How to Avoid the Leadership Trap of Always Being Right

Being right feels amazing for a reason: your brain rewards it. That quick dopamine hit can turn a capable leader into a stubborn one without them even noticing. I unpack how the “need to be right” sneaks into everyday leadership, especially when we’re under pressure to be decisive, credible, and fast. If you care about leadership development, critical thinking, and better decision making, this conversation is a practical mirror.

We walk through five specific pitfalls that show up when certainty takes the wheel: confirmation bias (and selective listening), reduced intellectual humility, escalation of commitment once you’ve said something out loud, defensive communication that ruins collaboration, and premature closure that confuses speed with quality. I also share a simple way to compare dopamine-driven habits with healthier thinking habits, like curiosity over certainty, adaptability over defensiveness, learning orientation over ego protection, and truth seeking over winning.

To land the lesson, I tell the tragic story of Ignay Semmelweiss, a physician who urged doctors to wash their hands and was shunned for it, with devastating consequences. It’s a reminder that righteousness, groupthink, and ego can be as dangerous as any technical mistake. If you want to lead teams that speak up, think deeper, and solve better problems together, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a leader you respect, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Join our free masterclass The Dopamine of Being Right on June 2nd at 1pm CST. Register here: https://www.intentionaleaders.com/dopamine-being-right-masterclass

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Ambitious leaders know that real leadership goes far beyond titles—it’s about developing the clarity and mindset to guide others with confidence. In this podcast, you’ll explore what today’s leaders truly need, from navigating everyday problem solving to handling tough moments of workplace conflict with steadiness and respect. Episodes dive into setting healthy workplace boundaries, strengthening workplace collaboration, and building the emotional intelligence and emotional agility that make leadership sustainable. Whether you’re managing a growing team or refining your voice as a decision-maker, you’ll find insights that help you cultivate a resilient growth mindset and elevate your impact.

Transcript

Why Being Right Feels So Good

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to another episode of the Intentional Leaders Podcast. I am your host, Cindy Wetland. In this podcast, we explore ideas, stories, and insights to help you lead with purpose and intention. Now, I have worked with thousands of leaders over my career, and this is what I know. They get very stuck and stressed when it comes to solving problems. Meaning, a lot of us as leaders or those that are aspiring leaders want to be great problem solvers. And a lot of times we think we are. However, what this inadvertently turns into is a need, a desire, and maybe even our identity of understanding, knowing, and being right. And when we feel right, we get a little hit of dopamine in our brain. And our brain likes that. So there's a lot of pitfalls associated with that dopamine hit of being right. And in today's podcast, we're going to talk about five things that happen and how you can prevent these so you don't fall into the pitfall of needing to be right. So, how many of you like to solve problems? I bet a lot of you listening to this podcast do. A lot of us as leaders or even aspiring leaders think problems, ah, I got this. I got this. I'm going to be able to solve this problem. We'll get rid of the chaos, we'll get rid of the challenges, and we'll make the world a better place. And I'm totally with you. I totally want to do that. But the challenge when it comes to problem solving is we have a lot of biases in our brain that get in the way of effective problem solving. And I'm going to talk about one very important one today. And that is how excited our brain gets when it's right. If you think about it, I do this activity in class, and maybe if you've been in one of my classes, problem solving, you might have even done this activity where I have people write down something that they're right about. Doesn't matter what it is, it's not a trick question, just something they're right about. And then I have them scatter about and see how many people agree