What happens when nobody wants to be wrong?

Terry Ward, Publisher

Nobody particularly enjoys being wrong.

Whether it’s a disagreement with a spouse, a decision at work or an opinion shared among friends, most of us would prefer to discover that we were right all along.

That’s human nature.

But somewhere along the way, admitting we’re wrong seems to have become something more than an uncomfortable moment. For some, it has become something to avoid at almost any cost.

We defend positions long after the evidence has changed.

We search for information that supports what we already believe.

We explain away mistakes rather than acknowledge them.

And sometimes, we would rather damage a relationship than admit we might have gotten something wrong.

I wonder what that costs us.

Think about how much time and energy we spend defending decisions that, in hindsight, probably weren’t our best.

We’ve all done it.

We make a judgment based on incomplete information. We form an opinion before hearing the whole story. We say something in frustration that we later regret.

Then comes the difficult part.

We have a choice.

We can acknowledge the mistake, learn something and move forward.

Or we can dig in.

Unfortunately, digging in often feels easier, at least initially.

Admitting we’re wrong can feel like surrender. It can seem as though we’re giving someone else the satisfaction of winning an argument. We worry that acknowledging a mistake will make us appear weak, uninformed or incapable.

But being wrong isn’t the same as being weak.

In fact, I would argue that recognizing a mistake and taking responsibility for it requires considerably more strength than pretending it never happened.

I’ve spent much of my professional life making decisions.

Some have worked out well.

Others haven’t.

And there have certainly been times when I’ve looked back and wondered what I was thinking.

Experience has taught me that the mistake itself is often less damaging than what happens afterward.

A poor decision can usually be corrected.

A misunderstanding can often be resolved.

An apology can begin repairing a relationship.

But when pride gets involved, relatively small problems can become much larger ones.

We see this in our workplaces.

A manager makes a decision that isn’t producing the expected results but refuses to change direction because doing so might suggest the original decision was wrong.

An employee makes a mistake but spends more energy explaining why it wasn’t their responsibility than finding a solution.

An organization continues doing something that no longer works because nobody wants to acknowledge that a different approach might be better.

The cost isn’t simply the original mistake.

It’s the opportunities lost while everyone works to defend it.

We see the same thing in public life.

People take positions on issues affecting their communities, sometimes before all the facts are available. As new information emerges, those positions become harder to reconsider because changing one’s mind is treated as inconsistency rather than growth.

Instead of asking whether an idea still makes sense, we ask whether changing course will make us look bad.

And too often, the conversation becomes less about finding the right answer and more about proving who was right in the first place.

That’s not a particularly productive way to solve problems.

It also creates an environment where people become afraid to acknowledge uncertainty.

We expect leaders to have answers. We reward confidence. We admire conviction.

Those qualities have value.

But confidence without humility can become arrogance, and conviction without curiosity can become stubbornness.

Some of the most reassuring words a leader can say are, “I don’t know.”

Followed by, “But I’ll find out.”

Or perhaps even more importantly, “I was wrong, and here’s what we’re going to do about it.”

Imagine how much healthier our conversations might become if we stopped treating those statements as admissions of failure.

Imagine if changing your mind after learning something new was viewed as evidence of thoughtful judgment rather than weakness.

Imagine if an apology were received with appreciation instead of being used as ammunition in the next argument.

That last part matters.

If we want people to acknowledge their mistakes, we also have to create room for them to do so.

It’s difficult to encourage honesty while punishing every admission.

That doesn’t mean abandoning accountability.

There are mistakes that carry serious consequences. There are decisions that deserve scrutiny. There are circumstances where an apology alone is not enough.

But accountability should be about responsibility, correction and learning, not simply the satisfaction of proving someone wrong.

In small communities like ours, this is especially important.

We work together, serve on boards together, raise families alongside one another and encounter the same people long after a disagreement has ended.

The goal shouldn’t be to win every argument.

It should be to preserve enough trust and mutual respect that we can continue working together, even after we’ve disagreed.

That requires something from all of us.

The willingness to question our own assumptions.

The humility to listen when someone challenges our thinking.

The courage to acknowledge a mistake.

And the generosity to allow someone else to do the same.

None of us will get everything right.

Not as parents.

Not as employees or business owners.

Not as community leaders.

And certainly not as human beings.

The question isn’t whether we’ll make mistakes.

We will.

The question is what we do when we recognize them.

Because being wrong is part of being human.

Refusing to acknowledge it is a choice.

And sometimes the most important step toward getting something right is finding the courage to admit we got it wrong.

Terry Ward is the CEO of Ward Media and the publisher of NCW News, Cashmere Valley Record, Lake Chelan Mirror, The Good Life, The Leavenworth Echo, Quad City Herald, and the Wenatchee Business Journal. He can be reached at terry@ward.media.