Don’t Allow Your Need to Be Right to Hurt Your Career
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A Need to Be Right Can Be a Powerful Motivator – For Better or Worse
Sure, everyone wants to be right. In business, as in the stock market, sports, and other life experiences, you strive to be right a bit more often than wrong. However, many people have a "need" to be right, much stronger than the “want” of most people.
When the desire to be right becomes a need, the motivation can be overwhelming. While powerful motivation is often a very positive feature, the need to be right all the time can be good or bad. Like some people, when it’s good, it’s very good. However, when it’s bad, it’s normally very bad.
Like the often misquoted Biblical reference to money, which some incorrectly translate to "money is bad" (the correct interpretation: the “love” of money is a negative), the need to be right is frequently misunderstood and misused. While there is certainly nothing negative about being right, there can be problems with the need to be right in all situations.
Regardless of the benefits or negatives surrounding this issue, the need can be an overwhelmingly strong motivator. You should understand and accept this human fact to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives, particularly at the workplace.
Why Controlling Your Need to Be Right Is Critical
Your answers to two simple questions should emphasize this point.
- Do you always feel the need to be right?
- Do you typically feel the need to prove another person wrong?
Being right is wonderful. Always being right at another’s expense is usually wrong. From a cerebral aspect, this behavior is usually spawned by your “ego.” This important, yet flawed psychological component has generated some of the most impressive and/or most destructive behaviors in human history.
Even those psychological experts who tend to lavish praise on the ego would admit that people need to control their egos to receive the most benefit. The need to be right – at all costs – is a good example of an out-of-control ego.
How to Harness Your Need to Be Right to Improve Your Career
Even if you are the CEO, a runaway ego and/or the burning need to be right can hurt your career. Should you be an employee striving for an entry to management, an inherent need to be right can be a career killer. Conversely, learning how to control your need to be right can provide a measurable boost to your career. Here are some tips to help you harness the positives and eliminate the negatives of a need to be right.
- Accept that it’s not a “black and white” universe. Acknowledge human, ethnic, and environmental differences of co-workers, peers, and managers. Strong ego drivers emphasize individuality, separation, and polarity. This is usually a harmful philosophy in business. Diversity can bring more positives than negatives. Embrace the gray areas of professional life.
- Work to eliminate win-lose situations on the job. Like all winning athletic clubs, your teammates (co-workers) and coaches (management) are striving for the same goal, making your team (company) better. Win-lose conditions should only exist with your market competition, not with your co-workers. The more “right” you are at the expense of your co-workers, the less “right” you will be perceived.
- Be happy, not confrontational, with being right. When you’re right, you’re right, regardless of the comments, actions, or behavior of others. Avoid the temptation to include others, who may be wrong, to enhance your “rightness.”
- Avoid constant win/lose or right/wrong debates. Do not initiate or participate in the blame game. It matters not whether you are pointing to or are being pointed at as a winner/loser in these debates. Even if you’re consistently right, you may quickly earn the tag of “loser.” However, staying aloof from these counter-productive debates will often earn you the tag “winner.”
- An attitude of “style and grace” when you’re right will earn positive responses from co-workers and managers. Sports fans understand the phrase, “Act like you’ve been there before.” Players who “over-celebrate” when scoring a touchdown, hitting a big home run, etc., often generate a negative response from a positive accomplishment. When you’re right, act in a professional manner, which will attract goodwill from your peers and managers.
An overwhelming need to be right can damage, not enhance your career. The key to benefit or detriment is how you choose to handle the situation. Should you stress the win-lose component, you will probably lose even if you win.
Don’t stop striving to be right. Concentrate on being gracious and enjoying your “rightness.” Let the kudos come to you from co-workers and management. Avoid being perceived as a tireless self-promoter. Let your actions speak loudly for themselves. Your career will improve and you’ll feel good about yourself.
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