Courage to Change and Say, 'I'm Now Wrong'
A conversation about wisely being able to change our minds
It takes cognitive flexibility and confidence to changes directions of thought and say, hey, you know something? "Things change. I'm now wrong. Maybe I was right before but maybe not. Maybe I was never right,” Tim Cook, Apple CEO, recently said remembering how his boss, the late Steve Jobs, could suddenly make adjustments.
Cook pointed out that part of Jobs’ strength and power was his ability and willingness to, in certain situations, to move off hard beliefs when he learned more.
Cook detailed his interpretation of his boss’ thinking and communication behavior in these types of interactions.
“It takes courage to do that.”
There is a short video of the conversation if you care to watch and listen.
What makes this interesting to Communication Intelligence, the Newsletter is not only the main idea but that Jobs was well known for also being a dominant and yes, overbearing personality to many people. So him additionally displaying what Cook mentions shows that it can be possible for other “hard” people to do so as well, if they can come to see the value of doing what Jobs did.
Dr. Cindy Goodwin-Sak, the creator of Valiant Leadership, a framework for leaders to take their team performance, innovation and their careers to the next level and Parker Gilbert, CEO & Co-Founder of Numeric.io, an AI-driven accounting automation company, talk with the newsletter about this topic, especially within a leadership context.
“Tim Cook is sharing what is likely the most critical trait of a leader — courage,” says Goodwin-Sak. “Teams will emulate a leader's behaviors. That means leaders have to lead by example. If you want high-quality and ethical decision-making, your leaders must admit it when they are wrong. It's the only way to get an entire organization to behave that way. But that takes incredible courage.”
What makes it taxing emotionally and psychologically is how our brain has developed naturally and subsequently programmed by our personal experiences.
“We are hard-wired as humans to be perceived as part of the group, to be accepted, to be protected by the tribe,” Goodwin-Sak states, adding that, “If we show weakness, we're wired to believe that others will reject us, that we'll lose our social status or even our physical safety. To demonstrate vulnerability, biologically feels like a fight or flight moment.”
There is another factor in play that demands the flexible thinking and changing course.
“If we accept that the world is changing at a faster rate — just think about how much has changed in the past 6 months with AI developments alone — then we also must accept that our previously held beliefs are increasingly being proven wrong,” Gilbert says. “Nearly every opinion and approach has an expiration date.”
He expounds on his point.
“When you view yourself as right in the moment versus universally right, you open the door to seeing what may actually be true at a given point in time,” Gilbert says.
This can be taken a step further he asserts to get people’s attention about what can be done by them as well within the professional culture.
“When you accept that you're potentially flat out wrong, you allow others on your team to be flat out wrong,” Gilbert stresses. “Which, if you're optimizing for being creative and accepting a certain degree of risk, you will be wrong often.”
He analyzes Cook’s viewpoint on Jobs’ hunger for the better-or-best decision
“I read this quote as a recognition that much of business is really informed hypotheses that are proven right or wrong,” Gilbert says. “Science progresses when we're honest about what is right and wrong, the same with business decisions.”
When Goodwin-Sak thinks about Jobs’ mindset for herself, she thinks about how she applies it and how regularly.
“I struggle to demonstrate this level of courage consistently,” she says in a moment of vulnerability. “I'm human like any other person… overcoming that fear of rejection is challenging to do consistently. We get better at it with practice because we build confidence.”
When asked how she experiences, perceives and judges others when they communicate in this manner, she clearly recognizes what it requires of them.
“I see admitting you're wrong or demonstrating vulnerability as incredibly hard to do and something to be admired,” Goodwin-Sak says. “I think most people feel this way.”
She does voice a concern, maybe one shared by many, that infers only a select few can, in practice, act in this honest, humble manner.
“In our leadership environment that is often dominated by narcissists whose charisma and charm have taken them far in their careers, those narcissists will see it as a weakness and use it against another leader to get ahead.”
Gilbert argues though that facts and truth are important, critical even — and the willingness to communicate them about our thinking, plans and decisions is necessary, as painfully uncomfortable as it may be emotionally and psychologically.
“When people clearly communicate where they've been wrong — and we ask almost every new hire to tell us about a time they were wrong or any opinion that has been changed — I see a commitment to truth-seeking and an acknowledgement that in the long-run, business is about placing informed bets, understanding that not all of those bets will pan out,” he says.
This is not as simple as it seems, he admits.
“I empathize with the balance for many leaders in being so open with mistakes. To be effective, you need to inspire confidence from your team, which requires communicating about flaws and mistakes, but also not destroying faith,” Gilbert says.
The reality, he adds, is that it isn’t easy, courage or not, because “For every leader, getting this balance right about what information should be shared and when, makes accepting this quote in practice, a bit more challenging than believing in it in theory.”
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