Five Ways Being Wrong Can Liberate Your Thinking

Think about the last time you were wrong about something of significance. How did you feel? Did you feel disappointment, regret, embarrassment, or even shame?  Did you feel like you let someone down, maybe even your perfectionist-self? Or did you have a flashback to a previous time in your life when a mistake or error cost you a promotion, job, relationship, or even personal credibility?

Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong, explored this very question at a TED conference a few years ago. She pointed out that all those reactions we listed, as common as they are, actually answer a different question. They answer the question, “How does it feel when you realize you are wrong?”

Ms. Schulz points out that in the moments between when we have made a mistake and when we realize we have made a mistake, none of these feelings of shame, regret, or disappointment exist. In the time between when we run off the cliff, and when we look down, realizing we are no longer on solid ground, we actually feel like we are right. These moments of suspended animation epitomize the saying, “Ignorance is bliss”. The act of being wrong doesn’t cause trauma. It’s our reaction to being wrong that causes us trauma. These feelings of disappointment, regret, embarrassment, and shame exist only because of people’s prior reactions to when we have been wrong in the past.

When you watch children play, you see the innocence and freedom from judgment. As kids play, they make up new rules, explore the possibilities behind every encounter, and find freedom as they manipulate every experience. To them, the concepts of right and wrong are not nearly as strong as their desire to learn and experiment.

Unfortunately, as we grow older, our willingness to explore gradually diminishes as our innocence gets tainted by the judgments of teachers, parents, peers, siblings, and society in general. Eventually, we begin to form our own paradigms of how we view the world, how we believe the world expects us to behave, how we expect the world to behave, and in turn, how we react to being told we are wrong. 

Throughout our life, our expectations evolve with every experience, every interaction, and every reaction to our own fallibility. In turn, we eventually begin to project these expectations onto others. The problem though is that very few issues in modern society have a singular answer. The world is far grayer than it is black and white. We all see mistakes through our own eyes, filtered by our own experiences and our own paradigms.

According to Ms. Schulz's research, most of us, due to our experiences, tend to react in a predictable sequence when we see others make a mistake.

1.      Our initial reaction when we catch someone else’s mistake, it’s often to believe the individual who made the error, must not have all the necessary information. In our mind, we believe that if they did have all the necessary information, they would not have made the mistake in the first place. 

2.      When we realize the individual has all the necessary information, we begin to question their intelligence. We have been conditioned to believe there has to be something wrong with the person for them to make the mistake we are witnessing, because no undamaged person could interpret the information so incorrectly. 

3.      Finally, when we have assured ourselves that the person has all the correct information, and that he or she is actually intelligent, we shift our perception to believe the person is doing this thing wrong just to spite us.

Unfortunately, we are all too often blind to our biases that cause us to create these perceptions.

Changing Our Perceptions

The good news is that we have the power to change this pattern of thinking. Because we have our own life filters, we have the ability to change our perceptions, and in turn, change how we perceive our world. It is our choice how we view our own mistakes, and the mistakes of others. We can continue to view the world through the paradigm that mistakes should cause us discomfort, should be avoided in order to protect our own self-worth, and those who make mistakes must have something wrong with them. Or, we can realign our mindset back to the one we used as children, the framework where we happily explore new possibilities, actively seek out mistakes in the name of learning, change the rules when we don’t like the game, and look at the world through a lens of exploration rather than one of limitations.

As a leader, you are charged with determining the culture of your organization, work group, or sphere of influence. Therefore, your choice about how you view mistakes, errors, and what you consider to be “wrong” will in turn influence the behaviors and mindsets of your people. You can help your people look at each mistake as a valuable experience rather than as an inevitable result.

Granted, when being wrong is completely avoidable and errors are the result inattentiveness, sloppy work, or laziness, there is no advantage to being wrong. However, when being wrong is the result of pushing boundaries, exploring possibilities, and investigating the unknown, being wrong can be very healthy.

Continuing to restrict growth by perpetuating unhealthy perceptions about mistakes does nothing but limit possibilities. There is a whole world out there at your disposal; a world that views the world differently than you. Your ability to maximize your team’s effectiveness, their creativeness, and their development is founded in part on how you perceive mistakes.

Here are five situations where being wrong is more advantageous that constantly being right:

1. Test your assumptions: Are you blind to your own knowledge and expertise? Have you become so good at one way that you have stopped looking at alternate solutions to your most pressing problems? Try to purposely test what you believe to be true to see if it really is still true or if you are missing something that is right in front of you.
2. Practice risk: Far too many companies reward people for making the right decision instead of the hard decision. In time, the right decision can easily become safe decision while the best decision was actually the risky decision. Learn how to push the boundaries of risk, where you can grow from trying something new, and where you can move forward by not playing it safe.
3. Test the feedback you are receiving: There is an old adage that the higher you go in an organization; the less you know what is really happening. Sometimes it is wise to push the converse of the feedback you receive just to test the validity of the feedback. It is easy to surround yourself with people who will only tell you what you want to hear. Sometimes you need to hear the contrarian’s viewpoint.
4. Develop something new: No organization has ever experienced their greatest accomplishment by maintaining the status quo. Greatness comes from breakthrough events, bold decisions, and sometimes by good luck. At one time the iPhone was just an idea, as were the PC and the internet. Just because someone hasn’t tried something new doesn’t mean the world won’t embrace your new idea as the next best thing.
5. Show vulnerability: It is very difficult to get your people to stop trying to be perfect if you insist on always being perfect. Show your organization it is alright to fail forward, to learn from our mistakes and even to laugh at ourselves. Kouzes and Possner implore all leaders to “Model the Way” in their groundbreaking book The Leadership Challenge. Make sure you are modeling what you want others to actually emulate.

Tomorrow, when you find yourself judging someone because they are “wrong” in some way, consider following the advice of Benjamin Zander, author of The Art of Possibility. Raise your hands high in the air and scream out, “How fascinating!” Then liberate your mind from your own paradigm, move past the role models who shaped your perceptions that being wrong is dangerous, and look for a new way to view the world.  Once you find a new lens through which to view the world, share your discovery with your team and unshackle them from the constraints of having to always be right. Open the door to allow them to fail forward, to push the envelope of possibility, and to expand the boundaries of possibility.

Scott Brown, MSOL, is the Founder and Chief Engagement Officer at Hardie Consulting, a Fort Lauderdale, FL based management consulting firm.  Scott is a coach, a consultant, an author, and an award winning speaker who has successfully helped countless organizations learn how to meet shifting customer and employee expectations. Follow him on Twitter: @ScottBrownMSOL, connect with him on LinkedIn, visit his website:  www.HardieConsulting.com, and check out his new book, Alignment: How to Transform Potential into Performance, Productivity and Profit, available on Amazon or CreateSpace to learn more about how employee engagement and organizational alignment can become the linchpin to your success.