Expertise Matters, Opinions Are Easy
Now more than ever, respecting expertise and thinking through our opinions before pushing an agenda may be critical to our short and long-term survival and
Now more than ever, respecting expertise and thinking through our opinions before pushing an agenda may be critical to our short and long-term survival and
Too much judgment can be dangerous It feels like we live in a world today where rushing to judge the behaviors and actions of others
I remember my mom telling me early on that “words matter.” Once you say something it cannot be unsaid. Even if you apologize and/or make
Anyone can manipulate words and stretch the facts to suit their short term objective. However, it is difficult long-term to fake behavior and eventually your words will catch up with you.
When you lead others, everyone is a critic to some degree. It’s next to impossible to be fully aligned with another person 100% of the time. As a leader, knowing this, you can’t fall into the trap of listening to every dissenting voice. The path to mediocrity is littered with individuals who gave up their leadership power unnecessarily and allowed themselves to be unduly influenced by the opinions of others. This doesn’t mean you avoid soliciting feedback, quite the contrary, but you need to be able to filter this feedback and trust your own judgment. The world looks much different when you are actually accountable for your decisions. It’s easy to be an expert when you don’t have to deal with the consequences of your actions.
Leaders should be in a constant learning mode. Once you think you know it all give up the reigns of power because you will become detrimental to your organization. While some basic fundamental beliefs may remain true regardless of the circumstances, most of what takes place in business is in a constant state of flux. Your goal should be to stay ahead of the change curve not fall behind it. One way to do this is to keep asking questions and seeking answers. You can never be smart enough.
Most of us prefer to occupy the realm of opinions rather than facts – whether we’d like to believe it or not. Instead of taking the time to actually prove something or find out the truth, it is much easier to form an opinion based on personal experience, values, attitude, hearsay, etc. This is especially true in our media where people with strong opinions (often with minimal or no grounding in the facts) dominate the airwaves. We’ve become a society dedicated to the easy answer and convenience in all things. It is certainly much easier and self-satisfying (we think) to find someone who represents our own point of view rather than pushes us to grow and challenge this perspective.
Everyone is too quick to jump on the popular opinion bandwagon these days. Instead of taking the time to understand the facts and make an educated decision about something, it is much easier for most people to just go along with the crowd and follow whatever the media or their particular brand of talking heads tells them to think. Just because something or someone resonates with you doesn’t mean this is an accurate reflection of reality.
There is nothing wrong with having strong opinions but always remember this doesn’t mean you are right. There is a difference between a fact based opinion and experiential opinion. In one case you are actually using hard facts and objective data to state you position. In the other case, you are relying more on subjective experience and personal beliefs to make your point. The dangerous thing about experiential opinions is that they are grounded solely on the personal filters of the advocate. They are also based on a singular and usually somewhat stunted view of reality. Being louder and more passionate about something will certainly garner attention, however, once again this doesn’t mean you are right and very often means you are rude, close-minded and/or a poor listener.
There is no shortage of people who are unhappy with our government or political process these days, but very few of us actually do anything about it. It is much easier to complain and assume that one particular party has all the answers or not. In addition, instead of actually doing some research and using fact based arguments, we prefer to have strong opinions based on the rhetoric and propaganda of ill informed media personalities.