedback, decisions. How about the communication? And then look at the execution. Then ask better questions. Was this a communication problem? Was this a people problem? Was this a systems problem? Maybe a timing problem? How about assumptions? What assumptions did we make? Because if you did not identify root cause after the problem, you're probably going to

Find Root Causes With Facts

Buzz 10:50

solve the wrong problem. And that happens frequently. Leaders fix symptoms instead of root causes. They focus on the first layer of the onion, and often something that is maybe deeper underneath that's brewing. Maybe the issue was not the employee. Maybe it was poor expectations or poor communication. And then of course it could be poor training, and maybe it was just bad timing or a lack of trust. And honestly, maybe it was the culture where people were afraid to speak up in the first place. That is what a good debrief uncovers. I also think this matters in our personal lives. How many times do we go through something difficult and never really stop to process it? We move on, stay busy, we distract ourselves, and we tell ourselves everything's fine. But we never stop and reflect because we may miss the lesson. Sometimes the most important growth in our lives comes after something we wish had gone differently. Maybe a hard conversation, a mistake, missed opportunity, a failure, a setback. These moments can either make us bitter or better. But usually that depends on whether we're willing to slow down and learn. I think a lot of leaders are hard on themselves. I know I was in the military, and I still am, because things kind of play on my mind. They replay mistakes over and over in their heads and they beat themselves up. They think failure means they're not capable, but failure is not the problem. Avoiding the lesson is the problem. I know as I was a hockey referee and I made a mistake in a game maybe 10, 15 years ago down in Denver. I still think about that mistake in the game, and I just need to learn from the lesson and move on. A positive life stance says good and bad are both going to happen. Some of it I control, some of it I can't. But I can choose how I respond. I can choose to learn, improve, and not let difficulty have the final word. This is what strong leaders do. They review the game tape, they face the truth, stay curious, and ask better questions. They keep learning. And over time those small lessons compound, and that's how teams improve, leaders improved, and trust improve. Not because leaders are perfect, but because they're willing to be honest. The next time something does not go the way you hope, don't rush past it. Do not tell yourself to move on, slow down, remove the game review the game tape and ask yourself, what happened? Why did it happen? What did I learn? What will I do differently next time? Because failure failure is only wasted if we refuse to learn from it. And sometimes the most important growth in our life comes after the moments we wish we had done differently or gone differently.

TJ 13:36

Coach Buzz, what other places use this debrief process?

Personal Lessons And Coaching Questions

Buzz 13:41

Great question. Debriefing is not just a military concept. Doctors, nurses, and trauma teams use it after emergencies, while we see firefighters, police, and EMS teams use our after major incidents. Sports teams also review game film. There's businesses that do postmortems after launches, missed goals and client issues, and certainly airlines use debrief after flights. Even some schools and training programs use them after exercises and simulations. The military may have the strongest debrief culture, but the idea is the same everywhere. Stop, tell the truth, learn, and improve. In Maxwell's new book, How to Get a Return on Failure, it's built around a simple idea. Failure is unavoidable, but it does not have to be wasted. Use failure as fuel to get better.

TJ 14:35

Let's get to this week's three coaching questions for our listeners.

Buzz 14:40

This week's coaching questions, think about a setback or failure that still stands out to you, and what did that experience teach you about yourself, leadership, or the way you respond under pressure? Describe that. And next, where in your life or leadership might you need to slow down, review the gain tape, and be more honest about what's really happening? And then finally, if you chose to see a recent mistake or disappointment as an opportunity for growth instead of defeat, what might that make possible for you moving forward? And can and how would that show up for you?

TJ 15:16

Failure is going to happen. The question is whether we let it define us or teach us. John Maxwell reminds us that the leaders who grow are not the ones who avoid mistakes. They are the ones who are willing to face them honestly, learn from them, and move forward stronger. Reviewing the game tape, telling the truth about what happened, and making adjustments are what turns setbacks into growth. Back to you, Coach Buzz.

Buzz 15:46

That's it for another episode of the Leadership Buzz. If you enjoyed today's conversation, share it with someone else who cares about leadership. You can follow me on LinkedIn or visit workhardttelltheoth.com for more leadership content, podcast episodes, and coaching resources. And if this episode made you stop and think, take one idea from it and put it into practice this week. Until next time, keep leading, keep serving, work hard, and tell the truth.