There are those among us who love to say “I told you so.” We get great joy from those four words. To us it means “I was right and you were wrong.” It means “You should have listened to me.” It means “I analyzed the information and reached the correct conclusion and you did not.” “I won.”
When we are in a position where we could say “I told you so” (hopefully we don’t actually say those words), we should not view it as a success, but as a failure. What it means is “I had valuable insight and I failed to convince you to listen to me.” It is a failure of communication and one that, if it is a pattern, represents a critical limitation.
Our goal at work is not to be right, it is to be effective. I don’t want to be right, I want to be successful. That means both not needing to be right all the time being able to convince people the times when (usually because I have seen or done the same thing before) I know I’m right.
A mentor of mine used to say “my keys to success are hiring people who are smarter than I am and give them good tools.” It’s not quite that easy, but his statement indicates he did not need to always be right. He wanted to be effective.
If I am a person who regularly has “I told you so” moments, I should do a retrospective on the situation. Talk to the people I was unable to convince and ask them these questions:
- Was I clear in presenting my opinion?
- Did I present the data in such a way that my conclusion seemed to follow logically?
- Beyond the facts, was there something in the way I communicated (my style) which presented a barrier to your agreeing with me?
- Was there some other factor which made it hard for you to agree with me?
The answers may help me advance from being right to being effective.
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