It’s my self-admitted worst trait. Not that I’m wrong on purpose or out of malice or anything. But when I think I know the answer, I will often express it as if I know the answer.
It’s a terrible personality trait and I’ve been trying to work on it by forcing myself to use the words “I think…” before saying anything.
However…as someone in a leadership role, I also believe that sometimes, when there is no black-or-white answer, it’s more important to be confident than to be right so as to not undermine the teams confidence in your leadership/decision making. Captain Picard taught me that.
I don’t mean in terms of giving answers to questions. I mean in terms of decision making. When facing a decision with two equal possible outcomes, it’s more important to be decisive than to be wishy washy.
“Hey boss. For this project we can either continue doing “x” or we can shift over to doing “y”. What should be do?” In those types of situations it’s more important to make a decision and be confident in your decision. If you second guess, they’re going to second guess.
Yeah, nothing gets me to cut my leader out of the loop on shit I’m working on faster than knowing they won’t hear me out when I disagree with them on something. Like I might be wrong myself but we need to talk it out, not just disregard my knowledge and experience because “your the boss”. Same went when I was a leader. If someone disagreed with a decision of mine my door was always open.
I feel it can be more important to be confident than right, in the moment, but once that moment is over you want to correct yourself and let others know that you were wrong about x, y, or z.
I feel the way you handle trying to be confident, even when you may be wrong, matters as well. For instance, you don’t want to be dismissive of the correction, but you should assert that you’ll reconfirm the details so there’s no ambiguity, but you’ll approach x problem with y solution for now until you’ve had time to verify z.
There’s lot of examples I can think of where it can go both ways.
In an sport for instance the optimal play can be worse if not everyone is on the same page, so sometimes the decent play where everyone is on the same page is the one a leader would want to be pushing for.
In an emergency, having a leader giving directions to keep people calm and organized can matter even if it’s not the optimal way of handling things.
The opposite can be true too there though, if a leader is trying to have people put out a fire with a rag, water, or a broom when a fire extinguisher in present then the individual that thinks to grab and use the fire extinguisher could be demonstrating that there are times when it makes sense to override the leader.
The leader above is still doing the right thing by tackling the problem the only way they know how in the moment, but as individuals we need to be able to know when we should go along with the plan the leader puts forward or when to break from that plan.
I disagree that they don’t apply due to the subjective discussion. The issue is we’re talking about something very abstract like it’s always black and white when reality has a lot of grey.
How are we defining knowing better here?
If we’re saying the leader knows that there is information they don’t know, but they act like they do know that information then that can lead to trust issues.
If a leader doesn’t know that they don’t know something, then you would hope they have the capacity to learn and are willing to learn new pieces of information so that they can be more informed.
In either case though, you expect them to act based on the information in front of them that they are familiar with. If you bring up new information, in a low stakes setting, they should be open to receiving that new information.
If you bring up new information in a high stakes setting, that can catch some leaders off-guard since in theory they have had time to review all of the present information before a setting was high stakes. If for some reason the ‘facts table’ being used is wrong or outdated then I believe discreetly bringing this information up to the leader in these situations can be beneficial but I would leave the judgment call to them for what information to go off of.
It feels like you are talking about something else, not the issue from the TO. It is specifically saying something, intentionally, that is either wrong or unknown but in either case confidently, as if you know/are correct. And that is not the right thing to do. Perhaps there are rare edge cases where that would be okay.
Example from my week, training. This week I was training some fresh employees, one of them asked a really good question which I didn’t have an answer to at the time. I told them as much and said I’ll come back to them after the session to find an answer to their question. They were unhappy with my answer but I had a class full of people who want to get back out to do their work. The best thing to do was move on, get everyone else going then follow-up. Which I did and I learned something. My point being, sometimes it’s better to be wrong and move on than to stop everything to answer a single question. Experience has informed me what questions I have to take immediately and what ones I can circle back to.
Oh man if I found out my manager had that mentality I’d be second-guessing literally everything they say forever. I would much rather someone say “I don’t know, but that’s a good question. I’ll find out for you” than give me the wrong information confidently.
I already struggle with respecting authority figures who clearly don’t know what they are doing and thus have no actual basis for their authority, so yeah that’d be a ticking time bomb.
Please try to move away from doing that. It’s genuinely not great for your reports, only for you to put in less effort.
I don’t mean in terms of giving answers to questions. I mean in terms of decision making. When facing a decision with two equal possible outcomes, it’s more important to be decisive than to be wishy washy.
“Hey boss. For this project we can either continue doing “x” or we can shift over to doing “y”. What should be do?” In those types of situations it’s more important to make a decision and be confident in your decision. If you second guess, they’re going to second guess.
It’s my self-admitted worst trait. Not that I’m wrong on purpose or out of malice or anything. But when I think I know the answer, I will often express it as if I know the answer.
