Women Like Me Stories & Business

ERIN HERMAN - Embracing Failure The Path to Authentic Leadership

• Julie Fairhurst • Episode 132

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What keeps women from playing big in leadership? How can we create cultures where failure isn't feared but celebrated? And why is self-prioritization not selfish, but essential?

Leadership strategist Erin Herman tackles these questions in this robust conversation, drawing from her two decades driving global impact at the United Nations and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.


Erin reveals that while men apply for jobs when they meet just 60% of qualifications, women typically wait until they meet 100%. This hesitation stems not merely from self-doubt but from navigating systems not initially designed for women's success. She provides actionable strategies to combat this, including conducting "job audits" to ensure titles match responsibilities and shifting from permission language ("I think") to ownership statements ("I recommend").

Perhaps most transformative is Erin's approach to failure. "Perfectionism is fear wearing a mask," she explains. She advocates for "micro wins," celebrating successes and failures. This practice builds team resilience and rewards risk-taking, essential qualities for innovation and growth.

Listen now to discover how to lead with authenticity, embrace failure as growth, and recognize the power of your unique leadership voice.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-herman-97832217/

Instagram: @eebherm

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Who is Julie Fairhurst?
Julie Fairhurst – Speaker, Author, and Founder of Women Like Me

Julie Fairhurst is a champion for women’s empowerment and the founder of the Women Like Me Book Program. Since 2019, she has published 30 books and 300+ true-life stories—at no cost to the writers—giving women a platform to heal, inspire, and reclaim their power. Dedicated to breaking generational trauma one story at a time, Julie’s mission is to uplift women emotionally and financially, helping them create better lives for themselves and their families.


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Speaker 1:

Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Women Like Me, Stories and Business. I am your host, Julie Fairhurst, and today we have a lady who is just full of a wealth of information. I'm so excited to get into this conversation with her. Let me tell you a little bit about her. So her name is Erin Herman, and she's a bold speaker, leadership strategist and an unapologetic people expert dedicated to helping women lead with confidence.

Speaker 1:

With over two decades of experience driving global impact at the United Nations and St Jude Children's Research Hospital, Erin has created initiatives like the Learning Passport, so I definitely want to hear more about that. It's a digital educational platform developed with Microsoft and the Cambridge University, now reaching children in over 40 countries, so that sounds amazing. Her signature CEG method, focusing on courage, empathy and growth mindset, guides leaders to embrace change, fostering psychological safety, and cultivates cultures where innovation thrives. So Erin's mission is to transform leadership by making it more human, courageous and impactful. Holy smokes, girl. Well, welcome, Aaron. Thank you so much for being here. Would you like to tell our audience anything else about yourself?

Speaker 2:

I'm just thrilled to be here today and engage in this conversation with you, so I look forward to diving right in.

Speaker 1:

Perfect Well, thank you Okay, so CEG method, so that empathizes, empathizes courage, empathy and growth mindset. So how do you help women to apply these principles?

Speaker 2:

Sure, you know, we, as women leaders, I think oftentimes we are concerned about perceptions and I always say we need to stop being focused on perceptions and be really mindful to the impact. And in order to get to that impact piece, I talk about the KEGG method. And it starts with courage, right? So it's courage to identify, on these large teams with evolving priorities, hey, what's working and what's not working. Let's identify both sides of the house. And then it's the element of empathy to really understand that two-way feedback right, that's going to come from your teams when you're identifying what's working and what's not. And then there's the growth element there, which helps teams to embrace what they want to change, what they want to tackle, and it removes the shame and the process of that acknowledgement element. And so when you put all three of those components together, it helps to elevate the performance of the team, but it also shapes you as a leader and I've seen just brilliant, brilliant strategies and implementation across several Fortune 500 companies with it and it's very successful.

Speaker 1:

Wow, so do you do so? Are you working mainly with teams and are you working with the leader and the team to the side? How does that work?

