One of the most prevailing and destructive patterns in our culture is the obsessive need to be right. It's one of those essential ubiquitous repetitions that we take for granted. It is so deeply rooted in our belief system and in the collective psyche that we rarely pause to consider it. We wander blind and thoughtless, wrapped up in the clutches of defense as we protect what has become an obsessive and distorted fear of being wrong. With the insidiousness of this pattern and the contamination it creates in our lives, it’s shocking that we don’t inquire or reflect on its impact. The range of this dynamic from the personal and mundane battles over who said what in an argument, to the larger issues of politics, religion, healthcare or climate change; being right is a mandate. It elevates our blood pressure, short circuits our brains—reducing critical and conceptual thinking and executive reasoning to reactive and concrete-literal thinking and sometimes irrational thinking—causing us to yell and become aggressive. It damages and frequently severs relationships.
Inside organizations, flawed, destructive and costly decisions are pushed through because someone/s would rather avoid being wrong than correct a decision or alter a direction.
It is the reason-to-be for acts of prejudice, hatred, violence and warfare. Much of the thesis in our approach to education is rooted in the construct of binary thinking—right or wrong, so learning gets shortchanged with the need to get the right answer, rather than digging for deeper truths, context and paradox.
At any given moment, we are functioning out of one of two postures: Either we are in a posture of trying to be right, or we are in a posture of trying to understand. When we try to be right, we start from a place of resistance. We’ve already formulated a perception, opinion, or judgment, which informs a position and or decision. For one to hold that position firmly, it generally requires resistance, rigidity, control, defensiveness, and frequently self-righteousness. When we are trying to be right, we invite reciprocating resistance and defensiveness from others as we trigger their fear. Our rigid position, also known as defensiveness, typically stems from a stupefying fear of being wrong.
When we try to understand, we suspend judgment, assumptions, perceptions, and defense, and simply focus on comprehension and integration of meaning. This level of intention to understand comes from a posture of openness, curiosity, and exploration. When we try to understand, we operate from a place of centeredness, confidence and calm, which enables us to suspend reaction and get clarity. When we are in a posture of understanding, we are not caught in fear or lost in the pain of a perceived injustice. We will be aware of anxiety or fear, but it does not dictate or control our capacity for choice and our ability to be fully present.
When we are in a posture of wanting to be right, we are plugged into our fear which activates the reactive part of our brain that sees only threat (the amygdala). It causes us to make assumptions and judgments, cling to prejudice and distorted beliefs, and become reactive and defensive.
The problem with trying to be right is that we create resistance, defensiveness, and conflict. In effect we end up being wrong because we lose our connection with others and our effectiveness at eliciting trust, cooperation, and commitment—our ability to be influential. We sit in a distorted sense of our self as powerful and smart and in fact we are neither. We have lost real power and our intelligence has been reduced to reactive, defensive thinking. So, we actually gain nothing, yet we walk away from these interactions lost in the fantasy that we’re powerful because we’re not wrong. But oh, so wrong and so lost we are!
The desire to be right is a source of significant conflict and suffering. Most people instinctively recognize the motive and attitude of needing to be right in others but struggle to recognize it in themselves. That’s because it comes from that unconscious, reactive and patterned behavior.
When we are in a posture of wanting to be right, we cause others to constrict their thinking and therefore their ability to understand us. It also constricts their emotions and willingness to be generous with us. In other words, when I come at you in a posture of needing to be right—no matter how subtle I am—I automatically make you wrong, and it causes you to feel resistant and defensive. You—the other party then has the need to defend or justify your position, so rather than feeling open, generous, and engaging toward me, you feel closed off, guarded and defensive. Trying to be right pushes people away from us instead of drawing them toward us. It gets us the exact opposite of what we really desire, which is another’s confidence, connection, cooperation, commitment. And trust.
When we are trying to be right, we withdraw to protect ourselves rather than come together to do what needs to be done. It happens every day in every organization. It happens every day in personal relationships. It happens every day between parents and children. It happens every day among people who encounter one another on the street. When we try to be right with one another, we get stuck, defensive, pitted, and not committed to anything except the need to be right.