It’s a terrible personality trait and I’ve been trying to work on it by forcing myself to use the words “I think…” before saying anything.
However…as someone in a leadership role, I also believe that sometimes, when there is no black-or-white answer, it’s more important to be confident than to be right so as to not undermine the teams confidence in your leadership/decision making. Captain Picard taught me that.
… No dude, it isn’t.
I think maybe I worded that wrong.
I don’t mean in terms of giving answers to questions. I mean in terms of decision making. When facing a decision with two equal possible outcomes, it’s more important to be decisive than to be wishy washy.
“Hey boss. For this project we can either continue doing “x” or we can shift over to doing “y”. What should be do?” In those types of situations it’s more important to make a decision and be confident in your decision. If you second guess, they’re going to second guess.
Yeah, nothing gets me to cut my leader out of the loop on shit I’m working on faster than knowing they won’t hear me out when I disagree with them on something. Like I might be wrong myself but we need to talk it out, not just disregard my knowledge and experience because “your the boss”. Same went when I was a leader. If someone disagreed with a decision of mine my door was always open.
I think they’re half right.
I feel it can be more important to be confident than right, in the moment, but once that moment is over you want to correct yourself and let others know that you were wrong about x, y, or z.
I feel the way you handle trying to be confident, even when you may be wrong, matters as well. For instance, you don’t want to be dismissive of the correction, but you should assert that you’ll reconfirm the details so there’s no ambiguity, but you’ll approach x problem with y solution for now until you’ve had time to verify z.
How can that be more important? What moment?
There’s lot of examples I can think of where it can go both ways.
In an sport for instance the optimal play can be worse if not everyone is on the same page, so sometimes the decent play where everyone is on the same page is the one a leader would want to be pushing for.
In an emergency, having a leader giving directions to keep people calm and organized can matter even if it’s not the optimal way of handling things. The opposite can be true too there though, if a leader is trying to have people put out a fire with a rag, water, or a broom when a fire extinguisher in present then the individual that thinks to grab and use the fire extinguisher could be demonstrating that there are times when it makes sense to override the leader.
The leader above is still doing the right thing by tackling the problem the only way they know how in the moment, but as individuals we need to be able to know when we should go along with the plan the leader puts forward or when to break from that plan.
Sports etc. seem super subjective, so it does not really apply there. I specially mean knowing better but still saying something wrong.
I disagree that they don’t apply due to the subjective discussion. The issue is we’re talking about something very abstract like it’s always black and white when reality has a lot of grey.
How are we defining knowing better here?
If we’re saying the leader knows that there is information they don’t know, but they act like they do know that information then that can lead to trust issues.
If a leader doesn’t know that they don’t know something, then you would hope they have the capacity to learn and are willing to learn new pieces of information so that they can be more informed.
In either case though, you expect them to act based on the information in front of them that they are familiar with. If you bring up new information, in a low stakes setting, they should be open to receiving that new information.
If you bring up new information in a high stakes setting, that can catch some leaders off-guard since in theory they have had time to review all of the present information before a setting was high stakes. If for some reason the ‘facts table’ being used is wrong or outdated then I believe discreetly bringing this information up to the leader in these situations can be beneficial but I would leave the judgment call to them for what information to go off of.
It feels like you are talking about something else, not the issue from the TO. It is specifically saying something, intentionally, that is either wrong or unknown but in either case confidently, as if you know/are correct. And that is not the right thing to do. Perhaps there are rare edge cases where that would be okay.
Example from my week, training. This week I was training some fresh employees, one of them asked a really good question which I didn’t have an answer to at the time. I told them as much and said I’ll come back to them after the session to find an answer to their question. They were unhappy with my answer but I had a class full of people who want to get back out to do their work. The best thing to do was move on, get everyone else going then follow-up. Which I did and I learned something. My point being, sometimes it’s better to be wrong and move on than to stop everything to answer a single question. Experience has informed me what questions I have to take immediately and what ones I can circle back to.
But you were not wrong and instead did the right thing? There is no need to confidently say nonsense.
Oh man if I found out my manager had that mentality I’d be second-guessing literally everything they say forever. I would much rather someone say “I don’t know, but that’s a good question. I’ll find out for you” than give me the wrong information confidently.
I already struggle with respecting authority figures who clearly don’t know what they are doing and thus have no actual basis for their authority, so yeah that’d be a ticking time bomb.
Please try to move away from doing that. It’s genuinely not great for your reports, only for you to put in less effort.
I think maybe I worded that wrong.
I don’t mean in terms of giving answers to questions. I mean in terms of decision making. When facing a decision with two equal possible outcomes, it’s more important to be decisive than to be wishy washy.
“Hey boss. For this project we can either continue doing “x” or we can shift over to doing “y”. What should be do?” In those types of situations it’s more important to make a decision and be confident in your decision. If you second guess, they’re going to second guess.