Being Right vs. Getting it Right
How the need to be right gets in the way of good thinking.
This post is for leaders, collaborators, thinkers, and builders who care more about doing meaningful work than being right.
The Trouble with Being Right
Most of us learn early that being right is a good thing. At school, it means you’ve studied. At work, it signals competence. In conversation, it can win respect. The desire to be right is rarely questioned and it’s often rewarded. But if you spend enough time watching how people operate in meetings, in leadership, in conflict, it becomes clear that wanting to be right is not the same as wanting to get it right.
I once worked with a colleague who embodied this distinction. In meetings, he rarely introduced ideas or made proposals. Instead, he specialized in critique: raising objections, asking pointed questions, casting doubt. His style was reserved but consciously exacting. He kept his distance, rarely attaching himself to a plan or position. Over time, he had gained a reputation as someone who was “sharp” and “hard to convince.” In our culture, that reputation carried weight.
But it struck me that his habit of questioning wasn’t really about improving the quality of ideas. It was about maintaining a position, staying one step removed, never exposed. If you don’t offer a perspective, you can’t be wrong. If you only respond, you control the terms of engagement. It’s a clever way to appear right without taking the risks that come with actually doing the work of contribution.
And in some environments, that strategy works.
Why Rightness Appeals
The desire to be right is understandable. It gives us a sense of control. It reassures us that we’re competent, informed, capable. It helps us feel safe in group work settings, where ideas are social currency and mistakes can have real costs.
But being right can also become a kind of performance. It can turn into something we chase not to solve problems, but because it helps us manage perceptions - our own and others’.
Being right feels like a conclusion. Getting it right usually requires remaining in process.
The Subtle Ways It Shows Up
We don’t always recognize how the need to be right shapes our behavior. It isn’t always about arguing or correcting others. Sometimes it looks like over-explaining, or refusing to let a small error slide. It can show up as withholding credit unless we’ve been acknowledged, or leaning heavily on data so we can’t be challenged. It can even take the form of asking skeptical questions to demonstrate that we’ve seen something others have missed.
These behaviors often go unnoticed, easily mistaken for rigor or high standards. But they’re worth watching. Because over time, they can shift our focus away from the goals we most care about and toward a narrow need to maintain authority or control.
A Cue to Look Inward
If you find yourself needing to be right, especially when the stakes are low, or the conversation starts to feel tense, it’s a good moment to pause and ask yourself some useful questions.
What am I trying to protect right now?
What would it mean if I were wrong?
Is my goal to be useful, or to be seen a certain way?
The pull toward rightness is often a sign that something deeper is at play: an attachment to being competent, or in control, or just not exposed. But when we notice that impulse and examine it, it can help us reorient toward learning, improving, contributing meaningfully.
Kathryn Schulz, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, makes a compelling case that being wrong isn’t a sign of failure, but a fundamental part of how we learn and grow. In her TED Talk On Being Wrong, she explores the cultural stigma we attach to error, and how this stigma distorts our relationship to uncertainty and change. We tend to associate wrongness with shame, incompetence, or moral failing, but as Schulz argues, this is both unhelpful and inaccurate. "The miracle of the mind," she says, "is that you can change it."
Recognizing that we were wrong doesn't have to mark the end of our credibility. More often, it marks the beginning of clearer thinking.
Getting It Right
There’s a difference between wanting to win the conversation and wanting to understand the situation. The people who get better over time - who lead well, collaborate effectively, and build strong ideas - aren’t the ones who are always right. They’re the ones who stay open-minded.
They’re willing to say:
“I might have missed something.”
“That’s a good point.”
“Let’s rethink it.”
They’re trying to make progress, not defend a position.
This shift moves the emphasis from managing perception to improving understanding.
And over time, that orientation proves far more useful.
Bonus: When Someone Else Always Needs to Be Right
It’s one thing to recognize the need for rightness in ourselves. It’s another to navigate it in others- especially those who seem chronically attached to winning the point, correcting the detail, or controlling the narrative.
These patterns can be frustrating, but it helps to remember: people who need to be right are often protecting something. It might be their sense of competence, their standing in the group, or simply their comfort with certainty. The behavior may be habitual, even unconscious.
When working with someone like this, a few shifts in approach can help:
Lower the stakes. If you don’t need to prove them wrong, you free yourself to listen differently. Sometimes agreement isn’t necessary to move forward.
Don’t match the energy. Responding with your own need to be right usually escalates the dynamic. Instead, focus on clarifying the shared goal or the underlying concern.
Offer room for dignity. If someone is rigidly defending a view, look for a way to let them revise without feeling exposed. “I think we’re saying similar things” often works better than “That’s not correct.”
Redirect toward usefulness. Acknowledge their perspective, then ask: “What do you think we should do with that?” It shifts the conversation from being right to being constructive.
In some cases, firmer boundaries may be necessary. But often, just naming what’s happening, without trying to fix or match it, can preserve momentum and clarity.