In our Blog on Monday we raised the issue that being right can be wrong.
The media focuses on business people (and politicians) who appear to have that insatiable need to be right. So much so that when they “debate” they refuse to let anyone else complete a full sentence. We see this on CNBC, Fox and other news focused shows. And unless you have the ability to decipher the message within the noise, these shows are hardly informative. We also see people with this driven need to be right in our workplace, community and even in some families. And what they do literally, is drive right over or drive right off others in the conversation in order to be right.
Interestingly, it appears that many of these people are successful. The impression is: you of course must be successful to be on CNBC. Or, your boss or even the political superstar in your organization may possess this hubristic need, and they also seem to be successful. So wouldn’t adopting the drive to be right all the time just be nothing more than emulating successful people? No.
Defining success as someone who always needs to be right automatically eliminates the other people; outstanding managers and emerging leaders– some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t – and who, every day, run their organization or deal with their colleagues in a supportive, collaborative and cooperative style.
It’s like a bell curve that in our experience is skewed to the right. If you draw a bell curve and call it a “success distribution curve” and label the left side of the curve “bad behavior” and the right side of the curve “saintly behavior” you will find a small number of people on each side of the curve. What you will find, however, is more people in the middle.
So sure there are people who always need and will go to great efforts to insure they are right. But to generalize that this behavior is the key to success ignores one important point: employees, clients, vendors don’t like people with these behaviors. And unless you can live with not being liked and respected, and you are able to pull off the bad behavior successfully (that is, to be tolerated by those around you – usually due to status or authority), there is a very good chance that you will not succeed.
As you build your career, your department, your company, gaining and using positive influence and repute will result in a much higher probability of being “happily successful” for you and those around you.
Remember, status, position and authority can change. Influence is personal power.
Copyright 2011 Kubica LaForest Consulting
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