Speaker 2:

Great question. So when I started my career, you know I started out in elevators and escalators. I was quite literally paid to help people move up in the world. And then, when I went on to work for the United Nations Children's Fund and lead their corporate partnership team, our pretense there was we would iterate around what are sustainable and scalable solutions that we could put in place From there. When I went on to St Jude Children's Research Hospital, ALSEC very similar line of work we were looking at corporate partnership engagement and supporting children, but obviously on a domestic front, with a health focus.

Speaker 2:

Since then I've broken out away from both Fortune 500 organizations and have stepped into my own keynote business where I support corporate social responsibility strategy. I speak on topics around women playing big in the workspace, around change management, around self-assurance as a superpower and around creating positive failure cultures. And then, as an enhancement to those keynotes, I also help organizations really land those messages with their employees by running facilitation workshops, and those can be spaced out from, you know, right after the keynote, right before the keynote or, you know, on a monthly cadence or semi-annual basis, just to really help deliver and drive those messages home. Wow.

Speaker 1:

What do you think is the biggest thing that stops women from playing big? What do you think that is?

Speaker 2:

You know I talk a lot about imposter syndrome and you know, oftentimes I look at you know the data doesn't lie right. So men will apply for a job or a role when they meet 60% of the qualifications in AJD, whereas women will not apply for that same role unless they feel that they meet 100% of those qualifications. And for me that ties back to imposter syndrome, right, and you know, oftentimes women come up and they say gosh, I just feel like I'm continuing to fake it till I make it. But really, when we peel back the layers of imposter syndrome or what holds women back, that that element is really wrapped up in a system that wasn't designed for women in the first place. And you know, I think about imposter syndrome is really a response to external invalidation from peers, from workplaces. And so the more that we can move women away from permission language so simple, simple micronisms like, I think, versus ownership language of I recommend and through those micro nuances we start to elevate ourselves in the workplace. We elevate our titles I tell women to do, you know, performance audits and job audits.

Speaker 2:

So oftentimes if you look at women, we're running two or three different roles in the workplace. We're, you know, the employee counselor, we're running event management, we're leading teams. We're playing all these different hats, but we're paid for one out of those three roles, but we're expected to cover a multitude of facets and capabilities within those roles. So I say, look at your job qualifications. Make sure that you're doing exactly what you need to be doing and doing it really well. Make sure your title aligns with your responsibilities.

Speaker 2:

Oftentimes we see women are given a managerial title but they're doing director work right, and so we need to advocate for ourselves. And I think it starts from early, early onset. I have a daughter, and one time my daughter her name's May came up to me and she said mom, she was seven at the time. She said, mom, I know women can be bosses, can men be bosses too? And it's. It's so eye opening to me, because what we teach young girls and women through educational institutions all the way up is what they will believe about themselves. Yes, and so it sits with us.

Speaker 1:

Wow, you know you speak about the importance of creating a failure-positive culture. So how does embracing failure contribute to a person's personal and professional growth?

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, when people are afraid to fail, it is really just, and oftentimes that's covered up with perfectionism and I will say I am a recovering perfectionist to the T, but when I think about it it's really just that perfectionism is fear wearing a mask, right. And so when we can be vulnerable with ourselves and with our teams and authentic and we're not afraid of mistakes but instead we embrace those mistakes, we build trust and validity and credibility quicker than any other mechanism in the workplace. And I oftentimes, you know teams will say after I give my creating positive failure keynote speech, they'll say well, how do we do that, erin? What does that look like?

Speaker 2:

And it can be as simple as creating. I talk about micro wins, right? So every project, every initiative that comes down the pipe, figure out what went well and figure out what didn't go well, and celebrate both of those, because if you only have 50% of the equation, you're never going to solve for the answer. And oftentimes, when we learn to embrace failure, when we celebrate those challenges to embrace failure, when we celebrate those challenges, that teaches teams resilience and it also teaches them the reward to take the risk. So it's so important that we reward the risk-taking. That's how you elevate the performance of your team.

