"Being Right" vs. "Getting It Right" (A Hard Lesson in Leadership)

I want to explore the concept of failure and why it's so hard to embrace being wrong or not getting it right, or shall I say, not being right. I'm gonna say that when I have ran from failure, when I didn't want to acknowledge that I was wrong, I was always trying and proving to seek that I was right. This is something that I think gave me a sense show— now I look at it, it was a false sense of security, but it gave me a sense of security because if I was right, then people would want me, people would recognize my value, and people would realize that I am an extraordinary leader. However, as time had progressed, I realized that I was clinging to things that did not even align with who I wanted to be as a leader. External validation, awards, compensation, accolades, those things that made me feel like I was worthy and I was valuable. So I had to lean into why it was so difficult for me to feel like I failed. I think when I thought I was failing, I not only felt like I was failing myself, I felt like I was failing my team. But the reality is my feelings, they were real, but what I actually was thinking wasn't necessarily true. Because being right— or yeah, being right— can get in your way of getting it right. And the reality is perfectionism does not even exist. Being perfect doesn't exist, which means we're constantly striving for something that we're never going to accomplish. So we're gonna fail. It's set up for us to fail. We can't be perfect, and operating from a high level of perfectionism only makes us feel like we're striving and we're accomplishing something and we're valuable when we really are never going to be able to accomplish the thing that we're striving for. So being okay with not getting it right is critical. There was a time when I couldn't admit that I wasn't right, and it did not serve the people I was leading, because if I didn't feel like I could be wrong, they didn't feel like they could be wrong. I'll never forget a time where I gave one of my highest performing employees a project. She brought it back to me and it was fair, but it wasn't representative of the work that I knew that she could do. So I asked her, what happened with this assignment? She was like, what do you mean? I said, I know what your work looks like, and I know what you're capable of, and this does not necessarily align with what was asked in the project. But she started explaining away what happened and why she did it this way and that way. And what I was trying to explain to her was that if she had slowed down and looked at the guidance I had provided her, which she's done before she would have been able to deliver the project in a way that answered what was being requested and required. So she went on and on, and I gave her an opportunity and gave her space. And when she was done, I said, 'And my question remains the same.' I also share with her, 'I'm on your team. I'm not mad at you. This isn't like a stain on your character. However, this is an assignment where you didn't quite meet the expectation. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to be right. I'm just wondering what got in your way from asking for support and for help. And that's where she said she didn't want to be viewed as somebody who could not take the project and get the project done right, and she felt like she asked questions that would be a reflection of her incompetence. That was so enlightening to me because I had to then think, when have I done this? And I had. That's why I was able to see it. I recognized I was constantly striving to get things just so and just perfect because I didn't want anyone to think that I was incompetent, that that had trickled down to the people who I was serving. One of my best performers. And then I had to lean into why am I looking for her to perform instead of for her to deliver and for her to stand true in who she is and in her truth, which is she doesn't have to know it all. So that conversation gave us both insight and allowed us both to connect on a stronger, deeper level. She knew she could trust me, and I knew I could trust her. And so in the future, she didn't bat an eye. She would come to me and she would ask for help, and she would ask for help in a way that wasn't placing a burden on me. She would do the research, she would look at all the different possible avenues, and then she would approach me and say, hey, I know this This is what was being asked. This is what I'm seeing. Help me understand if I'm on the right track. What else could I be missing? Where could I do something different? She had took the feedback and she applied it real time, and she gave me inspiration and the courage to do something different myself. So often when we are trying to be right, we are not only doing ourselves a disservice, but we're doing someone else a disservice. I want to share a quote that I heard from John Maxwell, which actually brought me to this topic today. He said that the moment his perspective again changed, he hung around. And he's talking about he hung around with failure. He said, here's what I know: if I leave the failure, I'll repeat it again. If I learn from the failure, I'll get better. So do I want to keep failing in the same area? Because we know people who do that Or do I want to learn from it? I think what I experienced with my employee and even with myself was that we hung around with failure. I had to hang around with failing to create a psychologically safe environment for my employee to feel like she could share what she didn't know with me and not be judged and not be criticized and not be labeled. That was the failure that I experienced. And she had to sit with the failure of not delivering what the project was asking for. She had to sit with the fact that she didn't get it right and that she didn't need to be right. And I think both of us in that moment realized, I don't have to be right. I can work hard to get it right, and I can also hold space and create space to not be right. And when I'm not right, what can I take from the experience? What can I do to elevate and expand? This is all a part of my Receive, Perceive, Respond method, because we cannot control all the things that are going to come at us and knock us out of alignment or out of our center. But what we can do is lean into our feelings and lean into our experiences and accept them, that they're real, accept that they're valid, and also look at what are we making something mean, and know that whatever we're making something mean may not always be true. You see, I was making it mean that she could come to me with anything, but that wasn't the reality of what I was showing, right? So to me, I was telling myself, I'm valuable, I'm a leader, I can show her what to do. And the meaning I was making was that she wasn't coming to me and she was going to deliver, but she knew she could come to me. Then when she brought her projects to me and I realized like there was a disconnect, the meaning-making she had was if she came to me that I was going to judge her, I was going to, um, maybe put— not give her the same projects or not hold her with the same regard, which was not true. However, I have failed at creating the psychological safety for her to know that she could come to me. So there was a misstep on both of our parts, and instead of me just focusing on whatever the misstep was on her part, I was able to lean into where my misstep was. She was able to lean into where her misstep was. And was it failure? I mean, we could call it that. We didn't— we didn't— we weren't right. And we recognized we were not always ever going to be right. So that was, I think, the biggest learning lesson. And then the ability to look inward, the ability to employ our critical thinking, that was also a growth opportunity. And we both were better for the conversation. We were both better for the experience. If you want to get better with things that you experience, I have a resource for you that is available 24/7. It is My Virtual Mind. You can call it at any time of the night. You can talk to it. You can give it a question and it will respond. I invite you to contact my Virtual Mind and you can have 2 minutes for free to see if you like it. If you share your email, you'll get 5 minutes. So check out my Virtual Mind and figure out how you can lean more into not being right and sit with failure so that you can get it right, that you can elevate and expand. As you connect to yourself and connect to others.