with them about what they're right about. And that's fun. It's a fun activity because people get hyper competitive about like, I want to get as many, because that's the goal to win. I want to get a lot of people to agree with me. And when they do, they get a little check mark on their page. When they don't, they get an X. And getting that X, that doesn't feel good, right? Especially when we think we are right. But that is a dopamine hit. When someone agrees with us, when someone thinks we're right, we feel good. Our brain feels good. It's like validating. Oh, like your brain is like, oh, you knew that, or oh, you knew a way to solve that problem. And the faster you do it, the better it is. Why? Because we were taught as young children going to school that being right was important. When we were little kids, and I see that now in little kids, and I love that. It's the creativity, it's the um inquiry, it's the curiosity. Then we get to school and something happens where we're taught that it's better to be right than creative. And that's how we get rewarded. And so through our whole life, we we start doing this. And I think a lot of times it's very inadvertent. And as leaders, we believe that that's part of our job. That dopamine hit of being right, though, prevents your great leadership. And I'm going to talk about five different reasons it does that. Because the hit of dopamine feels good. We aren't thinking about it at the time. We're not like, hey, I'm right. I'm super awesome. Um, but this happens to us and it happens with us, and the effect on others is very significant. You can even think of an example of you feeling right, and maybe then needing to defend your position and ooh, maybe becoming righteous. I don't know about all of you, but I've certainly made that shift into feeling right and being and acting righteous. And this is a tricky part, is we have to pay attention to we almost have to take our identity and say, as a leader, our job number one is not to solve all the problems of the world. It's to actually create more and more effective problem solvers, more effective critical thinkers. I find a lot of leaders who think they have to absorb the problems, they have to do all the hard work. And and they like that, like, oh, that's my job. But then what it means is they're not enabling everyone around them to be good problem solvers, to be good thinkers. And then they resent people because they're not taking initiative, they're not being proactive. Boy, have I heard that a lot from people over time, right? Like, why don't my people take initiative? Why don't they be more proactive? Why don't they solve problems? And I always have to say, hey, what are you doing to enable that behavior? What are you doing to ensure that that behavior is happening not only in your team, but with people around you? So one of the things we absolutely have to combat is this sense of being right. This is only one, you know, there's over 200 cognitive biases that affect our brain. Being right is what is only one of many things that affect us. But this is what my focus is today. So, number one, when we believe we are right, our confirmation confirmation bias kicks in. And for any of you, I'm I'm confident you've heard of confirmation bias. It could be, um I hear about this a lot, like in interviewing when people say, Oh, you're gonna meet Fred, you're gonna love Fred. Fred went to the same college you did, Fred's a great guy. And so then you interview Fred and you look for all the reasons why Fred is awesome. And even if Fred wasn't awesome, you'd be thinking, oh, Fred must be having a bad day because Fred's typically awesome, even if you've never met him before. That is confirmation bias. But also that happens when we want to be right. We tend to look for things that support how right we are, and we tend to dismiss things, maybe evidence or other opinions that tend to be different from ours. So, number one, um, we think about um confirming evidence, right? Confirming evidence, that's what we look for, and we dismiss things that are different. And one of the behaviors that feeds into that is selective listening. I was noticing this the other day about myself. I was listening to something and I was like plucking out all the things I agreed with. I was literally dismissing things that I didn't agree with because I didn't feel like those things were right. So I felt this just the other day. So that's number one. The second one is reduced intellectual humility.

