Be Prepared to Lose a Few

Somehow we confuse being right all of the time and winning every battle as excellence.

It's not.

Our obsession with "all wins and no losses" creates a culture in which we believe we cannot fail;  we cannot be wrong.    Both of these beliefs are not in the realm of realism.

Every day when we wake up we should acknowledge that we will be the best we can be.   That means "putting it out there."   And "putting it out there" means that certainly we will make some wrong assumptions, err in judgment and lose a few.  If we didn't do these things, we would not be doing our jobs as humans.

The challenge is that we often look at this from one point of view:  our own.  It is that one dimensional aspect of "how does this impact me?"   "What do others think of me now that I've made a mistake/shown I'm vulnerable?"

The other dimensions of this are as follows:   if as individuals we  are "wrong" and someone else is right. . .and we acknowledge that and move forward. . .then universally we have participated in excellence.  We have challenged the status quo, we have played hard, we have contributed. . .and through that process, even though as an individual we may not have had the "right" answer - we enabled the larger sense of ourselves, our team, achieve a better answer.

Often I claim (perhaps with a little bit of pride) that I don't have to have all of the right answers - that I will probably be wrong more often than I am right.   I make that claim confident in the knowledge that I play hard, do good work, am skilled at my craft and know what I'm doing.     Through that confidence, I also know that as a group we will do excellent work.

Don't let "winning" get in the way of excellence.

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My book "Courageous Questions, Confident Leaders" is available on Amazon Kindle.