Here’s something they don’t teach in business school: failure is a skill. Not a tragedy, not a character flaw, not something to bury under more hours at the office. It’s a skill, and like any skill, you get better at it with practice.
Athletes know this. They fail a thousand times on the practice floor before they ever stick the landing in competition. Executives? Most of them are expected to get it right the first time, every time, with everyone watching. Foster calls himself a recovering MBA, and he admits the unwritten rule of his early career was simple. You don’t fail. And if you do, you definitely don’t admit it.
For the Season Three finale, Jana Devan sat Foster down to ask what a season of Olympians, mountaineers, conductors, and CEOs had taught him. His answers kept circling back to one idea: the stuff that makes us great at our jobs is rarely what makes us great at being human.
Strip Away the Titles
The guest list this season was wide. Luis Benitez guided the first blind climber to the summit of Everest. David Betts, Foster’s friend and a lifelong athlete, was diagnosed with ALS and turned his life toward service by building an app for others living with the disease. And there was a symphony conductor, Olympians, and leaders running healthcare systems.
So what connects them? Foster didn’t hesitate. Humanity.
He leans on a line from Ram Dass: we are all just walking each other home. Once you set aside the accomplishments and the résumés, everyone has struggles, joys, and passions. “I don’t want to talk to someone’s image,” Foster says. “I want to truly talk to that person, kind of at their essence.”
Dropping the Performance
That’s a big ask in a world where everything is image. Jana pointed out that kids today feel like they’re performing constantly, always on camera, always curating. Adults aren’t much better.
Foster’s answer is space. This season he started what he calls his not-a-men’s-group, which is basically friends around a fire, talking honestly. After one gathering, the feedback he got wasn’t “you facilitated brilliantly.” It was “thank you for creating the space for us to just be ourselves.”
He’s been thinking a lot about Allen Levi’s novel Theo of Golden, whose main character sees people for their goodness instead of their circumstances. Being seen that fully changes people. Foster thinks that may be the most valuable thing a coach does, more than any problem solving: helping someone walk out thinking, wow, she really saw me.
Clear Eyes First
Can anyone learn to see people that way? Foster’s answer: we all can. We just don’t all do it.
It starts with clearing our own filters. Judgment, bias, fear, and our ideas of how someone should be all cloud our view. Before you can honor another person, you have to do your own work. That’s the core of his upcoming book, Honoring, and he’s quick to say it isn’t just a business book. Do your work, see the other person fully, and then ask what the two of you can create together. It works in a boardroom. It works at the dinner table.
The Ferrari That Wouldn’t Leave the Garage
Foster spent years working with UCLA student athletes during Miss Val’s era. He describes them as finely tuned Ferraris that could go 200 miles an hour. And yet some of them couldn’t get out of their own way.
One gymnast developed a glitch on the vault. She’d sprint down the runway, panic, and run straight into the table instead of flipping. She had the strength and the skill. What she didn’t have was a belief that matched her ability.
That’s the chain Foster keeps coming back to: beliefs drive behavior, and behavior drives performance. Most of us try to fix performance at the behavior level. The real work happens one step earlier.
His own boulder is fear, specifically the fear of not being worthy and needing to keep proving himself. He doesn’t claim to have beaten it. It still shows up daily. What helps him is Byron Katie’s practice from Loving What Is. Is it true? Can you know with absolute certainty that it’s true? Who are you when you believe that thought? And what happens if you flip it?
Athletes Get Reps. Executives Get Exams.
Here’s where the season’s big lesson lands. In the final game of the College World Series, a softball player Foster had worked with struck out three straight times against a dominant pitcher. Back in the dugout, she used a technique they’d practiced all year. She wrote down every thought racing through her head: My boyfriend’s in the stands. I’m on national television. I look stupid. Then she balled up the paper and threw it in the trash.
Next at-bat, with a runner on second, she hit a double. The run scored, and her team won the national championship.
Jana named the insight: failure doesn’t just teach you how to do better. It teaches you how to fail, which is to say, how to recover in the moment instead of spiraling. Athletes get that practice constantly. Most leaders never do. Foster points to the scenario planning that came out of Royal Dutch Shell, where executive teams rehearsed crises as if they were real. It’s rare, and it’s exactly the kind of practice field leaders need.
He built his own practice field by testing new tools with student athletes, where the stakes were low and the audience was forgiving. He repeated them until he could deliver them at a high level for paying clients.
What He’d Tell 1980 Foster
Foster started his practice in 1980. For decades, he got restless about every ten years, because making a living kept crowding out making a difference. About ten years ago, after the move to Montana and stepping back from the CEO role, he realized his fuel was learning. Since then, he says, every conversation lights him up.
So what would he tell his younger self?
“You’re enough. Nothing to prove. Work hard. Learn a lot. Be a difference maker. But you’re enough.”
What’s Coming in Season Four
Season Four goes deeper into honoring: honoring yourself, honoring the other person, and honoring what you build together. His next book, Honoring, goes into presale in 2027. Sign up for the email list at fostermobleymt.com to hear when it’s available.
Continue the Conversation
What does wisdom actually look like when you’re in the middle of it?
Watch on YouTube | Subscribe to Step Wise
Want these conversations in your inbox? Sign up for our email list and get a heads-up when new episodes drop, plus occasional reflections from Foster that explore the ideas behind Step Wise in even deeper ways.
If this shifted something for you, if you heard something that made you think differently about how you show up, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
Set the table. Invite cool people. Magic happens.
—Foster