[Music]
when was the last time you were wrong
really publicly wrong this is not a
rhetorical question I want you to think
about it and think about how you felt in
that moment maybe you were awash in
embarrassment looking for the nearest
hole to hide in or maybe you were a
little defensive even a little angry at
the people who watched you be wrong or
maybe you were completely frozen not
sure what to do next there are many
different ways to respond to being wrong
but usually our reaction is some
negative emotion we most of us learned
early on in our life that it is better
to be right than wrong that to be right
is to be smart and so we avoid being
wrong as much as we possibly can that
was certainly the case for me I grew up
as what could lovingly be referred to as
a bit of a perfectionist no at all
it was very popular in middle school as
you can imagine my co-workers might tell
you there’s a little vestige of that
still remaining in my persona I really
liked to be right and there are actual
physical reasons why we enjoy being
right we get a little dose of happy in
our brain when we come to closure and
when we feel certain but that feeling
rests on an illusion because the thing
is I am wrong all the time and so are
you how do I know that well it actually
goes back to you how our brains work my
earliest conception of the brain was it
was some mix of a computer and a
high-def video recorder right it records
everything that’s going on around you
and you file those files away in your
personal video storage facility
somewhere back here and your brain
and when you need to recall it you could
pull it out and you play it back in
perfect HD that’s how I thought the
brain worked well it turns out the brain
works more like an impressionistic
painter it captures the essence of
what’s happening but not the whole thing
our world is wonderfully miraculously
complex so complex that our minds do a
favour for us that we are completely
unaware of they filter out a whole bunch
of that complexity and they do it in
systematically biased ways we pay
attention to the things that matter to
us that we care about that fit with our
current understanding of the world and
we ignore all the things that don’t you
already have a model of me
based on what you see what you’ve heard
in the last three minutes your
impression of what a Business School
professor might be or maybe I remind you
of a favorite cousin or a hated boss and
how you felt about that person informs
your model of me right now and that
model is at least a little bit wrong or
you can perform the following experiment
when you go home tonight go into a room
you know really well and close your eyes
and think about that room bring it to
mind in as much detail as you possibly
can and then open your eyes and have a
look around your natural instinct is
gonna be to ask what did I get right but
ask a different question what did I miss
now in some cases it’ll be something
quite small a mark on the wall or a
picture that’s a little askew but in
other cases there will be huge gaps in
your model of that room and that is just
fine your model of the world is exactly
as sophisticated as you need it to be to
get through the day we are constantly
building models of the world and we do
so for
a very good reason if we didn’t we would
be overwhelmed with complexity our
models of the world are what let us take
action and so from an evolutionary
perspective they are essential to us the
problem is we’re not aware we’re doing
it it doesn’t feel like we’re modeling
the world I just live in it I have
access to the reality around me so it
shuts us off from learning anything new
it makes us incredibly uncomfortable
with the idea of being wrong and that is
amplified by the fact that there are all
of these other people in the world and
just as you are going through the world
simplifying it and building models on
the basis of your own biases and
incentives and experiences so are they
but they have different biases and
incentives and experiences and so it’s
quite natural for them to build a
radically different model of the world
than you hold have you ever gone through
a meeting at work
your boss lays out the plan and for once
it’s perfectly clear you know exactly
what you need to do on the basis of what
you heard and you turn to your colleague
and you say that’s great I know exactly
what to do and she says yes and then she
tells you what she’s gonna do on the
basis of the meeting and you think to
yourself oh my god what meeting was she
in because it was so radically at odds
with what you heard and with what you
expected it happens all the time the
challenge emerges in how we react to
that different model very rarely do I
think to ourselves well that’s
interesting she must see something I
don’t see no we think to ourselves she’s
wrong and we know what to do when
someone is wrong explain the right
answer and if they don’t get it right
away
explain it again slower and louder
until eventually one of us has fine
we’ll do it your way notice I said fine
we’ll do it your way not thank you
