I love it when someone helps you realize that you’ve been ignoring a basic part of your life. This moment usually starts with the phrase, “There it was, all the time, right in front of me — and I just didn’t see it.” There are few minutes of regret (“Why did it take me so long to realize it?”) and then gratitude (“Wow, I am so glad I met her and she pointed this out!”) All these phrases — and more — were going through my head when I found a new favorite book, Kathryn Schulz’s Being Wrong. It has changed the way I look at things – and I am busy recommending it to friends far and wide.
Being better at being wrong was the last thing I thought I needed to spend time on. I have mapped out countless ways to work more on accuracy, being right, being “on-point.” But Kathryn Schulz’s book is helping me realize that it is just a important to be aware of what it means, and what we learn, from being wrong.
As a supervisor at work, I see things, fix things, and cause things that go wrong all the time. Schulz talks about ways to focus on reactions to being wrong and figure out why mistakes happen.
As a Dad, I am not always willing to be wrong in front of my kids. Schulz’s words have me thinking more about how important it is for my kids to see me dealing with my “wrongness” (as she puts it) so they can deal with it in their lives. I’m writing this on an airplane headed home to D.C. Part of me is almost giddy to get home (where something inevitably will go wrong as part of the natural course of family reality) so my kids and I can figure it out together. I never thought I would write those words, but it is going to be a fun experiment.
Now that I consider myself a student of Schulz’s Wrong-ology, I was anxious to discuss it with a professional peer. He confirmed what already knew: we in public relations perhaps spend more time justifying mistakes than being aware of how we react, and who we are, when we (or our clients) are in the midst of a mistake. Just a few minutes into the conversation, we figured out ways to help our teams own mistakes, fix them, and move ahead. I’m not anxious to make more mistakes, but am ready to look at them with eyes wide open.
While it sounds like something out of the lyrics of a 1980’s tune, it never felt so right to be so wrong….