Do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?
Lessons on life and work
This question changed the course of my life.
There I was at the age of 38, having just decided to divorce my wife. It wasn’t a rash decision. The marriage had been bad for years and I had spent a lot of time, like many others I suppose, ruminating on the faults and flaws of my wife.
Then I made the decision to be on my own.
And it hit me.
I was now solely responsible for the trajectory of my life. There was nobody else to blame. If ever it made sense to focus on what my wife had done wrong (probably not), that time was over. I had to focus on myself. To sit with my thoughts. To embrace uncomfortable truths. To look deeply at my own actions and determine where I had gone wrong and how I had contributed to the catastrophic failure of my marriage.
The question came to me from deep within. In a somber tone but with perfect clarity and an unshakeable insistence that I heed its call.
Do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?
I’d spent my life wanting to be right. I’m sure personality played a role. As did my academic training. I am a passionate believer in Truth; I dedicated my life to pursuing it and holding myself to its highest standards — even as I constantly fell short.
Being right wasn’t ego driven for me. Well, ok, maybe it was a little. I’m human. But it was much more than that. Being right was about morality for me. It was core to my value system.
And yet that inner voice was unrelenting…
Do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?
I was tired. Sad. Alone.
Being right takes a lot of work. Not only the attempt to actually be right, but even more to maintain and tell the story that I was the good guy. I was exhausted.
Being right is also a great way to be unlikable. In trying to be right, it was never enough that I knew I was right. I needed my wife to know. And, nobody wants to be around the person who always has to be right. Being right is not a way to build healthy relationships; it is a choice to be alone. Eventually I realized that amidst the pain of aloneness, being right was cold comfort.
With no wife to blame anymore, there was no place to hide from the truth.
I had spent my life pursuing a strategy that was failing me spectacularly.
With my 40th birthday looming, I felt a sense of urgency to choose a better path. I just wanted to be happy. I wanted to enjoy my life.
Do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?
I chose love.
It was a profound choice that fundamentally changed my life for the better. It also transformed my career — but we’ll come to that later.
Choosing love enabled me to find the woman that was actually right for me. We’ve been together for 15 incredible years and I would not have lasted a week with her if I was still the guy trying to be right. As my (new) wife taught me, a healthy successful relationship is not about finding the right partner, it’s about being the right partner.
I think about this question from time to time. More so now as I look with despair at our increasingly polarized society and toxic discourse. Spend just a few minutes on social media and you’ll experience what being right is all about. It’s a constant battle to appear more clever than the next person — at their expense. It sheds no light, solves no problems, heals no wounds.
Do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?
Beyond the immeasurable joy this question has brought to my personal life, it has also made me a better professional.
The work I do, together with the team at Rule No. 1, is about helping organizations become the best version of themselves. This is entirely about changing behavior — and success always comes down to winning hearts and minds.
But too many leaders in too many organizations are trying to be right. Trying to be right prevents you from truly listening; it gets in the way of learning; it makes you seem arrogant and out of touch. So it’s no surprise that organizational change efforts almost always fail; however right they are (or seem to be in the minds of a few leaders), they don’t capture the imagination of the very people whose efforts are required to make the change successful.
I empathize with these leaders. Most of what they were taught in business emphasized the value of being right. It’s how one rises to the level of leadership: Asking the right questions, gathering the right data, making the right decisions.
Business socializes people to be right; it should teach people to choose love.
Choosing to be loved is not about choosing to be wrong or ignoring facts. It’s not about abandoning your values, opinions, or principles and simply going with the flow. It’s not about one particular moment, decision, or interaction.
Choosing to be loved is a life and leadership strategy whose only objective is to increase your chances of achieving success and happiness.
If the outcomes you desire require the involvement of other people — and they always do — then choosing to be loved over choosing to be right is the only choice.
Choosing to be loved is about recognizing that you can win the battle and still lose the war. It’s about understanding that a decision that’s 70% right and embraced by all is far better than a decision that’s 100% right and ignored by all. Choosing to be loved is about meeting people where they are, staying open to their perspectives, and sometimes letting go of the logic when others simply don’t buy it.
I could have ended my marriage convinced that I was right and that my ex-wife was wrong. But even if I was right, where would that have left me? The data suggest I would have ended up alone or in another soon-to-be failed relationship — with a significantly higher mortality and suicide risk. Dying alone on that hill — regardless of how right I thought I was — seemed incredibly foolish to me.
And yet this is a common choice in business. Many business leaders genuinely believe that so long as the data are on their side and their decisions are strategically and financially sound they will prevail. Ironically, in making this choice, the data are not on their side. The belief that being right is more likely to lead to success than being embraced has been proven false over and over again.
The pursuit of being right as a leader ends as a lonely crusade. The pursuit of being loved as a leader ends with positive energy and forward momentum — a far better outcome even if it’s not exactly what you’d hoped for or implemented as quickly as you wanted.
Do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?
My younger self would not have been able to hear this question. He would have been ready with a brilliant argument about why being right is…right. Heck, he might even have been right. But it wasn’t working for him. He was on a path to sorrow. If you’re on that same path — as a spouse, a parent, a friend, a citizen, a leader — I hope you can hear me.
Letting go of the need to be right and, instead, choosing love will make you a better leader. Perhaps more importantly, it will save you a lot of pain and open the door to a life of healthy joyful relationships — in your career and beyond.