you’re right because if you’ve ever had
to be the person who gave in because the
other person really liked arguing or was
your boss or was married to you whatever
reason you had for saying it you know it
leaves some emotional residue it is an
uncomfortable feeling to believe you’re
right and to do something else and the
emotional residue is amplified by the
way we often act in the face of someone
who is wrong
typically we reduce them to one of two
things so there’s one explanation for
why you and I could have all the same
information and one of us comes to the
right answer and one of us comes to the
wrong answer one reason for that is that
one of us just isn’t quite as smart as
the other one if you ever had someone
explain the right answer to you as if
you’re truly stupid how do you feel
about that person at the end of the
conversation of course that’s not the
only possible explanation for why a
person could be wrong they might in fact
be incredibly smart smart enough to know
the right answer and yet they’re
willfully consciously arguing for the
wrong answer so there must be some
reason some hidden agenda right some
reason why they are making an argument
for the wrong answer and so now they’re
not stupid they’re evil right what
happens in business is organizationally
as we tend to cast entire departments as
one of stupid or evil typically the
finance guy sorry you’re the evil ones
right because you just won’t let us
spend money on the stuff that matters it
is a pretty short walk from stupid and
evil to entrenchment and even hatred
especially if the person you’re arguing
with
when we cast other people as one of
stupid or evil on the basis of our
belief that we are right and they are
wrong it has really bad results and that
can be true even when it feels like the
answer is definitively the right answer
a few years ago I was asked to teach in
a program for executives working in
health care and I teach at a business
school so up to that point I had only
ever worked with business executives and
all of my examples are from the world of
business and I had a hunch that the
physicians and nurses and allied health
professionals were not going to be super
keen to hear about my business examples
and so I sought advice from people who
might have engaged with groups like this
before who have been members of this
group and one of my good friends a
psychiatrist and an educator gave me
some great advice about absolutely every
example needs to be a healthcare example
and so why don’t you come in and talk
about something really topical kind of
controversial and see what happens and
so I said oh great what what should I do
and she gave me a great example I went
ahead I went into that room about fifty
healthcare leaders and I happily and
confidently told them that we were about
to talk about the vaccine debate there
was a little hush that fell over the
room just for a moment as I felt waves
of hatred coming at me and then a
booming voice from the very back of the
room I can still hear quite vividly and
that booming voice said to me excuse me
maybe I was wrong in my choice of
example in that particular moment what a
really interesting thing happened
another voice from another part of the
room popped up and she said oh isn’t
there though
from a scientific point of view we know
20 years ago there was a single journal
article published that posited a link
between the MMR Mac vaccine and autism
that is the most thoroughly repudiated
piece of medical writing ever the person
who wrote it had his medical license
taken away and the medical community has
for 20 years said to anyone who does not
want to vaccinate their children at the
time and on the schedule that the
medical community recommends that they
are both stupid and evil and how is that
working for us every year fewer people
vaccinate than the year before
we’ve had outbreaks of diseases we
thought were eradicated people are dying
from measles and that should not happen
so what we ended up talking about in
that room was whether seeking to
understand the perspective of a parent
who believes it should be her
responsibility to make that choice for
her child whether understanding that
just a little more deeply could at least
change how we talk to her because we
have the right answer and we’re getting
the wrong results we need to get more
comfortable being wrong we need to stop
framing wrong people as one of stupid or
evil and say instead they are human
being wrong is human it is how we are
wired and so I want to encourage you to
think about how you can get more
comfortable inhabiting that wrongness
and so there are two things I believe
that we can do to get a little more
comfortable the first is to spend a
little more time thinking about our own
thinking not in the sense of reflecting
on our thinking the way we normally do
normally when we believe something we
look for evidence to support it
confirmation bias the most famous of our
cognitive biases exists and is
extraordinarily powerful and he
is how it works I’m gonna give you an