Speaker 1:

I love that Reward, the risk-taking, and I think that even women who are just leaders of their own businesses they're not necessarily, maybe, leaders of large corporate teams, but that is just so important embracing it, because really failure is learning and it's not something that, it's something we should learn and then enhance and then grow from. Not allow it to, you know, make us want to stay in bed that day with the blankets over our head, right right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one thing you know I talk about is just pressure testing assumptions. Right, think about something as simple as assumptions that we make, and we do this in our personal relationships. We do this in our personal relationships, we do this in our relationships with colleagues, but I say, hey, 30 minutes a day, sit down with your team and say, hey, everyone, we're going to get in and we're going to pressure test the assumptions that we all made this week. Right, because when we do that, we realize so many false narratives we created. We realize so many things that we jump to conclusion on. We talk past one another instead of with one another, and what that does is it creates the opportunity for pivots instead of panics to ultimately be made, and that is so helpful when you're talking about creating a positive failure culture.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's just. You know, that's a lot of what women learn in writing their stories, because that's what we do, women like me. And it's so true because once they sit down and they start to get it out of the body and get it on paper in front of them, they can see what was just a perception that was necessarily not true and holding them back for years based on that perception, right, wow, that was brilliant. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Can we talk about the learning passport? I'm really curious about that.

Speaker 2:

What is that all about? Yeah, you know this was back very onset of my career at UNICEF, but we were looking at the time at the refugee crisis and we were looking at, specifically, children on the move. So if I was a young let's say seventh grade girl in Syria and my parents were moving to Jordan and we were going to be going to a refugee camp there, well, my parents don't speak the native language, they don't possess the appropriate papers to put me in the formal education system within Jordan and there are so many hurdles right for young men and women to be able to have that continuity within their learning journey. And so we sat down in a boardroom with Microsoft and Cambridge University and we started iterating around the fact of this gap in learning for refugee children on the move. And so, through that iteration and several sessions, we came up with the concept of the learning passport, and so what that looks like now is it's an online and offline digital learning platform.

Speaker 2:

So if I do eventually go to Jordan and I'm in a refugee camp, I can still pick up in my native language and my native education and I can have that continuous education so that I can move grade levels and ultimately obtain a high school diploma and become a productive member of society. And for me it just really speaks to the fact that education is essential for opportunity in life for anyone. It doesn't matter male, female, young or old. When you have education, it unlocks opportunities. And that is really the pretense. And then during COVID, when so many countries' primary education system shut down, it was actually pivoted to become the primary learning platform in country for several different countries, so that kids could continue their learning journeys from home and not miss out on a year or two years, in some instances even three years of education Beautiful.

Speaker 1:

So are people still using that today? No, I'm not necessarily meaning in, I guess I'm meaning more North America. Are we still using that for kids that maybe want to? You know, some kids don't do well in the school system or in that environment, so is that is that learning passport still available?

Speaker 2:

It's available in over 40 countries, but not within the US. It is not up and running in the US. It is an international global education, okay. Wow, an international global education, okay.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's that's fantastic. That is just that's fantastic, wow, okay. So let's talk about balancing roles for women, because and I and you mentioned it earlier on about how we can do three different jobs and you know we're only getting paid for one, but at the end of the day, they go home as well, sure, and they might have a spouse, and they might have children or they might have elderly parents. So how can we balance multiple roles and still stay effective in leadership and helping others.

