Right & Wrong is Just Plain Stupid!

And it is holding you back from the success you deserve...

In your pitch or talk, when you unconsciously tell your audience that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things, you are running a risk. Doing this can reduce your effectiveness and lead to mediocre outcomes.

Face it. Most of the lessons you learn from parents and teachers could be summed up to say there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. And this thinking has infected your mind. It is tainting everything you attempt to accomplish and leading to some level of misery in your life that can be avoided.

In this week’s issue, I will tell you how.

First, let’s look at why this may be a problem. Ignoring the ‘Right & Wrong’ issue momentarily, let’s consider the hierarchy of beliefs.

Some beliefs are ‘lightly held’; we generally think they are true but can easily change our minds if evidence contradicts them.

At the other end of the scale, there are beliefs we hold onto so tightly we are willing to die for them. No matter what evidence is presented, we will cling to these beliefs until death or until something happens to shatter them completely. -This is the sort of belief that cults work hard to foster in their adherents.

But outside of that scale, there is another sort of belief. A type of belief that is much more dangerous. These are called Global Beliefs and work like our minds’ operating systems. They structure how we think about things, how we approach things, and how we measure other beliefs against them. The reason that these Global Beliefs are so dangerous is that we never think to question them. They don’t stand out. They are tucked away out of sight like the code in the operating system of our minds.

Yet as they sit there unobtrusively, these Global Beliefs are silently shaping the course of our actions, behaviours and ultimately, the experiences of our lives.

This belief in ‘Right & Wrong’ is a Global Belief. You can confirm that this is true for you if you can’t think of a time when you considered whether Right & Wrong made sense. Chances are you never thought about it because it is part of your operating system, and you take it as fact. It’s just the way things are!

But what if it’s not?

Let’s explore the fallacy of Right & Wrong.

This concept has been sold to us as a binary choice. It is either Right or it is Wrong. Even as children, we intuitively struggle against this idea. Any parent can think of a time that they have told their child this is how it is, and the child comes back with: “But what if…” and describes a situation in the ‘grey’ area between the binary options.

If we take on board this Right & Wrong programming and it becomes part of our Global belief system, then we can expect some of the following results:

The endless search

If there is a right way to do everything, then all you need to do is find it, and you will logically get the desired results. So you are forever searching for the perfect tool, structure, or technique to be ‘Right’ and take you where you need to go.

The problem is that you are stalled at this point. You don’t feel you can proceed any further without the right thing. And you experience growing frustration.

Tossing away failures

If this is binary, anything that didn’t immediately work is wrong and should be discarded. This makes perfect sense, but as we will discuss shortly, things are not binary, and your entrepreneurial heroes look at failures and wonder how they can be tweaked to make them work. They can only do this because they know it is not a binary equation.

Locking in the successful approach

Even worse, what if you try something and it works? “Great, that is the right thing! Let’s move on to the next problem…” With a binary mindset, if it works, you move on, never considering if it could be improved because you got it ‘Right’.

So what is the answer?

We need to retrain this Global belief. We need to challenge the Right & Wrong belief and adopt what I call the Effectiveness Paradigm.

The Effectiveness Paradigm recognises a sliding scale of effectiveness, from ineffective, to highly effective. The measure of effectiveness is also nuanced. Things can be effective in the short term but ineffective in the long term.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

Lying in a job interview. It may be effective in the short term but very ineffective in the long term if you are found out, impacting your future career.

Seriously injuring someone in a self-defence situation. While effective in the short term, the long-term effects may be considerable. However, if you fear for your life, you can’t be concerned with the long-term impact of your actions because, without those actions, there may not be a ‘long-term’.

One of the keys here is that everything you do only needs to be effective enough. The clickthrough rate of an advertisement has a level it needs to reach to be effective (break-even). More effective will be more profitable, but being effective enough to break even is the first goal. Launching a crewed rocket into space requires the highest level of effectiveness, and there is no room to be less effective. You must determine the level of effectiveness you need from your project or actions.