example that my husband loves me to give
because it is an example about him so
when we were first married he had a
deeply held belief about the world his
belief not mine and that deeply held
belief that he had was that all people
who drive Audi’s are jerks how do I know
that this was his Dell deeply held
belief because whenever we were in the
car if an Audi driver did anything
remotely objectionable he would point it
out to me and if an Audi driver did
something generous and kind like let him
in nothing or if heaven forbid a BMW
driver did something obnoxious again
nothing our confirmation bias is sticky
it is how we think about the world it
informs what we believe and why we
believe it and so the thing we need to
do is start to look for disconfirming
evidence believe what you believe but
ask yourself how might I notice what
does not fit how might I see things that
are not in the pattern of what I already
believe so starting with thinking more
about our thinking
the second thing very closely tied to
that is to start to see what you do not
see and the best way to do that is to
spend time with people who see the world
differently to seek to understand other
people’s points of view as an
interesting opportunity to learn
especially when that person says things
that feel wrong our natural reaction
again in that moment is to argue the
fight-or-flight reaction our amygdala
fires we want to argue take a breath
pause and consider without evaluating
just
consider and if you’re making amygdala
fires and you’re ready to fight give
yourself a little bit of time by just
leaning back and saying say more the
magic words it buys you all kinds of
time to just listen these two things
being more intentional about
understanding our own thinking and where
it comes from and being more open to
understanding the perspectives of others
are a step along the journey to greater
comfort being wrong and the change
doesn’t have to be huge
I’m deeply inspired on this front by a
young man that I met a few years ago
through a program at a school called
John Palani collegiate which is about 30
minutes north of here and this young man
was named Jabril he was finishing his
high school years and he took a course
that really was aimed at helping these
students be more comfortable being wrong
be more open to other perspectives and
to see possibilities to create something
new and at the end of that course we
asked him what had changed for him had
he seen any change in himself what was
that
and he told an interesting story he said
before he took this course before he was
aware of how his mind worked in the
world he was one of those guys who once
he came to an answer he was done right
he didn’t want to hear anything else and
even if evidence emerged a little bit
later that maybe he was wrong he did not
want to hear it because he’d already
finished and he said even on tests you
know how your teacher would tell you to
read over your test he did not want to
do that because he just wanted it to be
done and so he said the greatest change
he had seen in himself was that he used
to write all of his tests in pen and now
he writes them in pencil now that is a
tiny change but it signifies something
amazing because the answers that used to
be finished
can now keep getting better and better
so that really is my challenge to you is
to think about those moments when you
write someone else’s story in pen and
ask what would happen if I changed that
to pencil if I was just a little more
open to being wrong about that person or
that idea I believe that is the first
step to changing a lot of the division
and anger and hatred we see in the world
today but of course I could be wrong
thank you [Applause]
when was the last time you were wrong
really publicly wrong this is not a
rhetorical question I want you to think
about it and think about how you felt in
that moment maybe you were awash in
embarrassment looking for the nearest
hole to hide in or maybe you were a
little defensive even a little angry at
the people who watched you be wrong or
maybe you were completely frozen not
sure what to do next there are many
different ways to respond to being wrong
but usually our reaction is some
negative emotion we most of us learned
early on in our life that it is better
to be right than wrong that to be right
is to be smart and so we avoid being
wrong as much as we possibly can that
was certainly the case for me I grew up
as what could lovingly be referred to as
a bit of a perfectionist no at all
it was very popular in middle school as
you can imagine my co-workers might tell
you there’s a little vestige of that
still remaining in my persona I really
liked to be right and there are actual
physical reasons why we enjoy being
right we get a little dose of happy in
our brain when we come to closure and
when we feel certain but that feeling
rests on an illusion because the thing
is I am wrong all the time and so are
you how do I know that well it actually
goes back to you how our brains work my
earliest conception of the brain was it
was some mix of a computer and a