Examples of when we are trying to be right:
Plan our defense while others are talking
Wear others down in an argument to prove our point
Stay tough and angry rather than attempting to resolve
Attempt to make others feel guilty and obligated as a way to get our way
Use force, threats, or intimidation to get others to do what we want
Use one’s authority and position to overpower the situation
Use deception or fear to manipulate others
Keep score of who did what and when, to justify taking advantage or deceiving others
Shift the blame and finger point
Refuse to examine one’s bias or long standing (potentially outdated beliefs)
Refuse to be accountable for the impact of our behavior on other
Use logical persuasion to convince others of something
Overwhelm others with data and facts
Become self-righteous and moralistic
Claim to have someone else in authority on our side. God!
Become judgmental and critical
Become superior and dismissive
Do it ourselves to prove to others that we are better than they thought
Do not believe that we can afford to listen
It is important that you recognize the unique behavioral patterns you display when you are trying to be right, which will offer important insights to help you shift your intention and position in those moments. These behavioral patterns usually live in the areas you feel most defended, reactive, anxious or fearful. Learning to shift in the moment from an unconscious, reactive position to a conscious one is powerful, and it is the first step toward being present and choiceful.
Recognizing your own patterns is not about judging what you see in yourself; rather, it’s about using insight, some compassion, a bit of humor, and healthy doses of courage and integrity to shift and step into the posture of understanding. In this uncomfortable yet fantastic moment, pause to ask yourself: What is the fear or insecurity that drives my need to be right in this moment? This fear is usually tied to the fear of being wrong. The fear of judgment, criticism, rejection and loss of esteem.
When you try to understand, you produce the opposite outcome from what happens when you try to be right. Others feel expansive around you—in their thinking as well as their emotions—and their ability to understand you increases. They are also more willing to be open and engaging to a different point of view or direction.
When you try to understand, others feel safe and are more likely to take responsibility for their share of what needs to be done as well as for what does not work. Everyone becomes more willing to connect, trust, and commit. It builds capacity in others where they are open to taking risks and doing something different from what they might have imagined before. You open up a place of possibility that could not be imagined previously. You literally alter the psychology of the dynamic—expanding people’s critical and reflective thinking and their emotional levels become more expansive and confident.
The word understand has a depth of meaning beyond the definition most frequently used in our day-to-day exchange. When I say, “I understand,” I could mean that I hear what you are saying literally and yet have no idea what it really means to you. To understand can be superficial and meaningless, or it can be relevant and life changing.
My definition of the word understand is the experience of being in a mental and emotional posture of curiosity to comprehend, discern, empathize, and grasp meaning.
To really understand causes a shift. It is different from just hearing the words spoken or sensing the emotions of another person. The ability to move into a posture of understanding means I am open and willing: I have the intention to suspend judgment or prejudice so I can hear, grasp, and discern what is happening around me or you. I am willing to push the pause button on my own mental chatter and really hear and really comprehend what you are saying or doing. When I step into this level of intention, I shift from not being aware and having a fear of being out of control to a place of expansion, clarity, confidence and calm. In this space I can connect and move things forward in a completely different way.
Control Is a Fallacy. When we let go of our fear and insecurity, as well as our projected stories and judgments, we can experience a brilliant point of awareness and courage. We begin to know with confidence that we give up nothing if we suspend our reactions and move into a posture of trying to understand. It becomes compellingly clear we gain a great deal and lose nothing—except perhaps some of our ego struggle and fear.
We have become so conditioned to the fallacy, the belief that someone is always right, and someone is always wrong.
It’s incredible how much time and energy we spend judging circumstances and making sure “I am right” or at least “It’s not me that’s wrong.” Breaking through this fallacy helps us let go of our need to control, which is brought on by the fear of losing power and the fear that somehow someone will take advantage of us or get the upper hand if we are not right. The overwhelming fear is of losing something, whatever it is (fill in the blanks) or, maybe worse, of being wrong. We carry a deep, unconscious, distorted defensiveness against being wrong. If we are right, we win; and if we are wrong, we lose. It becomes an all-or-nothing proposition.
Much of the restrictive, fear-based, controlling and even punitive religious doctrine that many of us grew up with, encodes a black-and-white concept of being right or wrong. This creates distortion around right and wrong and pits people in a polarized world of either/or rather than a world that promotes understanding, new truths, paradox, connection, resolution, and new beginnings. At the core of this distortion is the fear of being out of control, being judged and rejected—being wrong.
