Maxwell Leadership Podcast Episode 400: How to Use Failure for Success
34 snips
Feb 25, 2026 
John Maxwell, leadership author and speaker known for decades of transformational teaching, shares fresh thinking from his new book. He contrasts good misses with bad messes. He explains a six-stage cycle of test, fail, learn, improve, and reenter. He urges keeping success and failure together to build resilience and humility.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Turn Misses Into Good Misses
- Do classify misses as good or bad by how you respond to them.
- A good miss means you look at yourself, learn, make adjustments, and avoid excuses; a bad miss means blaming others, running away, and making excuses.
The Six Stage Cycle That Makes Failure Productive
- Test often because testing produces failure which is the raw material for learning.
- Maxwell's six-stage cycle: test, fail, evaluate, learn, improve, reenter — skip any stage and the upward cycle stalls.
Ask What You Learned Before Moving On
- Do get over yourself after failure by asking what you learned instead of letting the miss define you.
- Maxwell says most real growth lessons come from failures; if you can't name a lesson, you get no return.
