When you're right to be wrong

I think we can all agree, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is no dummy. You don't build such companies and amass such wealth by being short of brain cells. So I was surprised by a recent article that I had read, stating that Bezos advocates for leaders who often get things wrong.

Let me explain.

You see, sometimes, being really smart can get in the way of original thinking, innovation, risk taking, experimenting, and openness to competing ideas. When you really know a subject, your confidence increases, and your conclusions become entrenched. Therefore, you are less likely to accept competing points of view, or to open your mind to additional variables or possibilities.

However, if a leader is shown to be wrong quite a lot, it may be because the leader is constantly challenging conventional wisdom, pushing into new frontiers, experimenting with new ideas, and open to the possibility that their original conclusion may not be right.

It could be argued that you have to be wrong to get it right

Try your own experiment with self professed "smart people". Ask them how often they are wrong. Ask them how often they have changed their point of view. Can they admit that they are sometimes wrong?

If these so-called smart people claim that they are always right, what does this tell you? If they hold firm to their conclusions, is this a sign of confidence or stubbornness?

There are some, like Bezos, who would submit that the smartest people are the ones' most comfortable when revising their conclusions. The smartest people are open to rethinking problems that they already solved. They're open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

"Fickle or Open"

I think we can all follow the logic, that to be truly smart, you must maintain a willingness to consider new information, and an openness to accept that some of your conclusions were flawed. But how do discern whether such openness is an act of being smart, or just someone who is malleable and susceptible to unfounded arguments? When is it okay to passionately argue for a position and just as quickly switch to a contradictory point of view?

I learned that research in this area has attempted to answer these questions. The research categorizes decision making and outcomes, by the method in which these decisions were derived. And it can be shown, that better decisions (i.e. better outcomes) are made, when competing ideas are entertained. According to new research out of Duke University, one of the most essential ingredients of decision making is intellectual humility, or the ability to consider that you might be wrong.

Perhaps we should not worry so much why someone is open to new ideas, rather embrace the process which accepts and considers contradictory points of view. Have conviction about your conclusions, but not that much! It is okay to have strong opinions, just not too strong. You see, I am getting the hang of it!

The real trick is to be self aware of those things that undermine your ability to discern evidence that is incompatible with your strongly held positions or opinions.

According to the research, those who lack intellectual humility tend to get more defensive when their views are contradicted. This defensiveness has been shown to undermine the decision making process.

Now, I admit, nothing about this topic and related research is particularly earth shattering. It seems logical that one should be able to make better decisions if you remain open to new ideas and open to the possibility that your own conclusions may be flawed. But what provoked me to write about this topic is the fact that most leaders overlook the quality of intellectual humility as a key ingredient to decision making and leadership.

After reading this article, how would you answer the question "are your decisions usually correct?" Nobody wants to admit to being wrong, but showing humility could be the best way to demonstrate your "smarts". Admitting to failures, but showing how you quickly learned and applied new and different ideas, until reaching the desired outcomes "is really smart". [I write about The Hazards of Early Success, in this article ]

When conducting your next interview or when just trying to assess a blowhard, ask them to provide examples of when they were wrong. Spend more time assessing their intellectual humility and iterative process of arriving at conclusions and decisions, than on all the times they were right. Remember, you need to be wrong sometimes if you hope to get to "right".

Are you smart? Show me by commenting below.

Be Happy

Eric

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