Our Need To Be Right

The meeting has become a little heated. Battle lines have been drawn. The argument has been going for a while now. Neither side is backing down. But then you see it! A chink in their logical armour. A flaw in their argument. This is your chance. You marshal your thoughts and go in for the kill! The argument is yours! It will be your proposal that gets accepted, not theirs. I mean, sure, their proposal had some good points, but yours was clearly superior. Clearly. Probably a good thing they didn't pick up in that bit where you had to fudge some numbers to make things look better… like you did with theirs.

OK. How often have we sat on the sidelines watching others slug it out and thought about how the argument has gone on way past the point where it is about getting a good outcome and become about winning the argument instead? Regardless of the quality of the outcome? How often have we been in this sort of situation ourselves and thought about how important it is to win the argument? So why does this happen? Why can we see how silly it is when we watch others but can't see that same behaviour in ourselves?

We all have a bias towards our own ideas. We have put effort into them. We are invested in them, and we won't give up that investment lightly. Unless we have our idea adopted, the time we spent coming up with it will have been wasted. And also, if someone else wins, it means that someone else has come up with a better idea than ours and that hits us right in the ego. Because of our investment in our idea, we tend to argue to win, rather than discuss to get the best outcome. And if we don't win, we go through back channels to keep the argument alive and undermine the winning solution to try to get the organisation to switch to ours.

We hold onto our ideas very tightly and protect them from outside influence.

The big problem with arguing to win is that the outcome is forgotten. We focus on demolishing the other person's idea and refuting their arguments, rather than using their feedback to strengthen our idea. Or providing feedback to strengthen theirs. We end up with a winning argument rather than the best solution. We end up with ongoing conflict rather than everyone working together to implement the solution.

This is bad for the organisation because we don't end up with the best possible solution. It is bad for us because the heated arguments strain relationships. It causes stress. It's bad for the health of the organisation and ourselves. So how do we stop?

We need to stop holding onto our ideas so tightly. We need to start seeing our ideas as things we can contribute to a shared pool of knowledge. Our idea is not the only idea. Other ideas are welcome because they increase the amount of knowledge in the pool. With increased knowledge we can create even better solutions.

We need to see our ideas as imperfect and able to be improved through feedback. Our idea is not a perfect thing. It has certain strengths and certain weaknesses. There are other ideas out there that have different sets of strengths and weaknesses. By placing the idea on the table alongside other ideas, we can see their relative merits and use that knowledge to improve all the ideas.

We need to view our ideas with humility. Our idea is the best we could come up with given the information at our disposal and the skills and ability we can bring to the problem. But it may not be the best idea. Others may have more information or more skills to bring to bear. This is not a criticism of us but an opportunity to learn more.

We need to view the ideas of others with curiosity rather than defensiveness. Other ideas are welcome and valuable as they add knowledge to the shared pool. We will seek to understand the other ideas with an open mind, seek out their strengths and weaknesses and give honest, unbiased feedback. Be genuinely curious about how they reached their conclusions. Be generous with your interpretations. If there is a flaw or mistake don't dismiss the whole thing out of hand, the rest of the idea may be sound. Or your understanding may be faulty - the mistake may be yours.

So what would this look like? Let's rewind our meeting from before -

The meeting has become a little heated. Battle lines have been drawn. The argument has been going for a while now. Neither side is backing down. But then you see it! A chink in their logical armour. A flaw in their argument. This is your chance. Your marshal your thoughts...and stop yourself because you realise that you are now arguing to win rather than trying to reach the best solution. You take a deep breath. "Hang on guys...let's focus on the outcome here. I'll freely admit that the revenue side of my plan is a little weak, but to be fair, the delivery side of yours is a bit weak as well. Can we take your revenue model and my delivery plan and see what happens when we put them together? Thinking about it a bit more, there was another idea we dismissed a while ago that had a really interesting approach to after sales support...can we bring that into the mix as well?"

If we hold our ideas lightly, view them with humility, if we value the ideas of others, if we contribute to a shared pool of knowledge rather than hold knowledge to ourselves, if we focus on the outcome rather than winning the argument we end up with the best solution for the organisation and ourselves.