unknown 7:07

Woo!

SPEAKER_00 7:08

I like this one. When people think they know and they think, I already know this. Do you already know this? And sometimes when we're very experienced leaders, we think, I've seen it all, I've done it all, I know it all, I have 20 years of experience or 10 years or 30 years, and I know this thing. And so when I know it, I drop into that sense of being right. But what happens to curiosity and what happens to someone with a totally different perspective than us? Are we willing to be intellectually humble enough to understand their point of view? Are we willing to ask the tough questions of ourselves to really explore that others may have information that we don't have?

unknown 7:58

What?

Pitfall 3 Doubling Down Publicly

Pitfall 4 Defensiveness Breaks Collaboration

Pitfall 5 Premature Closure And Speed

Healthier Habits Than Certainty

A Tragic Lesson From Semmelweis

SPEAKER_00 8:00

How weird is that? Um, but when we think about um newer people or even people that maybe have less experience from us, they absolutely have something to share with us intellectually, but we have to be open to listening to it. All right, so confirmation bias intensifies reduced intellectual humility. I love that one. And the third is the um escalation of commitment. Now, this means when you're right about something, and especially if you've stated it publicly, you're gonna have to double down on it, aren't you? Like I think we should go this direction in terms of our teams or our goal or the marketplace. And once you've said it, you put it out there, then if you change your mind, ooh, that's not cool. Um, we have to protect our ego by being consistent. Um, I do this, this is connected, but it's a tangent to this. But I do this assertive, uh, assertive rights assessment where managers take this assessment to see how assertive or how much they will assert their rights to dignity, to saying what they think. Um, and there's a couple statements. It's a 20 uh 20 statement assessment. And um, I can actually post it. Um I'll I'll I'll include it as part of the show notes. But when we go through our assessment about what rights do we have, I use this in class and I ask people to take it and say, what rights do they not feel good about asserting? And two of the most common ones are changing my mind and saying, I don't know. Isn't that weird? Like to change our mind is somehow wrong, or it's going to reduce our credibility, or we're gonna appear illogical. That's another one that people pick a lot. I cannot be illogical. What's the opposite of logic? And people say, well, if I'm if I'm illogical, other people think I'm gonna crazy. And I was like, well, crazy isn't necessarily the opposite of illogical. It could mean that you're emotional. Maybe you're really thinking about something from an emotional perspective, not a logical perspective. So can you change your mind publicly and be okay with it? But I think a lot of times people think we can't do that, that that's not available to me. It'll affect my credibility or it'll affect my reputation. But that kind of commitment and escalation of commitment means we're hanging on tightly to something and we won't change our mind. Oops. All right, defensive communication and poor collaboration. So we're in a big group, and let's say your leader, your manager has told you to come into this group and we're gonna collaborate on a certain topic. When we collaborate in theory, collaboration is designed to get as many ideas as you can out. Um, what do people think? What do people value? What do they need? What do they expect? And to share those openly. So if we come in to a collaborative situation with a solution already in mind, is I know what we're gonna do. Like maybe let's say we're working on a new process, a communication process. And if I come in and think, I know what to do in this communication process, I know what's wrong. Then even if I'm in a collaborative experience, uh that perspective, that mindset of right is going to affect my ability to collaborate. Because will I be open-minded enough to hear any other points of view? Or will I very much struggle to understand and to shift my perspective? Am I open to new information, or do I just hunker down with my thought in a way that affects my collaboration, but also my communication because I'm getting defensive and I'm trying to protect my idea, my good idea, because my good idea is right. I thought about it a lot. And chances are many of you are good thinkers, right? You've you've thought it through. But again, just because we've thought long and hard about something, even long and hard about a solution, does not mean it's the right one. And are you willing to entertain any feedback to the contrary or not? That's what it feels like in those moments. And then the fifth one is premature closure. And what I mean by premature closure is a lot of us like to solve problems and get that checked off our list, right? Like, oh, we're having this challenge. Let's just, let's, let's take care of this, let's move on to the next one, let's move on to the next one. And so then we go um fast, right? Fast in our thinking. And fast in our thinking does not necessarily mean quality thinking. There's a a great book um called Thinking Fast and Slow. I'm pointing to it's down here. Um, thinking fast and slow. And our brain likes to process very quickly, right? System one, system two thinking. System one thinking is very fast, like, oh, I've seen this problem before, let's do this. I know I'm right. Um, or I've seen this before, let's do this. And we automatically really move quickly, whether that's problem solving, decision making, um, it doesn't even matter. We we have a lot of system one thinking, which means it's uh we're on autopilot. We do it habitually and automatically without really thinking about it. That's not good reflective thinking. Good reflective thinking is pausing enough to say, what do I know about this topic? What do I not know? How is this situation different from what we've done before? What new information do I need or do I have to make this decision? And when we look at um creating, it's almost like there's an end an identity embedded in these different pitfalls of my identity of being a good problem solver, my identity of what it means to be a good leader, which is confident and credible, my identity as meeting needs and challenges and doing it as quickly as I can. See how competent I am, how confident I am, and how credible I am. Again, those thoughts aren't at the surface. They're driving these behaviors, but they drive us towards sometimes really destructive patterns of thinking. And again, a lot of that comes down to the great feeling that comes from being right. Oh, dopamine, my little friend. We all need it, we all want it, but we don't think about how it's making us behave. So I want to just compare healthy thinking habits to dopamine-driven habits. What do we do when we're looking for dopamine? All right. One is um a healthy thinking habit is curiosity versus certainty. When we move into