Foreign.

Hello, welcome back to the Promoted podcast.

I'm your host Felicity Fury and I'm joined by the wonderful Renee Wootton Tomlin.

Hello.

Good morning Wanya.

How are you today, Renee?

I'm great, thanks for asking.

I'm calling in from Larraki country today.

I'm gonna head off to a co working space later.

I found a new co working space in Darwin because I'm spending so much time on my own in my house.

I need to get out and I need to feel like I'm going to a job at an office.

So yeah, and I met some really amazing people through the co working space already which I feel like I found my people at Darwin which is so nice.

How about you, how are you going?

I'm good.

It's a very warm sunny day here on the Sunshine coast on Gubbi Guppy country and yes, very much looking forward to a Christmas break.

It is that time of the year where it is busy and it's all happening.

So yeah, it's very much looking to that.

And this week I did my last.

Keynote which in person for the year, which was also really great.

And I wanted to bring in the topic to the podcast today because it really resonated with me how important this is and how much we don't talk about that.

Talk about it which is how do you actually deal with overcome setbacks or failures.

It's not a popular topic to talk about failing.

It's funny when I post about it on LinkedIn it is like nosedive in terms of responses connections.

We've actually run workshops called Flick the Switch on Failure and they have been our least attended workshop.

So I'll be interested to see how this podcast episode goes of how people listen to it.

Maybe because a bit more private we can see how many listeners we get.

But yeah, this week I was speaking at qut Shout out to the electrical and robotics crew at qut.

I was a bit intimidated speaking to a room full of academic PhD electrical engineers and robotics peeps.

There was some people in aviation.

There's actually a board director from cassette in the audience which is super cool.

And yeah, it was awesome to hang out with them.

They were so warm and open.

And I tell you what, if they were my lecturers at uni, I probably would have gone down the electrical path.

I thought it was like way too hard for me.

That's why I stuck with civil.

But there was such a beautiful, warm, open audience.

So thank you.

And they have a really tricky job.

If you work in academia you will know the grant application rate of acceptance is crazy low.

So they were sharing with me that 80% of their grants do not get through.

And for early career researchers from some of these big ARC grants, it's like 8% success rate.

And I was speaking with some of them and we're talking about how do you actually motivate people when the success rate is so low?

Which was a great question.

So I wanted to bring this into the podcast episode.

Renee, I'm sure you've had many setbacks.

I would say if you're anything like me, I've had more setbacks than successes.

And I feel like that's the time that you learn the most.

So when you've had those fails publicly, privately, what are your strategies to, I guess, overcome them, deal with them, process them?

What the heck do you do?

Yeah, so I have a pretty, I guess, wide guth in terms of when I go through failure, how I bounce back.

Like, I emotionally have to deal with it first, and then I kind of just get to a point where I'm like, all right, get over it and move on.

So I. I really feel like I need to mourn the moment.

So I will feel sad for myself.

I will probably be in the fetal position in my bed, crying.

I will call all of my people to let them know what I'm going through and what's just happened and the shame or embarrassment or disappointment that I feel.

And I probably give myself anywhere between, like, four hours and a day.

And then I'm like, all right, get over it.

Move on.

So I kind of get to a point where I'm.

It's really funny actually being in my brain sometimes, laying there in the fetal position, and I'm like, all right, this is a waste of time and energy.

And I mean, at the end of the day, it's happened.

I can't take it back.

I need to move forward.

I'm not going to let this slow me down.

And, you know, we go from there.

And some of my failures, it might have been like, when I failed my first physics exam at university, I was shocked.

I remember I had to do a bridging course because I didn't study engine.

I didn't study physics in year 12.

So I went and did a university kind of bridging course.

I did really well in that bridging course.

And then when I did first year physics for engineering, I failed.

And I was literally flabbergasted.

I was like, sorry, what?

How did this happen?

I had studied so hard, and I really felt like I knew it off the back of the bridging course.

So I was shocked.

And to this day, I genuinely wish that I went back and contested those results.

But I was so young, and I believed in the system.

I thought the system must have been right.

I couldn't have been wrong.

So therefore, I accepted the results.

But I was devastated.

And it, like, took a huge hit on my.

My confidence.

And I again, like, really reiterated I'm too stupid to be here, which is, like, this ongoing dialogue I had when I was young.

So recovery from that.

