Admit You're Wrong, and They'll Trust You to Be Right

By Steven Cochran, Impression MGMT. Leadership Specialist

You cannot get along with everybody all the time and you can't get rid of anybody every time. If you want better interactions, more consistently, with co-workers, bosses, and employees, embrace how wrong you are when those interactions go badly.

Being wrong sucks, so to avoid it, we do the clever thing: we insist we're not. When a conversation slides off the rails, both of you walk away certain the problem was sitting in the other chair.

The leadership approach to take is not conceding arguments or lowering your standards.

It is to look at the parts of an interaction and find the part that is yours; there are at least four to consider.

If you start doing that, they will start trusting and listening to you more.

Every lesson I teach runs the same route: one idea, carried from how you think, to what you know, to what you do. If it doesn't end in behavior, it's just a nice show. So here's the idea, run all the way through.

Embracing being wrong is the most important leadership skill you can develop.

How do we think about being wrong?

We think being wrong sucks. Not because it costs us much, but because being right feels so good. When we're right, we get to feel righteous, and that is an addictive feeling. We will fight for that feeling.

We think that being wrong is like failure; it isn't. Failures have an end-point and we deal with them by trying again. Being wrong can go on forever, and it only changes when we learn something new; in this case, learning something new about specific people. Ever heard somebody in your company say, "I keep saying this over and over and they just don't get it"? That is someone that's trying to fix being wrong like it is failure.

We think that being wrong an either-or proposition: one of us right, one of us wrong, and usually them. When you think about what goes on during any interaction, you realize how many different things can go wrong.

The first is the tidy little story. If they just knew my intentions, if they just saw what I saw, they would have agreed. They didn't fail to be right; they failed to see that I was. The story feels safe to tell, and it quietly wrecks your credibility, because everyone can watch you telling it.

The second costs more. Failure has a clock on it: you try the thing, it dies, you try again. Being wrong has no clock. You can be wrong forever. We treat it like failure anyway. We walk away, calm down, come back tomorrow, and try again. Same words, same volume, same result. Ever heard somebody in your company say, "I keep saying this over and over and they just don't get it"? That's somebody trying to out-effort being wrong. Effort fixes failure. Learning fixes wrong, and when the wrong involves people, that means learning about people. That's the hard kind. People are complicated.

Failure is a broken clock. Being wrong is a clock that runs perfectly, set in the wrong time zone. It never tells you it's off.

The third is the ego talking. Right or wrong, no in-between. But being wrong isn't a coin flip; it's a spectrum, and we all live somewhere between the extremes. The question is rarely "am I wrong here?" It's "how am I wrong?" That swap is the whole skill.

What do we know about being wrong?

There are four places you can go wrong in any interaction: your message, your delivery, your reception, your assumptions.

The message is the claim itself: were you factually right? The delivery is how you said it. I can tell you something true, just the two of us at a table, and scream it in your face. Factually correct; delivery a little off. The reception is how you listened: on your phone, rolling your eyes, interrupting. And the assumptions are everything you didn't know about their day, which is always more than you think.

"Never assume someone leads a simple life, simply because you know so little about it."

Now, a message about the guy who says "I just tell it like it is. I just gotta be honest." Honesty describes the message, not the delivery; there is no such thing as honest delivery. Being factually accurate is the easiest part of a message, and by taking the easy road, you will forfeit people caring to understand you. To those that are thoughtful with other people, don't let people be lazy with you, and don't be lazy with them. Think about who you're talking to before you start talking.

I did not go to business school, but I hear that Harvard has a good one. Amy Edmondson is a professor there in the school of Leadership and Management; she claims that high-performing teams report more errors, not fewer; they feel safe enough to admit them. Apparently Google has also done a study of 180 of its own teams in Project Aristotle; they report that the top thing separating the best from the rest was psychological safety: people feeling safe to speak up and be wrong.

What happens when the peer or the boss is never wrong?

First of all, you don't get anyone's support when you aren't around. You get eye-rolled and ignored as often as possible. If you have some authority, then people stop telling you things. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. workers strongly agree their opinions count at work. That's pathetic. Put a leader in the room who cannot be wrong and that number falls through the floor, and with it goes the exact information you need to run the place. It poisons teams at any level, and the fix starts with whoever holds the authority modeling something better.

Gallup runs the numbers the same direction: when employees feel they contribute, organizations see about 27% lower turnover and 12% higher productivity. How information is given and taken decides whether it flows at all. Delivering truth so it gets accepted isn't soft. It's operational competence.

