Minisode 22: Introducing: The Failfluencer Files! Celebrating Real Work Fails with Really Real Leaders
The gig is up! Please welcome to the stage: The Failfluencer Files! Celebrating Real Work Fails with Really Real Leaders
This is exactly what it sounds like, improve it! peeps. We’re reframing and filing the failures that make us, us. Dare we say, we’re celebrating them. Yup, we’re throwing an actual party that’s right in your headphones. What happens as a result? Our failures lose their power over us as we share the dark, embarrassing, human parts of our life. The ones that normally don’t make it on the ‘Gram. The ones that connect us farrrrrrrr more than sharing our successes.
The first ever Failfluencer File features (woooo say that 10 times fast) Erin’s true story of one of her latest podcast episode fails.
Click the link below to leave us a voice note with your WTF (Worst Terrifying Fail). We’ll be there, failing right beside you.
Connect with Erin Diehl:
Connect with Erin Diehl:
Email Erin: info@learntoimproveit.com
Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Minisode 22 Transcription
Erin (00:00):
Welcome to the Improve It Podcast.
Erin (00:11):
Beep beep, beep beep. That's the sound of your alarm going off right when you are supposed to be in your first zoom meeting of the day. Then after you get to said zoom meeting with said pajama, top on you hit reply all on an email that is meant to go to one person, but instead goes to several people on your team about the steamy date you had the night before. Cut to two zooms later you are off mute and the team happens to hear you yelling at your partner in the other room. Welcome to the Failfluencer files where we celebrate real work fails with really real leaders. Now, today's episode is short and sweet. It's a mini episode for a reason, my friends. And for the next few months we'll be releasing an episode or what we like to call the failfluencer files as a mini for you.
Erin (01:17):
Some will have audio clips, some may have actual interviews, some may be improvised. Who knows? We dunno the exact formula, but we'll fail our way through them. See what I did there? So here's what I want you to do. I want you right now to think of your worst failure story. A failure story so big that it would go down in your history book as the worst fail ever. It's what I like to call your W T F. Worst Terrifying Fail. Did this fail happen at work? Even better? Let's share these WFS and celebrate them. And you know, I like to say fail. Yeah, on this show. And if you are just tuning into the improve it! Podcast, welcome. We like to keep it real and fail our way through our life and improve our lives through improv play, and of course failing along the way.
Erin (02:27):
So the more failing we do, the more frequently we are trying. And that my friends is called innovation. It's called growth. Those who never fail, never try. And those who don't get it wrong, never get it right. So let's celebrate the small everyday fails and let's lean into them. Okay? Cheryl Sandberg called, we Are Leaning In Now. Each week you're gonna hear comical versions of fails that will make you smile, make you giggle, make you cringe, and make you go, Ooh, glad that's not me. Okay, so to start it off, I thought I would get the ball rolling with my own W T F. Worst Terrifying Fail for You that happened on this show, <laugh>. So imagine a day of all days you've gotten up late, your hair dryer broke, you drop your kids off late to school, you're driving home from said drop off, and you spill coffee all over your yoga pants.
Erin (03:39):
Okay? The metaphor is over. Jokes out. This was me. I had an awesome podcast interview scheduled with one of the most cool women on planet Earth, Rocki Howard. Now, Rocki was recently on the show. Rocki is the chief people officer here at or not here. I wish she worked here at the Mom Project. And oh my gosh, Rocki is one of the coolest people. She's the Chief People and Equity Officer. Let me get that right at the Mom Project. She is the host of the Voices of Diversity and the Grown Woman Life podcast. She is just one of the coolest people who prioritizes being a voice for diversity, creating high performing and inclusive work culture. It's an advocating for bold, brilliant, badass women. So I'm thinking to myself, okay, got the coolest interview around. Here we go. I'm gonna crush this even though the beginning of this day has just been a real poop shoot.
Erin (04:44):
Now, normally when I come to record an episode for you, I get to my podcast closet, which is again, a closet, which I've changed into a recording studio. It's very minimalistic, although I do have polka dots on the walls if you see any of the show clips. So anyway, normally I come in here about 10 minutes early. I get set up, I put up my $20 ring light from Amazon, my fancy Nancy microphone and my kids teal headphones. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. But because this was the day of days, I of course come in five minutes before we are set to record to get started and set up. So as I'm logging into the podcasting platform, I discover that Rocki being the rockstar that she is, is early. And normally I would be like, yes, best guest ever, thank you. But today was not my day because today my computer decides it doesn't want to allow my USB drive to work. And that means I can't plug in my microphone, I can't plug in my camera for the interview and I cannot plug in my headphones. This also means that for some reason my wireless AirPods will not connect.
Erin (06:08):
So Rocki being the most patient, loving, kind, compassionate, the list goes on, human in the world is patiently waiting for me, the host to get set up. And again, she is a senior leader at one of the coolest companies. The mom Project, such a cool organization. She has her own company and her own coaching practice and her own podcast and her own family, and about 800 other things she could be doing with her time. And I'm just showing up late with this broken laptop. So I start fumbling. I'm like chatting with her through Zencaster, the podcast platform we use, telling her, I'm so sorry, I call her, I can't talk to her cause my microphone won't connect. And she was legit, the kindest, most compassionate person. And she said, you know what, Erin, this happened to me a week ago. I was launching something, a course of my own, and my laptop completely broke.
