Newsletter #21

The Weight of Needing to Be Right

Hi there,

There's a particular kind of pressure that comes with being the boss. There’s an expectation that you'll always have a solution to the problem. There’s an assumption that the solution will always be right. And an understanding that if everyone follows your recommended solution all will be well; certainty is your currency.

I felt it every day when I ran my business. This constant, overbearing need to appear in control, to look like I knew exactly what I was talking about. To personify calmness when all was turning to shit. I really didn’t like it. Mainly because I didn’t have the courage to admit that I wasn’t sure. So I ended up pretending a lot of the time. Trying convey authority when the truth was I was drowning in doubt.

I found it exhausting. In fact, it was more than that. It was destructive.

When you're trapped in the prison of always needing to be right, three toxic patterns emerge. First, you stop admitting when you don't know something. People are looking to you for answers, so you give them answers - even when you're guessing. Even when you're completely unsure. You'd rather be wrong with confidence than honest about your lack of clarity.

Second, once you've made up your mind, you become wedded to that position. You have to be right. And you have to be seen to be right. So, when things inevitably don't turn out as expected, you start pointing fingers. You have to. You can’t be in charge of the ship and admit that you don’t know where to steer it. Or even how to steer it. So the excuses come out. The market shifted. The team didn't execute properly. Someone dropped the ball. Anything to deflect the finger being pointed at you.

Third, you stop asking for help. Bosses provide answers; they don't seek them. That's the unspoken rule. So, you isolate yourself at the very moment you need perspective most.

These patterns all converge into one devastating outcome: impossibly high expectations of everyone around you, leading to constant disappointment and simmering resentment. And never - not once - looking at yourself as the source of the problem.

Expectations are disappointments waiting to happen. And when we're busy being right all the time, we're blind to our role in creating them.

That is until there’s no getting away that you are 100% at the heart of the problem.

The Gift of Being Wrong

In 2016, I was asked to leave the company I was running in this ‘always be right’ way. I had turned to alcohol to numb the devastating effect of pretending to know what I was doing. But my drinking got so bad that I had become a liability to the business. Even in the thick of my addiction I couldn't see that I was the problem. I'd just come out of rehab and felt I deserved another chance. I had it all under control. I had been under undue pressure. It’s not my fault. I need another chance. I demand another chance. And I was furious with my co-owners when they didn’t give me that second chance.

My resentment was deep. Very deep. And it felt completely justified. We had built a really strong business together over a 10 year period. Surely they couldn't just kick me out just like that.

But that was all down to my lack of perspective. Because the truth was I'd been given dozens of second chances that year. My alcoholism had put everyone in an impossible position. Nobody wanted me to leave; least of all them. But there was no way I could have carried on in the state I was in.

I didn't see any of this at the time. I was too busy being right about how wronged I'd been.

Then I embarked on the 12-step programme of recovery and it taught me something I hadn’t considered before: look at your own side of the street before blaming others. Clear your side first. Take responsibility for the role you played in any injustice you feel.

I didn’t like the idea of doing that but I did it anyway. I was told that my recovery from addiction required me to take responsibility. So I looked at me. At my behaviours. At the problems I was causing with my actions. Fessing up to the harm I was causing to those around me.

When I finally did that - when I stopped defending my self-centred rightness and got honest about my responsibility - everything shifted. I could clearly see that it was my drinking that created the crisis. It was alcohol that forced Richard and Malcolm's hand. Once I deeply felt that truth, I was confronted with only one course of action.

I needed to apologise to them.

What Forgiveness Actually Looks Like in Business

That apology was in 2020 and it still leaves me with goosebumps to this day. I apologised for my behaviour and the position I put them in. They graciously accepted and offered genuine gratitude that I was getting better. And a deep transformative sense of healing arose in the room. Not just between the three of us and our relationship but also something deeper. It healed something fundamental about how I understood leadership and relationships.

Because it showed me that my old ways of leading and my need to always be right was fundamentally all about fear. Fear of being exposed. Fear of being inadequate. Fear of losing control.

These fears are all self-centred and ego-based fears. They’re the fears that the image we’ve created for ourselves as a leader have to be protected at all costs.

And these fears create a particular kind of leadership. A brittle, defensive, isolated kind. A kind that makes forgiveness virtually impossible because forgiveness requires admitting you might have been wrong. About the situation. About someone else's motives. About your own role in what happened.

Real forgiveness in business isn't about being nice or letting people off the hook. It's about seeing clearly. It's about letting go of the story where you're always the wronged party and everyone else failed you.

It's about recognising that business isn't just business. It's relationships. It's how we show up when things get hard. It's life.

And here’s what’s happened as a result of that meeting ten years ago where forgiveness was sought and forgiveness was granted; Richard and I now are working together again on Another Way Leadership Programme. A programme that embraces much of the soul-inspired lessons I’ve learned from the 12 step programme to be shared with leaders who also believe that business is not just business.

None of this would be possible without forgiveness.

I’m so grateful for everything my journey out of addiction has given me. Not least the ability to stop needing to be right. I am able to let go of many (not all quite yet) of those self-centred fears that kept me pretending to be the leader I thought I needed to be.

I can finally start being real.

I can finally start being me.

Until next time,

Simon