Speaker 2:

I love this question and I think this is one of the most underrated topics, but it is of the utmost importance because women, you're absolutely right, we play multiple hats and wear multiple roles15. Once you've gotten your kids to school and you're dressed and ready to roll, your day is completely shifted in that 15 minute period. And so what I really encourage women to do and I think this is such a unique topic, but I encourage women to get sponsors, and this is different than mentors, right? So mentors are going to teach you the ins and outs, maybe within your professional careers, but when you have a sponsor, it puts names in rooms that you're currently not in and that is across the board. It could be in friendship circles, it could be in neighborhood communities, it could be in religious settings, it could be in the workplace. But those sponsors, they help you to identify the difference between being a weak-minded mom and a career goer, and a strong-minded mom and career goer, because weak people will find other people's weaknesses and critique them or make fun of them or condemn them, whereas strong-minded women, we will identify other people's strengths and we'll learn from them, or we'll be able to switch the ideation of envy to admiration and when more women can start to admire other women for how they show up, or even that they're showing up amidst the chaos and the struggle, we start to elevate one another and we celebrate that and we learn from one another.

Speaker 2:

And I think it's so important within that entire setting to be strong-minded. You have to recognize your vulnerabilities. You have to recognize, hey, the struggles or the challenges or the areas in which you fell short that day, because when you have that recognition, you teach other women that it's okay and that you figured it out. And the last thing I would just say is prioritize yourself in the journey. We are so good at prioritizing our husbands, our kids, our employees, our teams, but if we don't start with ourselves, we will be a shell of what we could truly become. And that's a choice, just like a choice to care for your kids, just like a choice to go to the gym, just like a choice to cook dinner. So take those moments and don't think of them as being selfish. They're a necessary growth tool and resource for you to be successful.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for saying that, because I believe that selfish has gotten a bad rap, and it is so important because if we're not healthy, we cannot pass down healthiness, to never mind people in our workplace that might possibly be looking to us as a leader. But we can't do that to our own families, right, and to our children and and also to our daughters. I think that that you know, sometimes we think of ourselves as being a martyr, or maybe we don't even think of it, but we can't help it, because that's just what we women do we're out there saving the world, but eventually we burn out and then we're no good to anybody, right, right, yeah, it's just so important for people to realize that self-care should be number one.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you know I think it's actually such a blessing.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think about a long time ago, you know, I was involved in a bad car accident and I wanted to start lifting weights. I had all these neck problems and you know, for the first year I would go and I would lift weights every single day and I felt really guilty about after work being gone for an hour for my kids and just not being there. And then one day both my daughter and my son said mom, can we come to the gym with you? Can we start lifting weights with you? And I thought, wow, even in the most indirect moments where I feel like I'm being selfish, my kids are watching, but they're seeing it from a different lens. And it forced me to realize we all have the same reality, but we have two different ways in which to look at it. And so when I started to look at it from more of a gracious and, you know, really from a lens of gratitude, I was able to realize the positive influences that we can have on others, and indirectly, indirectly- Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

I don't talk about this very often, but many, many years ago I was not doing well in the beginning of my life and I did have my three boys and I was a single mom and I was broke, not doing well at all, and so I knew that I had two choices. One choice was to stay there and be there for my kids, be there when they got up in the morning, be there when they went to school, be there when they got home, just be there for them. But the other option was to show them that that's not reality. Sometimes, when you have to eat, when you have a rent to pay, when you so you know when, when you need clothes.

Speaker 1:

So I chose very not happily about it, um to to go into the workforce and I thought you know, I can show my kids those two things, but really, what is more important to me? To show them, rather than we get up in the morning, we go to our work, we get paid and this is how we grow and live and take care of ourselves and our families. That was real and I had so much guilt about it. And then I realized that, just like what you were saying, with your kids and lifting the weights. My kids started. My kids were working at like 16, 15 years old and and again there was a lot of pain around that because, you know, I I was out there. I wasn't there all the time for them, but that was important to show them.

Speaker 2:

I love that because it truly does. I think in those moments you know, I'm writing a book right now and one of the things I was writing on was my dad and the fact that you know, he never had a college degree, he never was formally educated. You know, he never had a college degree, he never was formally educated, and yet he has run so many successful companies and he has gotten knocked down probably more times than I can count and in some of those instances I truly thought okay, you broke them, this is it. And he would bounce back every single time.