How does this help?

By adopting a Global belief that everything we do falls on a scale from ineffective to effective, we are freed up to be more creative in response to the results our actions bring us. We no longer seek the Right Answer because many answers will work.

We can find an answer that works well enough, is effective enough, and move forward, knowing that we can always go back and improve that answer later.

Similarly, when we get results showing that our action, tool or technique was ineffective, we don’t automatically discard it. We can look at why it was ineffective (or not effective enough) and consider ways to adjust the approach to make it more effective.

And we know that because everything we do is on a scale of effectiveness, there is always the potential to make whatever we do even more effective. We can continually improve our talk, sales letter, product, offer and service.

How do we adopt this?

In my coaching of Speakers and Founders giving pitches, I constantly reinforce that there is no one way to do or say something. There are only more effective and less effective ways; the key is to be flexible enough to try them. The way I find most effective may not be the most effective for you. We all communicate differently, and by prioritising authenticity, we can each find our unique, effective combination.

It was from some of these coaching conversations that this article was born. Some people get very frustrated when I say: there isn’t a single way to do this, do what feels best for you. Because of their Right & Wrong Global beliefs, they think I am cheating them by not giving them the Right Answer. (They probably wouldn’t word it that way and may not even be able to articulate why they feel uncomfortable with the answer I give them).

So for you to adopt this change, you need:

Awareness - Be aware of this as a potential problem. - This article should have helped there.

Challenge - Challenge yourself and your colleagues when this thinking surfaces.

Support - Discuss this with your team, coaches, and whoever you interact with regularly. Decide as a group how you will handle this going forward and commit to keeping each other accountable for a period of time.

Flexibility - Actively and intentionally exercise flexibility in your thinking around your processes or activities. Consider how you could make something more effective, even as a thought exercise while commuting or walking. This will build your Effectiveness Paradigm so that it becomes automatic rather than a conscious effort.

How can you use this to be a more compelling communicator?

The first thing is to stop reinforcing the Right & Wrong mindset. Stop telling people that this is right, and that is wrong. In addition to putting your audience on the right track, it sounds preachy and will feel uncomfortable for some of your audience. Whereas saying, “In the past, I found this more effective, and when I tried this, I found it less effective.” Comes across as authentic and is easier for your audience to accept and take on board. -Because you are not telling them how to think.

If you are educating your audience on a topic, you will empower them by helping them to understand the Effectiveness Paradigm. They hold the power, and their unique approach to the problem they face, only requires that they know what they want to achieve, they pay attention to what is and isn’t working, and they explore and try different things and go with what works for them.

Many people who want to build their credibility feel like they must have THE answer. But if you tell someone that this is what works, you risk losing that credibility if it didn’t work in their experience. However, if you say this is what worked for you, and this is why, then even if they have tried and failed with that method, you still have the credibility of having had it work for you and, more importantly, explaining why.

More than anything, you want to avoid being dogmatic in your approach to how things are done. Guiding principles are far more important than rigid steps for most endeavours. And even when you do give step-by-step instructions, explaining the guiding principles behind those instructions adds far more value.

Conclusion

I believe that people are generally moving from a Right & Wrong Paradigm to an Effectiveness Paradigm and that by speaking in those terms, your message will be more readily accepted by most audiences.

I also believe that we all must be vigilant in checking our Global Beliefs. Whenever we automatically answer a question without thinking, we should get into the habit of pausing for a moment to consider:

• Where did that come from?
• What do I believe that caused me to answer that way?
• Do those beliefs serve me?
• What is the cost of those beliefs?

Doing this and consciously fostering an Effectiveness Paradigm will serve you well in an increasingly complex and fast-moving world.

This article was originally published in the newsletter on 13th August 2023. To get more like this, subscribe to The Compelling Communicator, a free weekly newsletter. https://compellingcommunicator.beehiiv.com/