I did it again the next semester, and I passed the flying colors.

So, you know, I think the best thing that you can do when you go through these moments is you have no other choice other than to keep going or to exit the building completely and divert course.

And I was so determin determined to achieve the outcome of whether it was graduating uni.

I remember actually I was taking off on my first flight test.

It was my RPL flight test, my recreational pilot's license.

And just because of the time of the day that I was always doing my flying, it meant the winds always favored Runway 11 out of Bankstown.

So every morning, I would follow the same procedure to fly out of Runway 11.

And then on the day of my test, it was later in the day, and the winds changed direction, and I now had to fly off Runway 06.

I think that kind of been 06.

What are we, one one plus 180 degrees to seven.

Something like that.

Anyway, I was taking off, and I literally had this moment when I was, like, starting to pitch around to kind of fly parallel to the Runway.

My takeoff procedures, I completely forgot them.

I was like, I haven't flown off this Runway for so long.

I have no idea what flight level I need to climb to right now.

And it was, like, happening live.

I was like, no.

And I literally just had to say to the instructor, I was like, I'm really sorry, but I've forgotten what flight level to climb to right now.

And, like, it was getting to.

So it was either 1,000ft or 1,500 was the departure requirement.

And I just looked at him, and I was like.

And we were getting closer to a thousand fees.

It was like, decision point time.

And he was like, well, you better figure it out real quick.

And I was, like, trying to do the math.

Like, if they're flying in at this level, then I should probably fly out at this level, like, anyway.

And I just got to the point where I was like, I'm sorry.

Like, I literally can't Remember?

And I don't want to be unsafe.

So he's like, all right, taking over.

And that was it.

I failed the first flight test, and it was just so disappointing.

And I got down the ground.

Damn it, I'm so disappointed.

Anyway, that was like, again, one of those moments where it was like, you know, I really believed in myself up until that point.

And that was like my first shock of like, oh, shit.

Like, maybe.

Maybe I'm not that good at this.

Anyway, I went on and passed my next flight test after I revised my departure procedures and knew them then forever what it was like to depart from the other Runway.

So, yeah, I've had these moments of failure.

And, you know, I think if anything, again, I'm sad in the moment.

I let that pass, and then it's time to get back into the game.

You know, you sleep on it, you get back up and you keep trying.

And I think I've always had that.

That approach with failure.

I'm not scared of failing now.

And I think as an engineer, I've appreciated that.

Failure is part of the innovation process.

It's part of trying to get to that end result.

I know.

Full C had this great post up on LinkedIn recently about James Dyson and the fact that he made 5,127 prototypes until he figured out the Dyson Air app.

And so he failed 5,126 times to get there.

So I think when you see those sorts of stats, you realize that the people that have made it have failed many times to get there.

So I don't really look at failure the way I used to.

I don't get embarrassed about it the way I used to.

And what I've seen in corporates since I've begun and moved through my career is the corporates that have the best culture around failure, the ones that celebrate failure.

So bring a donut.

And every Friday you get a donut when you tell a story about what you failed at that week.

So it's embracing this culture of, like, it's okay to fail.

It's okay to mess things up.

Another great example is like our safety systems at Qantas back in the day.

You know, the safety management system relies on people, people owning up to failures or incidents and accidents.

So you need to create a culture where people are willing to actually share that they're not, you know, reprimanded or there's no consequence, a negative consequence for when you do front up and actually share those things.

So, you know, we would have these like, 8 o' clock calls where everybody would dial in and share their missed near misses or like their actual incidents and accidents that have occurred.

And so I think, you know, the approach to it is very much, it needs to be embraced if you want to have the highest, like safe culture and also the most innovation.

But certainly I think that most people still see failure as this massive problem.

Like, I can remember sitting in a meeting with a boss at the time and I missed this deadline again to try and share or prepare the head of people for a communication piece that we needed to go out and it needed to be published very last minute.

And at the time, you know, the comms team were completely inundated that week.

They, they told me that they couldn't get this information to me until the last minute.

And I failed to then let my kind of two up know that that was going to be coming last minute.

And so my manager sat me down and she was like, it's late again.

This is the second time you've done this.

Why do you keep doing this, Renee?

And I can remember just the misery of just like, like, I failed again.

And then I reflected on that and I was like, no, this wasn't my fault.

I was like, number one.