Erin (07:12):
So I had to go to Best Buy that day. And I was in the very same position as you. And in those two minutes of giving me that conversation, I just felt my body just relaxed. My shoulders shrink. But again, I'm feeling like the biggest goober on planet Earth because I've taken her time and now we're 15 minutes in to when the recording should have happened. So the moral of the story is I canceled the recording and then rescheduled with Rocky. But of course I sent her the wrong calendar link and I only sent her 30 minutes instead of the hour that I usually use to record with guests. And we still did the podcast in 30 minutes. And it was a beautiful episode that you have the opportunity to listen to on episode 1 38 of this show. However, it was one of the stinkiest fails that I have had in a long time when it comes to recording an episode of this show.
Erin (08:18):
My armpits were extremely sweaty. I had to shower, but Rocki was so beautiful and handled the entire scenario with just such grace. And I said, you know what, Rocki? We're gonna be friends forever because this happened. And sure enough, we are friends forever and I'm going on her platform. She is a LinkedIn live show that she does in the next few weeks. And so we've continued this friendship and guess what the topic is on that show? Giving each other grace. So that fail turned into this beautiful fail. Yeah, because through her grace and compassion and my lack of preparation and just real bad day, we gave each other moments to pause and say, we're human beings. So here's what I want from you. Beautiful, beautiful. Prove it. I want you to think of a wtf. I want it to be worse than mine. I want it to be like the stinkiest for manga cheese that you have ever experienced in your life.
Erin (09:21):
I want it to smell up your kitchen and make you wanna take out the trash. This is your wtf. And what I want you to do is if you're willing, you don't have to say your name, this can be anonymous. Send us a voice note using our SpeakPipe app. You're gonna go to learn to improve it.com/podcast questions. We're gonna have a link to this in the show notes. And it's gonna say, send a voice message to Erin, you st you hit the little start record button. You can do it from your phone, you can do it from your computer, you can do it from any type of technology that you have. No pressure. If you're an iPhone user on Google, we accept both. And leave me your wtf, your worst terrifying fail that you've ever had. So we can talk about it on this show.
Erin (10:15):
You can say your name or like I said, it could be completely anonymous, but we're gonna celebrate the crap outta our failures. You can share with us the light at the end of that tunnel. What happened? So for my example, Rocky and I became friends. We're going on each other's platforms, supporting each other's work. I think she is a bold, brilliant, badass woman and I wanna continue to support her in any way that I can that is the silver lining through that fail. But what was your silver lining? And we're gonna record, or we're gonna play, I should say, some of those recordings on some upcoming episodes. So you'll hear commentary from myself. I'm gonna bring on some amazing improve it! Team members who can help give commentary and just talk about our failures. Because you know what? Celebrating failures is actually one of the most freeing things I've ever allowed myself to do as a failfluencer.
Erin (11:14):
One of the keynotes that I love doing is called F words. F as in Frank at work. And let me just tell you, hr, there's no swearing. There's a lot of swearing, but I don't do it. And it an opportunity for us to look at our failures and reframe them. It is one of the most liberating things that I've ever done for myself as a professional and as a leader to really lean into this idea of failure. We're human beings. We are human beings, not human bots. And we all make mistakes. And so mistakes happen when we are out there putting ourselves out there. So what I want more than anything in this world is for you to feel that freedom for yourself. I want you to experience that joy. And if you don't want to send a recording because you're like, somebody will know that's my voice, even if it's anonymous, that's a ok.
Erin (12:14):
I want you to write about it, I want you to journal about it. I want you just think about your WTF moment right now because that freedom that you are giving yourself is actually allowing you to fail forward and to grow. And that's what this show is all about. So friends, the Failfluencer Files, step one, if you want to leave us a recording, you're gonna go to the link in the show notes or learn to improve it.com/podcast questions. Step two, you'll scroll down, you'll see a little red button that says start recording. Leave your story there. You can say your name or you cannot say your name. That's step three. And that will just send the recording directly to our email and we will take that recording, listen to it, and hopefully incorporate it into an upcoming episode of the Failfluencer Files. So again, step one, go to the show notes.
Erin (13:11):
Go to learn to improve it.com podcast question, step two, hit start recording. Record your wtf. And step three is it'll send it directly to us if you're not gonna do any of those steps, I hope that Today show provided you with some comedy, some refreshment in your brain, if you will, and an opportunity for you to see yourself as a failfluencer. Cause my friends, you know what I'm gonna see. I want you to keep failing. I want you to keep improving because this very special world that we are living in needs your very special it and it's only the IT that you can bring. So let's improve it by failing through it. See ya next time. Hey friend, did you enjoy today's show? If so, head on over to iTunes to rate and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Now, did I mention that when you leave a five star review of the Improve It podcast, an actual team of humans does a happy dance? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's right. So leave a review for us on iTunes, screenshot it, and send me an email at info learn to improve it.com. I'll send you a personalized video back as a thank you. Thanks so much for listening. Improve It Peeps. I'll see you next Wednesday.