Speaker 2:

And I think what it taught me, very similar to probably what you taught your children was you can literally build back from anything. You can build back better from any situation, from anything that has come your way, and resilience isn't, you know, built overnight. It's just built by consistency. And when you have that mindset, you teach kids, work hard, you can be anything you want to be. The world is truly your oyster and man. When you have that belief, it is just beautiful to see your kids and see what they can accomplish.

Speaker 1:

And I got shivers.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, what you've taught your kids.

Speaker 1:

Oh, thank you. You just gave me shivers. That was just. I want to. When you're done the book, let me know. I want to get your book, I want to get it. Okay, so let's move on a little bit. What advice do you have for women who are looking to make a career pivot into leadership positions?

Speaker 2:

I love that question. You know, I think we as women in particular, we are really good at saying we'll get to that tomorrow or we will prioritize ourselves when the opportunity presents itself. And you know, a couple years ago I was really at the, you know, crux of massive change in my life and I realized that that simple sentence that I was saying to myself that I'll get to my passion or my career choice, that really resonates with me tomorrow. I realized there's no better day than the present and I was literally giving myself, I was doing self-limiting talk, which is one of the most destructive things you can do to yourself as a female and as a leader. So what we tell ourselves is truly what we will become. You know, people read a lot about manifesting. They read a lot about, you know, self-help books, but we can be our biggest champion just by simply advocating for ourselves.

Speaker 2:

So I say two things to this. I say learn to say no is a complete sentence. We need to say no. We need to say no more often than we say yes in certain situations to help create boundaries and space for us to be able to make appropriate decisions that serve us and our growth in whatever element of our lives. That that is, and we need to do that without shame or guilt.

Speaker 2:

The other thing that we need to do is believe in ourselves, and everyone says, oh, that's so cliche, and you know, that's, that's just something, that that happens inevitably. But empowerment to me is twofold. It doesn't mean redistribution, it means inspiration, and no one else is going to inspire yourself other than you, and we do that by what we tell ourselves, what we take on and who we become. And I just I can't emphasize enough to women there is no better time than the present to figure out what inspires you, to figure out what empowers you and to pursue it, because in 80 years, when you look back, you're going to remember those moments that you took the biggest risks, because oftentimes they have the best rewards, and my gut, my experiences, have not led me astray yet, and so I just can't emphasize that enough for women.

Speaker 1:

I love what you just said your gut, your intuition. We need to listen to that a little bit more instead of up here, because sometimes up here we get all confused and we get mumble jumbled and that imposter syndrome sneaks in. But when we listen to our intuition, 99% of the time it's leading us in that right direction.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, think about anything in life.

Speaker 2:

I think that inner voice can be so strong and oftentimes I think we're taught to turn that volume down.

Speaker 2:

You know we want to fit in, we want to be seen as being perfect or being polished, but really we should set the expectation on our teams and in society to reward risks, to reward bravery, to reward authenticity. Sometimes I think we have to think about our value system, and I also talk about the fact that we spend so much of our time in our lives trying to convince others that may have a different value system than us to believe in ours, and we throw energy at it, we throw conversation at it. But what we need to realize is we're not here to convince others of our worth, of our own unique value systems. We're here to have that shelf assurance to believe in our own values, our own ideas, our own ways of working and then exude the confidence and the self-assurance to believe those at all costs. And when we do that, you create this really beautiful tie of authenticity to who you are and what you believe in, and it helps you to navigate those bigger and broader challenges that life throws at you in a really clear and succinct way.

Speaker 1:

Wow that's thank you for that. Thank you for that. You are just, I said in the beginning, wealth of information, and I was right. I are just I said in the beginning, wealth of information and I was right, I knew it. I knew it. Erin, I have a few questions that I like to ask my podcast guests. Would you mind if I asked you a few? Sure, it's just a way that we can all get to know you a little bit better. Okay, so my first question is if you could travel anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would you go and why would you go there?