Like, you know, there was a process that I followed and the process was delayed.

So that was out of my control, what was in my control.

And I sit there and I really think through then, like, what could I have done better?

And the thing that makes me feel better then is I really own that.

And then I, you know, followed up with my manager afterwards and I was like, hey, just so you know, we had this conversation yesterday.

You asked me this.

I didn't really give you the right answer because I needed time to think about it.

But here's what happened, here's what I could have done better and here's what I'm going to do next time.

So it's like that communication piece is super important.

And I think that that's an ongoing learning is people have different styles, different expectations and you can fail quite often.

It just looks different every time.

Yeah.

What about your Felicity?

Oh, so good.

So many good things that you shared, Renee.

Well, we have that in common.

I fail first year maths, which, you know, as an engineer, probably not ideal.

And I didn't do anything in Queensland at the time.

It was maths A, B and C. C was the top maths.

I didn't do the top maths.

So I had to do like a combined maths course at uni and it was really tricky and I remember being so embarrassed that I'd failed, actually failed two subjects in my first year.

And I dropped a subject because I was just finding first year so overwhelming.

So I got really behind.

And I think a really aha moment for me was in that second year.

Behind.

Yeah, actually behind.

Not actually behind.

But I was like, I want to, you know, I wanted to finish this anyway program.

And I found.

I felt like I didn't belong anyway.

So there was a whole bunch of other things there.

And for me in that second year, we.

It was a.

It was practical and it was applied.

And if people have heard me speak before, you would have heard me share this story where.

When I realized that engineers get to build and change the world around us, I was like, oh my gosh, this is so cool.

Of course I want to be an engineer.

Why did anyone tell me that before?

And that really became my why and my purpose.

So I ended up doing three semesters of five subjects and got it done in five years.

I had to even sit down with the head of school.

I'll never forget who's this older gentleman?

And he's like, so let me get this straight.

You dropped a subject and then you failed one the next semester, and then you failed one the next semester and now you want to do five subjects?

And I was like, yes, I can do it.

And he was like, yay.

Because I had to get special permission to actually go ahead.

I don't know why he said yes, but anyway, that was very helpful.

So yeah, all the way through yourself.

Yeah, I can do it.

I can do it.

And I found my driving test three, two times before I passed on the third time from like silly little mistakes.

So I definitely haven't failed flying.

Maybe that's to come because that is on my bucket list to get my rpl.

So yeah, there's been so many different examples throughout my career of failure.

I could do a whole episode of just all the things that have happened for me along the way.

And I think the thing that really personally helps me get through is purpose.

What is that?

Why?

When we set up Power of Engineering a few years in, we had funding from corporates and instead of it being three years, it got packed, cut back to two.

And then we had all of our volunteers in the exec team quit.

It was just me and my co founder.

And that was a point of do I keep going?

This is really hard.

Like, what are we doing here?

And for me I was like, do you know what?

This cause is so important.

We have to keep going.

And so we went, okay, similar to what you said, Renee, what can we do differently?

We actually brought on someone who was a HR person in a construction company.

And so she talked to us about succession planning and rebuilding with key people in mind so that we can really sustainably grow our leaders and our team.

So it became a great thing because it had us do things differently in that case.

So I think personally purpose is a big one.

If you have had a challenge or something, not go your way reconnecting with that and that why is incredibly powerful.

And I think another thing that you touched on, Renee, which is really important here is are you that psychological safety that do you have a psychologically safe environment where you can fail?

And I've been in a lot of workplaces where this is absolutely not the case.

One workplace I worked in had, it was like literally a whiteboard of shame stuck to a column.

And it was, if you did something incorrect, it would go up on that board and you'd be paid out about it like one person.

Oh, that's so terrible.

They misspelled the word consultant in a report and it was consultant.

And so that is what they would call consultants repeatedly.

And I went on the whiteboard, I left that organization and I came back in a new consulting role.

And they were like, you're one of them now.

It was horrific.

It was a very toxic workplace culture and I obviously won't mention the name of them.

So I think that was a really unsafe place for me.

And I think if you are an engineer or you come from that STEM background, you probably have been really trained to be risk adverse and that's fantastic for our job.

If one in a hundred bridges fails, that is catastrophic.

And this comes from a guy, Nathan Krishna.

So shout out to him.