The polarization makes us want to protect and defend our position. We feel a need to judge, assign blame, separate, punish, and ultimately reject others. In this space we are unaware of context and meaning, and we are disconnected from our humanity and our deeper intelligence.
Pivoting with awareness in the face of fear and our projections to proceed with courage and a desire for clarity creates a new level of possibility and choice. The choice, in that moment, is how we will show up and engage. When our intention is to try to understand, we come with awareness of our own presence, our thinking, our emotions, and what we are bringing or not to the dynamic. The term projection is a slippery defense response. It’s when we attribute to other people our own unacceptable emotions, thoughts or patterns. For example, I might say, “He is angry with me” when in fact I’m angry with him.
Fear can create an interesting power play. When we act defensive and take on a posture of blaming others, we irrationally think we have scared away whatever it was that we feared, which then gives us a false and distorted sense of power. As an example, there is an attempt to give me some performance feedback, and it triggers fear in me—fear of criticism, judgment or rejection—so I immediately shift the focus off me and start blaming a member of the team whom I feel is not supportive of me. That team member is neither part of the topic nor relevant to my performance issues.
Do You Feel the Tension?
About now, you might be saying, “Thom, some people really are wrong, and certain things are wrong too. How can you say that it’s not about right and wrong?”
When I talk about the difference between trying to understand and being right, I’m not talking about the atrocities committed against individuals and humanity or the hubris brought about by corruption. Acts of violence, cowardice, and greed are deep moral offenses and create great outrage to our sense of ethical and moral behavior. I’m talking instead about 90 percent of the experiences we have in life through our interactions with family members, colleagues, direct reports, bosses, clients, customers, and the person standing in line ahead of us. I am talking about the dynamics and interactions that make up most of our daily lives.
Your partner or spouse forgot to pick up the cleaning or was late to your child’s soccer game. Your colleague forgot to include you in the meeting to prep for the client presentation. The client didn’t give you credit in front of his boss for the work you did on the marketing plan. You show up on the wrong date for an appointment and are convinced the scheduler wrote the wrong date. A stranger cut in front of you at the barista counter. All these scenarios, these interactions trigger us. They can feel like assaults to our values and our sense of self-respect. Rather than petty inconveniences, they become moral offenses that make us begin to feel indignant or defensive.
I also understand that other debate going on in your head right now: “But sometimes I am right, Sometimes my spouse/partner/colleague/boss is wrong.” Yes, you might be technically correct in the facts. You might feel like you have the moral edge in your rightness because of poor judgment, disorganization, or lack of insight on someone else’s part. Yes, someone may have engaged you in a way that felt disrespectful to you. Someone may have misunderstood you and jumped to inaccurate conclusions. Someone might have forgotten you.
The moment that the feeling of “rightness” comes over you, you may be technically correct in your data or in terms of the experience you had. However, rarely will you be recognized for your rightness. What’s at stake here is not the accuracy of your data or your judgments or your perceptions. What’s at stake is your ego (that unconscious part of you) getting bruised and needing to defend and justify. It’s that part of us that fears we are not seen or validated, where we turn it into a case of being disrespected, then we build our moral platform in which to go to battle.
Our ego is fragile territory, where fears of being taken advantage of are activated and over dramatized, and the only way we know to soothe this is to feed the craving for recognition related to a perceived offense.
The fear or anxiety present in these moments is what I call an inflection point, a moment that provides an opportunity to pivot into awareness and shift from the old narrative of perceived powerlessness to a new narrative of authentic power. Real power. That moment is where we consciously step into choice: I can choose to react and defend or choose to reflect and engage. I can choose to be right or choose to create understanding.
Let’s pause for a moment.
Take a deep breath. I mean a really deep breath.
What I’ve been talking about is loaded with creative tension—or the not-so-subtle point of clarity when profound learning can occur. These moments give each of us an opportunity to move from being unconscious about something to being conscious. We begin to see clearly and can connect the dots that create the larger picture. We grasp the consequences of patterned behavior, and we sense the power of intention. In these moments we can pivot in that clarity and shift to a place of awake-ness versus a place of reaction. This is one of those moments where you can choose to engage in old patterns of reactive behavior or to take a developmental step and build new muscle in your awareness and discernment to be powerfully influential.
