# How to fail and still succeed - Business English lesson (Intelligent failure - part 2)

An episode of [Breakout Business English - Improve your vocabulary and confidence using English at work.](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1616739393), 6 Aug 2025, 24 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2022761/episodes/17627018-how-to-fail-and-still-succeed-business-english-lesson-intelligent-failure-part-2.mp3

Send us Fan Mail This is our second episode discussing Harvard Professor of Leadership and management and her book on intelligent failure. So if you speak English at work, but aren't a native English speaker, then this episode will help you to think about failure, how to communicate with your colleagues on this topic and give you all of the natural and native sounding vocabulary that you need to do this. 🔗 Book a one-to-one session with Chris at breakoutbusinessenglish.com 🎁 Use code PODCAST30 for 30% off your first coaching session Do you want me to analyse your English on YouTube? Contact me here: https://www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com/contact Do you want to see what I do? Click here: https://youtu.be/1jpP2nCQDi0?si=DCKHKxe9dqhidx0o Also, if you're studying for the IELTS, TOEFL, or Cambridge English tests and exams then you might find some of the vocabulary in this episode really useful. This podcast is all about helping you to communicate better, in English, at work. I work with international English speakers from around the world who use English, at work, as a second or third language and I hope that I can bring some of the ideas, vocabulary, and grammar, from those sessions, to you in this podcast. Don’t forget that my full time job is helping international professionals who use English at work to improve their communication skills. So, if you need English to do your job but don’t speak it natively then maybe we can work together to help you to achieve your language goals. 👉 Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and request future topics! 📅 New episodes released every Wednesday 📺 Watch vocabulary breakdowns and coaching analysis on the Breakout Business English YouTube channel Today's examples: - We've done our homework on this so we're pretty confident about the outcome. - Now that we’re got a hypothesis, we just need to test it and see if it holds up to scrutiny. - We’ve got a hunch, now we just need to test it out. - If this doesn’t pan out then we need to make sure that it doesn’t impact the wider project. - Fortunately, we’ve engineered this test so as to limit the fallout. Support the show Book a coaching session with me at: https://www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com

## Transcript

Welcome back to the Breakout Business English podcast, where every week... We discuss how to improve the way that you communicate at work in English and the vocabulary, grammar and skills to help you achieve your communication goals. My name is Chris. I'm a business English coach who has personally worked with over 1,000 international professionals, just like you, to improve their communication skills. Thank you so much for listening, as always. And today is part two of our discussion on how to fail intelligently.So last week we started to look at the four criteria for intelligent failure described by Amy Edmondson in her book, The Right Kind of Wrong. Today, we're going to complete this exploration by taking a look at some vocabulary and ideas that we can use to talk about her third and fourth key points. If you missed last week's episode where we talked about the idea that failure is okay when you're exploring new territory and when you're in pursuit of a goal, then feel free to go back and listen to that. However, You... Don't need to listen to that to get value from today's podcast. Perfectly good. Podcasts that.So today we're going to talk about the idea that intelligent failure happens when you're testing a new hypothesis or idea, and that your failures should be kept as small as possible. So, let's get started. According to Harvard leadership and management professor Amy Edmondson, a failure can be called intelligent if you are testing a hypothesis. You should have a theory based on what you already know, and your goal should be to find out whether or not that theory is accurate and correct. Let's listen now. To some natural and native ways to talk about theories and hypotheses at work. We've done our homework on this, so we're pretty confident about the outcome. We've done our homework on this, so we're pretty confident about the outcome. Now that we've got a hypothesis, we just need to test it and see if it holds up to scrutiny. Now that we've got a

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