He's an amazing guy in construction who's a robotics AI expert and he's been working with Michael to run the Infrastructure Intelligence Lab, which is an AI program for leaders in engineering construction.

And they've just finished their first pilot and it's been fantastic to see some of those results.

So he said this, he said, if you're an engineer, 1 in 100 bridge values catastrophic.

But in innovation, if you have 1 in 100 successes, that's amazing.

And so we have to shift that perspective in that context.

So I've known for myself as an engineer being trained in that way, can I notice, My response to failure is a bit different because there are really serious consequences.

So I think if you're, if you had a, if you had a failure and you're Noticing you're having quite a strong reaction and you are trained as an engineer in stem.

It could be that you've got that, you know, the risk appetite or risk aversion there because of that training.

So I think it's something really, we really need to be mindful of because often failures are not catastrophic and there's so many things that we can do to repair relationships and it can be a really strengthening moment.

But I also think we just want to add that into the conversation around, is it psychologically safe for you in that team to have those failures?

And like, I've got pretty strong views about it now.

If that's not, if that's not your team and you can't do anything about it, I'm like, leave immediately.

Like, get out of there.

Find a new role.

That obviously is hard with, you know, if you have a mortgage and a family and you're supporting those people with your income, it can be really, really challenging to do that.

But yeah, I think it's really important that we have that purpose for ourselves and that psychological, psychological safety in the team as well.

To when we do make failures and.

Make mistakes, I think just quickly as well, there is an element of, if you're a leader and your team fails at something, there's a really strong and important point to be made around you need to also take responsibility for that failure.

So, for example, if you've got a team member that doesn't hit a deadline or, you know, you fail to hit something in a project management, you know, I think that there needs to be these questions around how do we work better together?

How do I support my direct reports to be able to deliver so that we don't fail as a team?

We shouldn't be thinking about failure just as our own fault.

Most of the time when a failure occurs, unless it is, you know, an exam where you didn't study or, you know, you forget to check your, you know, departure procedures before you take off.

A lot of failures that occur in projects are generally multifaceted and have multi stakeholder involvement.

Which means that when a failure occurs, it generally isn't just one person's fault.

So it's, again, this is where I think great governance and the engineering process really comes in, where you can step back and say, right, how did we end up with this failure?

And then like, who was involved and what was their role and how can we now, you know, prevent this from happening in the future?

So I think when we do have these moments of failure, it can feel really disappointing.

It can feel really disorienting, but at the same time, there's a great opportunity to learn from that.

And I think that comes back to this innovation and.

And lessons learned state of mind.

Like where there's a failure or an opportunity.

Yeah, a fall down, a rundown, there's always an opportunity as well.

So embrace that failure.

Find the positives in it, reflect on the negatives and why it happened in the first place, and then curate a path to resolve it as a.

And don't ever point the finger.

I think to one individual, I think that that can be really.

Even if it happens in real life where there is one person responsible for it, it's still ultimately a team failure.

And I think that that's where you can have conversations with maybe that one individual where they have let you down, but you create more gateways or gate stops for them to meet in the future to avoid that kind of fall down.

Or you give that person extra support or you give that person a talking to if their mindset is where it needs to be.

So there's always something you can learn out of failure.

And it's a really positive thing to go through to kind of finesse that process.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think that you're right around the team approach because we, we are working in teams every single day.

And it's okay.

That team, you know, you could say even something simple like a failure could be not turning up to a meeting on time.

Okay, that person, maybe that person sits next to you.

Did you say, hey, the meeting starting in two minutes?

You, you know, what could you do to help someone be at the meeting on time?

Like a really simple and obvious example.

But I think that's so true.

We are working in teams.

Like, are you checking in people and creating that culture?

It's a challenging conversation talking about failure, but I think it's a really important one.

And yeah, if you've got failures, tell us, let's solve them together.

We'd love to support you.

And if you are having a challenge in your career at the moment, we would love to hear from you.

Thank you for another wonderful episode.

Renee, I can't wait to tune in with you in the new year and jump on the podcast again.

Thank you listeners for the another great year.

It's two years we've been running this podcast.

Let us know if you have questions, anything you want us to talk about in 2026.

We would love to hear from you.

Thank you, Renee.

Have a wonderful Christmas season.

Thanks for joining us today on Promoted the Podcast.

That gets you promoted to be great when you get there.

See you in the next one.