"Being a Knower & Being Right"​ is Deteriorating Trust

Many of us were taught that it was critical to know all the answers and to be right. “Be right at all costs, cause when you're not, you're an idiot or perceived as one. When you're not right or not quick with answers, you're not fit to lead or to have the title of leader.”

When I'm facilitating, I often ask the people I serve, "How many of you are paid to think and do and to have the answers?" At least 75% of the room's hands go up, including my hand. When I then ask, "How many of you are paid to feel?" it's a drastically different result. Of course, depending on the industry I serve, from first responders to manufacturers to nonprofits, the results can vary. But you can trust, that in general, it's about a 75/25 split between the thinkers/doers and feelers.

If you're like me, I was taught and trained to think but mainly to get stuff done - and quickly. And probably with a checklist and some standard work (I'm a recovering engineer). Sure, my opinion and feelings mattered some days (when I could actually identify them) but the only opinion that mattered, in many meetings, was the final "right opinion" from which many of us hopped on board.

Hopping on the bandwagon is common. Just think about a time where you were in a meeting and heard a leader who not only had title, rank but also power and influence say, "From my perspective, this is the right thing to do." and then the whole room either unconsciously or consciously agreed.

What does that mean, perspective? And why is that perspective, the right one?

I want to break that down a bit and integrate a bit about what I've learned from Dr. Brené Brown's research featured in her New York Times Best Seller book, Dare to Lead™.

Over 20 years ago, in the beginning of Brené’s career, she primarily interviewed women. Her early research and books focused on understanding what gets in the way of wholehearted living. What surfaced from this research was shame, vulnerability and the things that get in the way of living our best lives.

Currently, Brené spends almost all her time inside large corporations where much of her research data comes from the majority culture in the C Suite - white, men, above 50 years of age. Statistically, this is the culture that is leading our corporations and organizations today.

What's so interesting to me about this is that most of Brené’s work really resonates with women because of the strong emotional literacy component of her work. But Brené is a grounded theory researcher so she collects data by interviewing thousands of people of all groups and what she's uncovered is a human problem. One that does not discriminate. And, it's also a leadership problem.

When we think about "being a knower and being right" at work, it comes down to this powerful idea: We need to be right in our careers because oftentimes, our worthiness is on the line. When we aren't right or we don't know, we suddenly are up against some tough emotions. And let's face it, many of us were not taught to have emotions at work. We just think it's weak and that emotions are frivolous.

If we were honest with ourselves, we can all remember a time(s)where we just dug our heels into an issue just so we could be right versus focused on being effective or focused on getting curious. Am I right?

When we become more tolerant of vulnerability in our leadership roles and more confident in trusting that our worthiness is not on the line (because we are good enough right now, not if/when we hit every goal, not if/when we get the next promotion, not if/when we have every answer), we can let go of certainty and lean into curiosity.

Let's unpack curiosity a bit. I've created a list of questions below that you can integrate into your workday or workplace culture to begin engaging in curious leadership behavior. But first, why does curiosity even matter?

Because my background was heavily focused in operations leadership and continuous improvement, I have a bit of a lean/continuous improvement mindset and approach to curiosity. Here's an example: One of the principles of my work was to "go and see."

Meaning, we don't make decisions about people or processes until we go and see the current situation, right now, where the work is happening. We often make decisions about people and processes from a prior event or something that has been told to us second hand. This is potentially dangerous because how do we really understand unless we go and see with our own eyes?

When we "go and see," we naturally pique curiosity, in fact, curiosity happens right before we go and see. Questions like, "I wonder what's really happening? Are there too many opportunities to create a defective part? Is there too much walking? Too many confusing steps? Ergonomic issues? How are the customers impacted?" Lots of questions come to mind before we go and see but also, lots of questions can continue to happen during the actual go and see.

We don't know what we don't know. And it's ok that we don't. But how many of us actually say that or believe that? When our worthiness is on the line, not many. This is where an understanding of shame comes into play.

Shame isn’t an easy topic but believe me when I say that shame is in our workplaces and definitely connected to being a knower and being right. The simplest way to understand the connection to shame and worthiness in our workplaces and the behavior of "being a knower and being right" is through a question: When you don't have the answers or are wrong about something, what are you afraid of that may be uncovered as a result?

If your answer lands somewhere near, “I’m not good enough to be here or what will people think of me?” that is an example of shame functions in our lives. Developing shame resilience helps us tackle that from a leadership perspective so that we can show up authentically for not only our teams but our customers AND our selves.

Some of the best leaders I've ever worked for and with didn't always have the answers. Their worthiness was not attached to being right or having the answers. They leaned into the discomfort of the emotion we call vulnerability and said, "I don't know, what do you think? Maybe we should go investigate." We can decrease guessing and assuming when we get curious and look at the work area or what the people are doing.

Now, let's transition into a curiosity mindset. Here are several questions to help you begin the transition from "being a knower" to "being a learner."

For those of you who are experts in your field, leaders of your organization and are the person that everyone goes to for information, allow me to challenge you: Consider that having all the answers is not only NOT adding value to your organization but crippling it.

To become a true problem solving organization, not only must there be processes so that this can happen (e.g., A3 Problem Solving) but also a mindset for this. We must begin asking questions and getting curious versus responding with all the answers. This encourages our people to problem solve for their own work versus relying on one person to have all the right answers with one perspective. This is why curiosity matters. It's a muscle that we have to practice using and it's uncomfortable at first because it's hard to control.

We must be willing to let go a bit and recognize that our perspective may not be THE ONLY perspective. Especially, if we have a lot of power and influence. When we don't, trust continues to deteriorate and we don't bring out the best in our organizations and teams.

I’ve watched individual contributors of teams pause before giving their opinion with someone of title, power and influence in the room because they knew there was only one perspective in the room and lacking curiosity for other perspectives. 

We cannot build true high performing teams or problem solving organizations without psychological safety or vulnerability. One of the ways to get there is by committing to being a learner versus being a knower. 

Become curious, ask more questions, let go of certainty. Embrace the suck. 

___________

Here are some questions to help you develop a Curiosity Mindset. Many of these are within Dare to Lead™ and listed as “Rumble Tools” but I’ve included some of my go-to’s for you to use. Pick the ones that fit your leadership style and commit to practicing them. 

Questions to Develop a Curiosity Mindset

o  What problem are you trying to solve by making this change?

o  What problem are we trying to solve?

o  Help me understand.

o  What happens if we don’t know?

o  What would you do?

o  What outcome are you hoping for?

o  Let’s go see.

o  I wonder…

o  We are both dug in, tell me why you’re so passionate about this.

o  The story I’m making up about this is _________.

o  That’s not my experience with ______.

o  That’s not my perspective, can we get curious about that?

o  Tell me why this doesn’t work for you.

o  Tell me more about that.

o  Say more.

o  I’m not sure how this would play out but I’m willing to understand more.

o  What do you think?

o  Why do you feel that way?

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