So what do you actually do about it?

Three options moves. They all cost you comfort.

One: Erase Always and Never. It turns out that always is always wrong and never is never right. Tell somebody what they always do or never do, and all they need is one exception, one time, and your credibility is gone. You've shown them you didn't care enough to think before you spoke; why should they care to listen? So make the straight swap. Always becomes often. Never becomes not often enough. "You never show up on time" becomes "you don't show up on time often enough." It's truer, and it keeps the other person out of defense, which keeps a conversation a conversation.

PSA: The rest of the world didn't read this, so they'll keep saying always and never at you. Just be the leader and translate for them. When you hear "you always do this," hear "I do this a lot," and answer that instead. You can salvage a conversation in your own head before you say a word. That's not going soft; that's you being the leader in the room. All behavior is skill, and you don't get mad at somebody for missing free throws.

Two: Ask The Question. The next time you walk away thinking that didn't go how I wanted, or they seemed off, ask yourself one thing and don't move on until you answer it: how was I wrong? Not sarcastically. Honestly. There is an answer, I promise you, and it lives in one of the four places: your message, your delivery, your reception, or your assumptions. Figure out which one. Don't pretend, for Pete's sake, that it's none of them. That's just being wrong twice.

Three: Deliver The Answer. Take it to that person the next day and say it out loud. The next day. "Yesterday when we talked, I think I could have done a better job listening before I gave you my opinion."

No qualifiers. No "but you did this too." You own your piece and you stop.

Read me clearly: I'm not telling you to go along to get along, and I'm not asking you to concede a point you should win. There is an opening in the day after a bad interaction with somebody you'll work with for the long haul, and almost nobody uses it. You played a role in the negativity. Find it, lead with it, learn from it.

Key takeaways

• How you think: being wrong isn't failure and it isn't either-or. It's a spectrum, and the question is how wrong, not whether.

• What you know: in every hard conversation you're a little wrong somewhere: message, delivery, reception, or assumptions.

• What you do: erase always and never, ask how was I wrong, and deliver the answer the next day.

• Effort fixes failure. Only learning fixes being wrong.

• Owning your part builds trust. The boss who is never wrong runs a team that tells them nothing.

  
  

FAQ

Does admitting you're wrong make you look weak as a leader?

It was weak people that started this nonsense. No. Handled with maturity, it does the opposite: own your part and fix it, and people trust you to be right when it counts. Defensiveness is what reads as weak.

How do you admit you were wrong without losing authority?

Be specific and brief, and do it face to face the next day. Name the part that was yours, then stop. You are not groveling, for god's sake. You are showing you can be trusted with the truth.

Isn't this just conceding every argument?

Not even close. You are not being wrong more often or giving up a point you are correct about. You are finding the portion of wrong that is actually yours, in the message, the delivery, the reception, or the assumptions, and owning that part.

How soon should you go back?

The next day. Not in the moment, if you are too pissed off or otherwise emotional. Not a week later. Don't overthink it.

What is the difference between being wrong and bad delivery?

Honesty describes your message, not your delivery. "I just tell it like it is" is a delivery problem dressed up as a virtue. You can be right and still be wrong in how you said it.

What are the four ways you can be wrong in a conversation?

Your message (were you factually right?), your delivery (how you said it), your reception (how you listened), and your assumptions (what you didn't know about their day). The answer to "how was I wrong?" lives in one of those four.

Is being wrong the same thing as failing?

No. Failure has a clock on it: the attempt ends, and you try again. Being wrong can run forever, and effort won't fix it. Only learning does, usually about the other person.

Why should you stop saying always and never?

Because always is always wrong and never is never true. The other person needs one exception to dismiss everything you said. Swap in often and not often enough. Truer, and it keeps them out of defense.

Some of you had one of these conversations this week

Go find your part, then go deliver it. That's the whole route: how you think, what you know, what you do.

It is the work you do when you don't have to that will determine who you are when you can't help it. This is that work.

If you want a read on where your leadership reputation stands, take the free Leadership Snapshot.

Sources

• Google, Project Aristotle (re:Work): psychological safety is the top driver of team effectiveness. rework.withgoogle.com

• Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School: high-performing teams report more errors, not fewer.

• Gallup: about 3 in 10 U.S. employees strongly agree their opinions count at work; raising it is tied to lower turnover and higher productivity. gallup.com