Week 27: Let Go of Your Commitment To Be Right

Welcome to Week 27 of the Authenticity@Work Leadership Tool-kit! My intention for this series is to share a quick tool each week to help you lead with more authenticity, adaptability and inspiration so we can together create workplaces where we bring the best of ourselves and inspire others. So grab a journal and an accountability partner to make these practices even more powerful for you!

Welcome to week Twenty-Seven of the Authenticity@Work series. In last week’s post we discussed letting go of the resistance to what is and worked on accepting situations as they are, without frustration. What new approaches did you find to achieve better goals in those situations?

We each have a hidden saboteur that operates under the surface. I call mine Ms. Right. She is big and authoritative and perpetually has her fists on her hips as if ready for a fight with anyone who will disagree with her. She doesn’t show up in many of the assessments, because she’s so ubiquitous as part of our human experience. She’s the part of my ego that has a deep-seated need to be right. She keeps me stuck in old patterns. She prevents me from seeing that other points of view can be right too. She prevents me from collaborating with others. She prevents me from adapting to changing circumstances. She’s at the root of my cognitive dissonance, the inability to see facts that differ from our beliefs.

Each of us has a Ms. Right. To be fair to her, she’s part of our survival instinct. We laid down belief patterns in order to feel safe (e.g., if I touch fire, I will get burned), and of course it is useful to have these belief patterns. So the key here is to let go of our commitment to be right all the time. When we are willing to hold the paradox that we can be right and we can be wrong as well, it creates new opportunities for us to see other perspectives and to collaborate, innovate, and engage.

This Week’s Tool:

The simple way to work with your saboteur is to take a deep breath, bring your Director in, and ask yourself, How am I committed to being right here? It works every time to loosen the hold she has on you so you can be more in choice rather than act from your habitual patterns.

Get the latest resources for Authenticity@Work (this tab will get updated with all kinds of cool resources). Curious to know more about the book? Read the reviews about Wired for Authenticity here.

This article was written by Henna Inam, C-level executive coach, global speaker, and author of the book Wired for Disruption. She helps leaders grow their agility to be a force for good and thrive in times of change. They create organizations that drive breakthroughs in innovation, growth, and engagement. In roles including Head E-Innovation and Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer, Henna drove transformation throughout her 20-year corporate career as an executive with Fortune 500 companies. Join the thousands who follow her blog here. Connect on Linkedin.