Do You Want To Be Right Or Do You Want To Be Married?

Life is tough. Its tougher when you are stupid. One of the most frustrating things about being an advisor to others is when you watch smart, intelligent, even accomplished people fall into what I call the TEST – temporary emotional stupid trap. It’s human nature I guess, kind of like the killer’s plea for temporary insanity. Emotion takes over and you dig in to fight because you believe you are right and the other party is wrong.

Early in my career I learnt the principle that just because you are right doesn’t mean you are in the right. At the time we were driving change throughout a dysfunctional decentralized organization across 14 countries in Europe and the Project Lead decided to implement a quarter of the changes we believed feasible in the interest of keeping the whole program together. Millions of dollars were being left on the table and I couldn’t understand why. I fought as hard as I could to take a different course but in the end was over ruled. In a TEST moment I charged into our Managing Director’s office and emotionally let loose. 40 seconds later I thought I was going to be fired.

Thankfully the boss was an experienced enough leader to know how to handle people, especially as passionate and egotistical as I was (I have since lost the ego thankfully). He spent 45 minutes explaining to me why I was right but failed to see the bigger picture in the situation, and therefore not ‘in the right’. It was a humbling experience, especially since 7 months later we successfully implemented what was a significant change across the client’s organization that frankly tested the boundaries of their people and organization. Our Project Leader was right, if we had tried to drive any more change we would have failed the whole program.

Regardless, the lesson was not fully appreciated by me until much later in my life. I went on with my career trying to keep the bigger picture in mind as tactical decisions were made but never quite mastering the concept of TEST. To be clear, I kept my own TEST in check and can honestly say I never lost it quite like that day again, but I failed to identify other people’s falling into the TEST, until one day a client and close friend called me on a Sunday afternoon.

“Shar, its Adam. Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday but we have to call off the project. Emily and I are sadly getting divorced so we will be selling the company. I’m sorry.”

Adam and Emily are co-owners of a multi-million dollar enterprise that they have built from the ground up over 20 years of partnership, and they had hired my firm to devise a turnaround plan that would pave the way to expanding through acquisition. I was stunned by the short and direct call out of the blue from Adam. “Adam, I’ll be at your house at 7am tomorrow morning. I want to see you and Emily both.”

Now I’m no marriage counselor, heck I’m not even married. But one thing I understood at that point in my career is that we human beings make life so much tougher because of our stupidity, temporary or otherwise. I drove to Adam and Emily’s home the next morning early and sat in their kitchen sipping coffee and listening to what was going on. Without going into the details this was a simple case of both parties falling into TEST and digging in. This had been going on since Thursday evening and by Sunday they decided it was time to call curtains on a 20-year partnership that had produced 3 great kids and a thriving business that so few accomplish in a lifetime. Silly, just silly.

“Okay guys, I have heard both of you and here are my thoughts. You are both right. But do you want to be right or do you want to be married?”

Not until that moment did I realize just how far we human beings will go when we believe we are right. Adam and Emily are two incredibly smart people who had temporarily lost sight of the big picture. It didn’t take much more of a conversation for them to realize what I meant by do you want to be right or do you want to be married? I have found that in every aspect of life people are blinded by being right such that they fail to achieve their goals. Whether it’s a couple arguing over their happiness or a terrorist believing in his cause, people are blinded by their beliefs to the detriment of the bigger picture.

In my professional life I have found it important to achieve one simple thing to avoid stakeholders and decision makers from digging in and claiming ‘right’. That one thing is understanding. When you are focused solely on your objectives then you lack an understanding of others’ position, specifically demonstrating understanding. Now to be clear, understanding does not mean agreement. But if you are unwilling to demonstrate understanding then you are not going to get understanding back.

This sounds like such a simple thing but time and time again people have proven to miss this very simple principle. Couples engage in one-way communication, consultants talk ‘at’ customers with their slides, and countries go to war. By attempting to understand others’ position you are able to connect to what matters to them and move forward. It’s a basic law of communication and human nature, yet the majority of man-kind fails to grasp this.

In my experience when I am able to demonstrate an understanding of someone’s position then I am able to move forward with the agenda I originally set out to achieve. People are smart enough to understand the value you bring, but only if they have been heard and taken into consideration first. Question is are you smart enough to understand when you need to stop being right?