In this ~10‑minute solo podcast episode, Christophe Bodin, host of the Irreverent, Bold, Unfiltered leadership series, records a brief motivational talk while traveling in a French ski resort. He explores the relationship between success and failure, arguing that failure is a necessary learning step that ultimately leads to success. Bodin cites famous figures—Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, and Michael Jordan—to illustrate that repeated setbacks are part of great achievement. He differentiates "mistakes" (single learning moments) from "failure" (repeating a mistake without learning). The core critique is that most organizations treat failure as a punitive event, discouraging risk‑taking and growth. Bodin urges leaders to reframe mistakes as valuable nuggets, to avoid letting hierarchical blame cultures diminish learning, and to maintain enthusiasm despite setbacks. The episode ends with a call to action for listeners to embrace mistakes, keep moving forward, and stay tuned for future content.
Chapters
Good morning, leaders. Wake up, smell the coffee. It's 6:30 in the morning somewhere in the world. Welcome to the Irreverent, Bold, Unfiltered podcast and videocast about leadership. You want to move your career to the next level? Look nowhere else. You found the right place. Let's get going, shall we? All right, all right, all right. Well, as you can tell, it's not the usual background. I'm actually traveling this week in somewhere very nice. Hopefully, I can do a walk in the park that I can walk you where I am. It's really nice. It's somewhere in a ski resort in France. That's all I'm going to tell you. So, no usual podcast. We'll do the generational gap. You guys want to have it, so we're going to have it with guests. But, as I was flying over the ocean, I thought about something and I went, Oh, maybe I need to do a short version. I don't have all my stuff here, but I said, hey, maybe just to keep the things moving. And I thought that let's talk about failure versus success. I think it's a big topic, especially in management and leadership. Is success bad? Better than failure, or vice versa? Success definitely makes you feel good, makes you feel great, and failure not so much. But I would argue that actually failure brings you to success; that failure is where you learn. And that you should embrace failure because they're going to make you better. So, let's talk very quickly, maybe 10 minutes or so about that. And you can tell me what you think in comments. But before we go into the meat of the topic, I'd like to read you some of what people said about success versus failure. I'm going to put my glasses here. And going into a few citations here that I'm looking at the other screen. I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Who said that? Thomas Edison, one of the greatest innovator, inventor in the world. I talked about World War I, World War II, and managing versus leading. Listen to that. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. Winston Churchill. Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely. Henry Ford. And let's finish with a big sport guy, Michael Jordan. I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan. So, great example here about success versus failure. And again, success is great. It feels good. But you learn from your mistakes. And let's think about that a bit and the difference that exists between failure and mistakes. We call things failure When I think they're just mistake, it's just something that hey, I was slightly wrong about that or totally wrong about that, and I'm going to change them versus it's not failing. Failing is not being able to do something forever. Mistakes are nuggets, peace. of experience that will help and make you successful. And we should embrace those. We should love them even more than we enjoy successes. But where is the problem? What's wrong in all that? What's wrong in all of that is that in all I shouldn't say all, but in most companies, management system, hierarchy, people, failure is the start of something bad. It's where you get inspection. It's where you get people trying to find what's wrong with what you did, with you personally, potentially. And that's what we have in our mind. So of course, when we make a mistake, we fail. No, when we're making a mistake, that's the path to learning. Unfortunately, people above us or people beside us trying to benefit out of it will take that as something to make us weaker. And it's sad because it's something that makes us stronger, makes you stronger. So when facing that, do not let your head down. Do not think that you failed. You just made a mistake. The difference again between Mistakes and failure. Failure is making a mistake multiple times. It's because you didn't learn from it. You didn't take the nugget. And that's on you. That's on us. So, I thought about that in the plane across, and I thought it could be something that I would share with you in a very short podcast, a limited edition, a special edition. And I hope you enjoyed it. And I'll see you soon. And I will let you know where I am, hopefully in a walk in the park if the weather outside is getting better. But in the meantime, do not forget, okay? Get out there and get it out of the park. I see you soon. Bye.
