The Still Space Podcast Episode #27 How to Stop Killing What You Want with Your Need to Be Right
Executive Coach Mary Lee Gannon
Get her free Career Plan at www.MaryLeeGannon.com
The need to be right is at the root of most arguments, conflicts and wars. It’s a product of the ego needing validation. People who are difficult are also needy. If you work or live with someone who is difficult, they’re likely more amenable when they can trust you – when they know you have their back or at least respect them. Trust is key. If you trust yourself and are comfortable in your own skin you don’t have to keep convincing yourself of your worth by attention seeking and needing to be right.
During my divorce and for years after, I needed validation that I was a good person, good wife, lovable and a good mother because I had adopted insurmountable shame about my situation. Though my ego needed external validation I never asked for it because, subconsciously, I didn’t feel I deserved it. This resulted in a continual longing for legal justice that never came, for validation from my children who were then teenagers and hated their mom on a good day, and for romantic love that was fleeting for a single mother with four school-aged children. I wanted to belong somewhere. So, I spent many hours at work. Corporate America welcomed my time and energy.
As an executive coach I counsel my clients dealing with big-ego colleagues to find something about the difficult person they can authentically respect or can learn from. It might be their dedication to the organization, their work ethic, their experience, their education, their brain. I suggest that my clients win trust by communicating their respect. The needy ego will appreciate the endorsement. This makes it easier to work together and to get what you want. But you must swallow pride and manage your own ego in the process. Keep your eyes on the ultimate goal, not your need to have your own ego ratified by them. “I know that you value (X) and I think this aligns with it.”
Most of the time there is a negative quality in the person we are in conflict with that reminds us of ourselves or that we envy. Notice and admit this. Honor that it makes you uncomfortable. It takes great curiosity and humility to identify that. Yet to do so is the ultimate freedom. You will no longer be held hostage by your own inadequacies if you see common ground in others. Be able to asses character quickly, especially when hiring. The litmus test is how people handle stressful moments. Don’t ask them how they handle stress. They’ll tell you they are good at it. Observe their patterns. Throw a few difficult, introspective questions their way.
I learned the art of patience by letting my children have their opinions of me without defending myself or needing them to validate me, especially when they were teenagers. They couldn’t possibly know what it was like to be in my shoes. Nobody could. We grew closer as a result of no expectations.
I was learning to trade the treadmill to nowhere for the freedom of self-acceptance. I had to shed the need to be deemed ‘right’ in the courts, with my ex-husband, with my children and the community.
Outside parties can judge you. Your children can judge you. Your colleagues and the community can judge you. It is you who must be true to your character and draw a boundary between what you will and will not allow. You will attract more substantive relationships when you don’t have to prove yourself. When you don’t need the affirmation.
Other people don’t get to define your worth. You own that. They get to define their opinions. Let them have that. Permit them to be right about their judgment. It is incredibly liberating. You need not waste time, energy or resources defending yourself only to feel defeated and exhausted when you can’t change their minds. You cannot convince fools of their foolishness. You can leave them to it.
In this space you must feel as if you are safe and belong in the comfort of your own humanity and humility. Your job is not to win them over to convince your needy ego that you are right. Your job is to be safe in your own conviction that you need not be #1 at anything but being yourself.
You need not be right. You want to get it right. If you’ve made a mistake, admit it. Remain consistent in your behavior so that people may trust the predictability of it.
I remember another day at the local swimming pool where the parent of a classmate of one of my children asked me, “If your marriage was so bad why did you have four children?”
Recognize judgment for what it is – an offshoot of unhappiness. People who judge others judge themselves far worse. Happy people do not hurt one another.
I paused and thought about her question. In The Still Space I could admit that it hurt. Everyone knew we had lost our home and that we were on public assistance. I had to lasso my ego because at first, I had wished she would drown in her own wickedness. Once I could set that thought aside with a wink in The Still Space, thinking about the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz melting as they threw water on her, I replied logically without emotion, “Probably for the same reason you have two children. Nobody goes into a marriage thinking it will end. My children are the best part of my life. I would never resent my children. Would you?”
This thing called life is a complicated engagement. Add into the mix your career and relationships and you have a real menagerie of emotions, behaviors and results. The happiest and most progressive people are the ones who can shake off self-doubt, can fit in anywhere they go, and accept joy as a part of their soul, not a condition of perfection.