It can be challenging to get the rational, literal part of our brain around this principle. It is hard to look beyond the defense that keeps us from seeing our behavior patterns and the fallacy of needing to be right.
When I first learned about this principle, I was twenty-nine. I understood the basic premise intellectually, but then the ego battle started—in other words, my fear and insecurity of being exposed and not being right reared its head. I was deeply afraid of the idea that “being right” could be insignificant. My sense of self-righteousness flared up, and I started a mental and emotional thrash that lasted for many weeks as I came to terms with the intensity of not wanting to be wrong. In full disclosure, I had, like most people, patterned ways of being right; and as I started to recognize them and not run from them, I felt an initial discomfort and embarrassment as I let the truth surface.
My finely tuned patterns of being right had served me well—so, I liked to think. I was prone to overwhelming people with intellectual data, trying to outsmart people. I was skilled at being tough and independent: “I can do this on my own.” Around the same time, I received painful and overwhelming feedback from several colleagues and two close friends about how critical, dismissive, and faintly judgmental I could be. When people didn’t quite measure up, I could let them know it in subtly critical ways or overwhelm them with my insights on how to do it better, which meant my way.
I remember the day my resistance lifted, the thrashing started to calm, and the embarrassment turned to laughter. I felt this curiosity and awareness come over me. I suddenly got it! I felt like I had just been given a huge gift. I was like an excited kid as I talked with my mentor about the insight and power of this principle of understanding. “This will change my life,” I said. He smiled, and I could see the recognition in his eyes when he said, “Now you will spend the rest of your life fine-tuning it.”
This principle creates tension in many people’s minds and emotions as they start to grapple with their own patterns of needing to be right and how they go about making others wrong.
Let’s take another moment so you can explore what it means to take on a posture of understanding.
What is percolating in you right now? What are you saying to yourself about what you just read, about your own patterns? Shift your thoughts and feelings away from judgments about the behavior patterns you may identify within yourself. What are you protecting, and what is your biggest fear? Is it that I’m not smart enough, creative enough, good enough, strong enough, or any other enough? What would happen if you let yourself off the hook and found some humor in your old patterns of wanting to be right?
If you are experiencing resistance, answer one question: What is the fear behind the resistance? What feels scary about acknowledging my patterns or in finding a bit of humor in the discovery? Most of us are afraid of being broken. If we acknowledge our patterns of needing to be right, then somehow we automatically admit to being wrong about that one thing. And being wrong has a broken quality to it. The simple truth is it’s time to let go of being right and enjoy the reality that you are neither broken nor fixed. You are in the process of becoming more of who you are—more deeply powerful, more deeply awake, more deeply courageous and more depth to your humanity.
An important step to take as you develop the capacity for shifting into understanding is to identify and practice it with yourself. If you can’t be open with yourself, it will be extremely difficult to be open with the world around you. I use curiosity and humor to do this with myself. Curiosity and humor are open emotional spaces and allow you to play or explore something, which means to take the test out of it: “Am I going to do it right or wrong?” This shifts the tone of the internal voice and opens up a level of mental clarity and emotional confidence that actually provides me with beneficial insight. And this insight usually inspires me to do something different from what I had previously been doing. I use this in every aspect of my life: professionally with clients, with personal and family relationships, and the brief encounter with a stranger.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. (Martin Luther King Jr.)
How to Make It Safe for Others by Shifting Your Posture to Understanding
An amazing aspect of our humanness is our ability to take risk, open ourselves, and connect when we feel safe. When I use the word safe, I don’t mean physical safety but rather emotional safety—when we trust, we will not be taken advantage of or be inappropriately vulnerable. It’s when you feel like you can do anything. You don’t feel limitations, and you don’t hold back. You step forward and embrace the moment.
Approaching a situation in a way that makes it safe for others fosters awareness in oneself in the moment. It enables us to shift our position away from being right and become centered in our true intentions for how we’d like an interaction to go with another person or group. For example, “I would like to make it easy for this person to trust me, take risk, collaborate with me, have fun, and be accountable, generous, and honest.”
Create an environment of safety for others:
Listen and try to understand. *
Don’t plan your defense or response while another person is talking.
Consider whether the other person needs to look good for some reason or to some other person. Send him or her home a hero.
