Today, I want to talk about an important Superpower, and provide a blueprint for how to learn it.
It seems obvious but is surprisingly hard to master.
It’s easy to spot in others but hard to notice in ourselves.
Let’s explore a key decision that affects your success in every area of life:
If given a choice, would you rather be right or effective?
Most people would pick the obvious answer and say effective.
In practice, people are more likely to behave in ways that make it obvious that we want to be right.
All of us have been on the receiving end of this reality. It’s what happens anytime someone insists on making you wrong for something. We hate the way it feels, yet when we feel that someone else lets us down, it’s almost automatic. We start defending ourselves, asserting our competency, or blaming someone else.
We might intuitively understand that it’s more important to be effective rather than right.
We might know that being right doesn’t necessarily get us any closer to achieving our goals—whether that’s advancing a project, preserving a relationship, or growing in our career.
But despite knowing any of that, it doesn’t mean we know how to do it.
Recognizing the Existing Pattern
It starts by understanding why we do it.
Humans are designed to react emotionally and with incomplete information—it’s how we survived as a species.
However, our quick decision-making often hides the fact that we lack all the facts, including a full understanding of others’ situations or intentions.
When stress, pressure, or past trauma add to this, we’re even less likely to take a measured approach. Instead, we move too quickly, double down on being right, and pass judgment.
If we never consider that we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg, we may find ourselves on a collision course that sinks our future opportunities.
Installing a New Pattern
Instead of giving in to our impulsivity where we risk damaging relationships, creating unnecessary conflict, or missing opportunities to make progress, we can build the habit of pausing and asking ourselves an important catalyzing question:
In this moment, what’s the best way to achieve all of the outcomes I want as a person?
If you allow yourself to sit with this question for even a few minutes, you will almost certainly interrupt a dangerous pattern and replace it with a more effective one.
The magic is in the reframing.
By refocusing on all of the outcomes you want as a person, you will consider more than just the immediate project. By expanding the scope and elongating the timeline, you will remember some things that get lost in the pressures of the moment.
You’ll probably remember…
- What type of leader you want to be
- How important the relationship is you were just about to damage
- How much information you really have access to
- How you could’ve been more clear in your instructions or expectations
- …plus a lot more.
Bottom line, you don’t have all of the information, you don’t understand everyone else’s full perspective, and you are a part of this equation rather than above it and free from blame.
Pattern as Habit
When something goes wrong and you feel the urge to defend yourself, to assign blame, or to react and respond, pause and ask yourself…
In this moment, what’s the best way to achieve all of the outcomes I want as a person?
The more you practice this approach, the more likely it is to become a habit.
- People who build a habit of being right, are often seen as difficult to work with or for.
- People who build the habit of being effective whether or not they are right, are often the types of people who build trust, loyalty, and can hold others accountable without unnecessary conflict.
Ultimately, the choice between being right and being effective isn’t mutually exclusive. You can be both—but only if effectiveness comes first.
If you can master this reframe, you’ll learn a superpower that can fundamentally change your life, improve your relationships, and make you much more effective in all of the outcomes you want.