certainty, it's kind of like the need to be right. And you know what? When we don't have certainty as human beings, we do not like it. In our brain, we don't like it. My our brain doesn't like not having closure. But when we move, when we're curious, it means we're still open to new information. That takes longer than being certain. So curiosity versus certainty. The second one is adaptability versus defensiveness. Can you be nimble and flexible and adaptable in the moment, in the moment to process new information, no matter who's bringing it up? So without judgment, without selective listening, without evaluating what someone is saying, that they're right or wrong, can you be open to hearing it? Can you be adaptable in your brain versus defensive and immediately trying to defend your own position? And that defensiveness, again, we're coming from a place of potential confidence and credibility. And we we want to say, hey, I've thought this through, listen to it. But that comes across, and that can be the defensiveness that gets in the way of the curiosity and more and different information. The third one, ooh, is learning orientation versus ego protection. When you think about learning, and I have been learning for many, many years. I value learning a lot, of course. Um so when I think about learning orientation, I think about a growth mindset. A growth mindset is I'm willing to consider ultimate alternate views, but I'm willing to also be vulnerable about what I don't know. And for again, a lot of us, that vulnerability in not knowing something, either around from an experience perspective or intellectual perspective or subject matter expertise, whatever it is, um, that we may associate with something bad or negative, um, that vulnerability and shame. But so so then we resort to ego protection. I need to protect my ego, I need to be right. And then the fourth one, ooh, truth seeking. Are you willing to seek the truth rather than thinking that you need to be right? And that is again, I think for many of us, the protection of our identity, who we are as a leader or manager, who we are supposed to be, the identity associated with that is infallible. Go fast, solve problems, get good results. But truth seeking is very difficult. Truth seeking means we need to suspend judgment, suspend our the evidence that we do have, and be open to new and different evidence. So all of this is so important because dopamine is something really awesome. I love that our brain that created these chemical reactions. Um, and dopamine is one of my faves. Why? Because it makes us feel good. I had I just had an almond joy bar. I gotta have hit a dopamine, it tasted so good, right? The almond, the chocolate, all good, the coconut. Um, but when we go through life looking and seeking dopamine without realizing it, it truly affects us from a leadership perspective. So five pitfalls. One is it affects uh confirmation bias, and that bias intensifies when we want to be right because we're looking for evidence to be right. Number two, it reduces our intellectual humility. And for all of us, can we be intellectually humble? Can we be like we're back in grade school, just being curious and interested and knowing that we don't know everything, no matter how much of experience we have. Number three, escalation of commitment. And that means once we've committed, we can't change our mind. And that's just not true. Because I think when we tell ourselves we can't change our mind, we're almost implying that changing our mind is bad and it means something bad about us. Neither of those are true statements, but are we willing to change our mind for whatever reason because we're open enough to listen to others? Just think about that. Four defensive communication and poor collaboration. This is, I don't know about you all, but when I'm in a big meeting and people disagree, it's uncomfortable. I do not like it, right? I don't like it, and then I seek out, or I think I'm better at this than I used to be, but I would seek out like who's right, who knows the truth, who's gonna win. But if we admit that we're all seeking information and that we all want to collaborate and we need to be open-minded and find common ground as a part of that, I think that's a really big reframe in, especially in a group setting when tension is high. And then fifth, premature closure. When we think we're right, when we think we are being efficient, when we think, oh my goodness, we just need to get this checked off the list. Let's just decide and go. Are we really exploring all the different options available to us or not? So think about this as you go through the next week or so. Think about your identity as a leader. And are you willing to have an identity that is not ego-driven, rather, it's intellectually humble and open and curious. And can you allow yourself to drop into that place and into that space? So instead of winning feels good, because winning, of course, does feel good, we think, no, learning feels good, right? Learning something new and understanding something that we thought we knew in a different way is truly a joyful experience if we can open open ourselves up to do that. And I think that single change in not having to be right significantly significantly impacts our problem solving, our leadership, and our long term decision quality. And that's what I want for all of you. If you want to hear a really sad example of righteousness, okay, I'll give you one quick. It is about Ignay Semmelweiss. He was a physician back in Vienna in the 1840s, and he discovered. There was a rash of infantests happening in their hospital, and he discovered why. He was set on figuring out why this is happening, and he did. He told the other doctors, we need to wash our hands. At that time, it wasn't a big practice, not like today. Um, and people said, My hands aren't dirty, people, meaning all the men doctors at the time, because they were all men doctors. Well, they all thought they were right, that they were doing the right things, but they weren't. In fact, they disparaged Ignace Emelvice so much, they basically shunned him from the medical community. And then sadly for Ignace, he had some mental health issues, and I think he became an alcoholic and he was hospitalized and he died from sepsis. All right, that story is horrible, but the reason I tell it is because Ignace was right and no one believed him. Doctors, smart people who actually were putting their patients' health at risk said, you are not right, Ignace. So as you go through this next week, see what you can observe around people's need to be right and share this with someone who you know. And you don't have to tell them that you think they think they're always right, but you could just tell them that this is a good practice for collaboration. So share this podcast with someone you know who you think is uh an important leader to facilitate collaboration because this concept and being able to find this dopamine exploration in your brain and understanding it more will be very helpful to being and leading collaboration.