Don’t ask rhetorical questions that make others feel the need to justify themselves. Rhetorical questions usually begin with why and have an implied stupid at the end. “Why did you do that…stupid?” Ask questions of genuine curiosity: “Can you explain that to me so I can connect the dots? Help me understand how that came about—I’m confused.”
Begin the conversation trusting.
Listen and try to understand.*
Don’t argue about who did what in the past or who’s at fault. Instead focus on whether there is a reason to have a future relationship, what characteristics you both would like that relationship to have, and what you are willing to commit in order to make it happen.
Explore with the other person the possibility of a more respectful and open dialogue between the two of you.
Focus on analyzing the problem and understanding and accepting everyone’s underlying needs and objectives.
Listen and try to understand.*
Engage by advocating and partnering rather than passively observing and critiquing.
Choose to be appropriately vulnerable. Tell others what you know. Tell them what you think and assume. Tell them how their behavior impacts your relationship. Tell them what you need.
Listen and try to understand.*
Surprise others by not living up to their worst expectations of you. If they expect you to be loud, be quiet. If they expect you to bully them, be gentle. If they expect you to be dramatic, be low-key. If they expect you to storm out, stay put. If they expect you to not say anything, talk. You may surprise yourself as well as others. When one person shifts, so will the others, in most cases.
Listen and try to understand.*
*A not-so-subtle reminder!
It is powerful to witness the generosity, confidence, openness, and integrity of another person when they are trying to understand. It is a humbling and enriching experience to be on the receiving end of an individual who is genuinely interested in understanding where you are coming from, interested in understanding your experience or your issue, interested in your opinion, and basically interested in creating connection, clarity, new options, or resolution. I have seen a room filled with tension, anxiety, and conflict completely decompress and level out when it is met with this presence and authenticity in action. When someone is not interested in being right but rather in elevating the conversation or interaction to a place of understanding, that is real power—the power of influence. This type of influence leaves a situation changed, people more aware and connected, and the moment remembered.
You can tell how this level of presence and influence from another person affects a room by the number of energized conversations about respect and admiration that bubble up afterward.
If you take away nothing else from all of your learnings but the principle of understanding versus being right, it will change many aspects of your life in profoundly amazing ways. This principle has been around for thousands of years and has been taught and written about philosophically, academically and spiritually.
I’ve never met anyone who has described wanting to go through life feeling anxious and defensive and missing out on opportunities to connect, thrive, collaborate, innovate, and create. I have met people who want things to be easier, less stressful and more fun—people who want to feel more confident, have more support, and be included in ways that allow them to shine. Awakening to and aligning yourself with an intention of understanding is how the shift can occur.
No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding. (Plato)
Tips for Your Development
This exercise helps create the awareness and clarity needed to more easily recognize your own patterns of needing to be right. Spend the next few days observing and listening to the interactions of the people around you. Take note of how much energy is spent on defending, justifying, criticizing, and blaming. After observing and listening, assess how much energy, resources, inspiration, collaboration, innovation, real problem-solving, commitment, and connection is lost as a result. Simultaneously try to notice interactions in which people operate from a position of generosity, understanding, and confidence. What dynamics are fostered there?
Identify your three favorite—yes, favorite ways of being right. Don’t judge them, just identify them (If you need a mental nudge, revisit bulleted examples earlier in this chapter). Then make a conscious commitment to specifically watch for these patterns over the next four weeks. When you observe them, use your awareness to shift your intentions and make a different choice in that moment. Working to shift your most common behavioral patterns will stimulate awareness in other areas of your life that are less patterned.
Identify a recent situation that left you feeling disconnected and polarized. Circle back and clean up the situation by acknowledging and owning how you contributed to the lack of understanding or disconnect. I’m not suggesting that you return to the situation to accept that you were wrong but that you reclaim an opportunity to understand and connect with the other person or group. This level of honesty and accountability displays profound personal courage and integrity and will build trust and confidence with others. It will also accelerate your own clarity and confidence exponentially.
While you are awakening and developing the ability to recognize your blind spots and see dynamics around you with awareness and meaning, having a system of feedback can be a powerful tool to support and promote the awareness. Ask several people you trust to give you feedback when they witness or experience you slipping into patterns of needing to be right, as well as when they experience you developing patterns of trying to understand. This exercise is more powerful once you are aware and can acknowledge your patterns of needing to be right.
Have Fun!