The Willingness to be wrong

“The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal. The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way.”  - Seth Godin

In my book Listening without Agenda, I discuss a few items about curiosity and the willingness to be wrong. It has resonated with me a lot lately as I am watching the news.

When it comes to listening, one good practice is entering into a conversation always thinking we might be wrong. Let’s face it, we are all wrong a lot, probably more than we think we are. 

• I thought I had more money in the account. 
• I thought the car had more gas. 
• I could have sworn I sent the notes for our last meeting, even though Bob says he didn’t get them. 
• I know I put my keys in the drawer. 

For many of us, we spend more time trying to cover up the fact we were wrong rather than accepting maybe, just maybe, we were wrong. 

• Who took the money out of the account? 
• Someone drove my car and used up all the gas. 
• I sent the notes; you didn’t get them (or the email got lost). 
• Someone moved my keys. 

The other choice is to accept the mistake and get better. My acting instructor Robyn Hunt once told me she had a chance to see Laurence Olivier do this on stage. The most riveting moments were the times when a mistake was made, because she watched him get better. Each mistake was a chance to learn, grow, and get better. 

For many people, this is the opposite of what we do when we make mistakes. How many times have you beat yourselves up for doing something wrong? “God, I am so stupid. I can’t believe I did that! Ugh!” This message sends us into a tailspin of self-depreciation in the guise of contrition, as if beating ourselves up will make the mistake any better or make it go away.

The energy we spend on berating ourselves can also be spent on improving. To do that, we have to be willing to be wrong, accept the new reality, and then build on it (yes, and). It means letting go of our ego.
“For Socrates and his contemporaries, losing an argument or being wrong about something was not a failure or a source of shame and embarrassment,” says author Michael McQueen in a Fast Company article about how to change people’s minds. “Quite the contrary. The feeling associated with being tripped up in an argument or realizing you were incorrect was described as a moment of enlightenment, self-knowledge, and freedom. They had a name for it: aporia.”

“According to modern philosopher James Garvey, the ancient notion of aporia was ‘a weightless moment as you float free of the mental rut you were in—you stop, your eyes narrow, and no words come to you.’ This feeling of aporia represented a wonderful opportunity to move in a new intellectual direction and grasp new possibilities.” Isn’t it a much nicer way to think of it rather than, “Wow, I screwed up… I am so stupid…” The word aporia means “no path,” and it’s what losing an argument or being wrong about a point once represented. It’s not a moment of shame and embarrassment. It is a moment of experiencing a liberating and exhilarating feeling to be in unfamiliar territory where the next step is unclear. In their pursuit of this intellectual free-fall, the ancient Greeks would argue passionately for hours, but not with the intention of dominating their opponent. Aporia was their aim—enlightenment.

Let’s think about this as a mindset for entering into any business situation. How many meetings have you been in where your boss seemed to really be interested in listening to discover their own blind spots? Where they seemed interested in learning something which would put them in unfamiliar territory where their next step was unclear? I would venture to say not often, or possibly never. 

I do not see examples of this in Politics today. As I watch the news, I also tune into other news channels so I can broaden my understanding and perhaps see a different side of a story. Many news channels spend their time justifying mistakes and failures, rather than owning up to the issue at hand. 

I know I listen from my own point of view. I acknowledge that. And I also listen with the values I believe in; to be of service, to care about others, to support those in need. You know, the things you learned in Sunday school.
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As a leader, the first step is to start by willingly admitting you don’t know everything and admit mistakes. The old days of traditional command-and-control management doesn’t hold up in today’s workplace. And it certainly isn’t holding up in the White House. Employees quickly lose respect for leaders who are unwilling to recognize their own mistakes, or their own fallibility, or share the fact they were wrong. This can have a more detrimental effect on a team and the culture of an organization than making a bad decision. Employees quickly lose respect for leaders who cover up mistakes and don’t take ownership.

I observe this a lot in leaders—the inability to admit they made a mistake. In an article in Psychology Today about psychological rigidity, Guy Winch writes that some people have such a fragile ego, such brittle self-esteem, such a weak “psychological constitution,” that admitting they made a mistake or that they were wrong is fundamentally too threatening for their egos to tolerate. Accepting they were wrong, absorbing that reality, would be so psychologically shattering that their defense mechanisms do something remarkable to avoid doing so— they literally distort their perception of reality to make it (reality) less threatening. Their defense mechanisms protect their fragile ego by changing the very facts in their mind, so they are no longer wrong or culpable.

If you are never wrong, then why try to make things great again? They already are! And if it doesn’t work, it is the fault of saboteurs, past presidents, and (God forbid) the free press that stifles my loud incorrect voice…
It’s time to start having some fierce conversations. 

• What do you believe in?
• How do you see the world?
• What do you really value?

Do my values allow for millions around the globe to starve? Do I value people who will not admit they made a mistake? Do I value more about the money in my IRA (which is down significantly) than the person next to me? Do I believe that I am more important than the rest of the country? The world?

We all make mistakes. The choice is clear – double down and lose more or own it and learn from it. 
Let’s learn from this mistake. Let’s allow for some enlightenment.
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