Speaker 2:

Boy. My husband and I always talk about this. It's my favorite topic to discuss. We actually just made a travel list, I think next on our list I'd like to go to the United Arab Emirates and just do a little bit more immersive, cultural, deep dive there, see all of the history and the cities and just I don't know. Dubai has been on the top of my list for a long time, so that'd probably be next I'd love to go to Dubai, beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Do you have a favorite book that inspires you?

Speaker 2:

Gosh, a lot of them, Good, I think. You know, for me the you know I don't think I could pick just one. To be honest, I love self-help books. I love Brene Brown, I love, you know, any book that really gets you to think about. I've read several about imposter syndrome. There's just so many different topics. For me it's really about the topics that I want to uncover around. You know, I've read things about attachment styles, about, you know, avoidant versus anxious attachment styles. How does that sync up in the workplace? How does self-assurance work to be your superpower, all of these things, teaching women to play big, all of these elements that I think we hear, but how do we make it applicable and how do we let that guide really be our mouthpiece in our day-to-day lives? And so I'd say any self-help book I'm probably I probably got it on my nightstand and I'm probably probably taking a deep dive into it. I probably can't pick just one.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree. I think that it's anything that that we can pick up that helps us, helps lift us up, helps us get, get out of that shrinking place that we tend to live in for sure. Okay, if you could have dinner with any woman in history, who would you have dinner with, and why?

Speaker 2:

Gosh, that's a great question too. I'd probably love to have dinner with Rosa Parks, and the reason I would like to have dinner with her is I'd love to hear how she felt during a time that I can only imagine, the feelings that she must have felt and what was going on within her situation that I find to be so inspiring, such a catalyst for our society and truly something that I just I idealized the stance that she took and how she handled it, and I think those are the moments in history that I know I personally will always remember, and when I think about people who inspire me, who you know are my motivation to be bigger and to be bolder and to create a more inclusive world, she's top of mind, and so I'd love to just sit down with her, have dinner, pick her brain and thank her.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, okay, my last question. If you could whisper one truth into the ear of every woman who's struggling right now, what would you say?

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would say you are worthy. We don't hear it enough from spouses, friends, kids ourselves. And I think it's so important. I try and tell my girlfriends all the time you are so worthy of love, of admiration, of success, of everything that is good and can come your way, and when we believe it, we start to feel it, and so I would just say you are worthy.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's beautiful and you're right. So women need to hear that. I don't know why we, you know, don't think we're as worthy as we should be, but that's just, yeah, what we do, so that's a great message. So, everyone, if you want to reach out to Erin, you will be able to find all of the links to find her in the details section of the video and, of course, of the YouTube or the podcast, and the video send the video. So, erin, I just have really loved this conversation. Thank you so much for doing this. It's we just need to lift each other up, and I love these because I get to be lift up by all of the women that I get to interview, so I appreciate it so much. Would you like to share anything at all in closing?

Speaker 2:

You know. First, I just want to thank you for your time, julie. I really enjoyed today's conversation. I love listening to your podcast. I always find it so inspirational, motivational, eye-opening. There's always a topic that just seems to resonate. So for that, thank you, and for your audience, I'm just really grateful and gracious for you taking the time to listen. Please do reach out. Grateful and gracious for you taking the time to listen, please do reach out. If I can ever be a resource, a mentor, a friend, an opportunity to connect and speak within your organizations about any of the topics, again, I would just feel immense gratitude and I look forward to meeting a lot of your listening base. So thank you.

Speaker 1:

Oh well, thank you so much. Okay, wow, that was. That was I filled up. I got filled up with some lots of good stuff, so I hope all of you did as well, and thank you once again, erin, for doing this, and we will see all of you on the next episode of Women Like Me, stories and Business.

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