high-def video recorder right it records
everything that’s going on around you
and you file those files away in your
personal video storage facility
somewhere back here and your brain
and when you need to recall it you could
pull it out and you play it back in
perfect HD that’s how I thought the
brain worked well it turns out the brain
works more like an impressionistic
painter it captures the essence of
what’s happening but not the whole thing
our world is wonderfully miraculously
complex so complex that our minds do a
favour for us that we are completely
unaware of they filter out a whole bunch
of that complexity and they do it in
systematically biased ways we pay
attention to the things that matter to
us that we care about that fit with our
current understanding of the world and
we ignore all the things that don’t you
already have a model of me
based on what you see what you’ve heard
in the last three minutes your
impression of what a Business School
professor might be or maybe I remind you
of a favorite cousin or a hated boss and
how you felt about that person informs
your model of me right now and that
model is at least a little bit wrong or
you can perform the following experiment
when you go home tonight go into a room
you know really well and close your eyes
and think about that room bring it to
mind in as much detail as you possibly
can and then open your eyes and have a
look around your natural instinct is
gonna be to ask what did I get right but
ask a different question what did I miss
now in some cases it’ll be something
quite small a mark on the wall or a
picture that’s a little askew but in
other cases there will be huge gaps in
your model of that room and that is just
fine your model of the world is exactly
as sophisticated as you need it to be to
get through the day we are constantly
building models of the world and we do
so for
a very good reason if we didn’t we would
be overwhelmed with complexity our
models of the world are what let us take
action and so from an evolutionary
perspective they are essential to us the
problem is we’re not aware we’re doing
it it doesn’t feel like we’re modeling
the world I just live in it I have
access to the reality around me so it
shuts us off from learning anything new
it makes us incredibly uncomfortable
with the idea of being wrong and that is
amplified by the fact that there are all
of these other people in the world and
just as you are going through the world
simplifying it and building models on
the basis of your own biases and
incentives and experiences so are they
but they have different biases and
incentives and experiences and so it’s
quite natural for them to build a
radically different model of the world
than you hold have you ever gone through
a meeting at work
your boss lays out the plan and for once
it’s perfectly clear you know exactly
what you need to do on the basis of what
you heard and you turn to your colleague
and you say that’s great I know exactly
what to do and she says yes and then she
tells you what she’s gonna do on the
basis of the meeting and you think to
yourself oh my god what meeting was she
in because it was so radically at odds
with what you heard and with what you
expected it happens all the time the
challenge emerges in how we react to
that different model very rarely do I
think to ourselves well that’s
interesting she must see something I
don’t see no we think to ourselves she’s
wrong and we know what to do when
someone is wrong explain the right
answer and if they don’t get it right
away
explain it again slower and louder
until eventually one of us has fine
we’ll do it your way notice I said fine
we’ll do it your way not thank you
you’re right because if you’ve ever had
to be the person who gave in because the
other person really liked arguing or was
your boss or was married to you whatever
reason you had for saying it you know it
leaves some emotional residue it is an
uncomfortable feeling to believe you’re
right and to do something else and the
emotional residue is amplified by the
way we often act in the face of someone
who is wrong
typically we reduce them to one of two
things so there’s one explanation for
why you and I could have all the same
information and one of us comes to the
right answer and one of us comes to the
wrong answer one reason for that is that
one of us just isn’t quite as smart as
the other one if you ever had someone
explain the right answer to you as if
you’re truly stupid how do you feel
about that person at the end of the
conversation of course that’s not the
only possible explanation for why a
person could be wrong they might in fact
be incredibly smart smart enough to know
the right answer and yet they’re
willfully consciously arguing for the
wrong answer so there must be some
reason some hidden agenda right some
reason why they are making an argument
for the wrong answer and so now they’re
not stupid they’re evil right what
happens in business is organizationally
as we tend to cast entire departments as
one of stupid or evil typically the
finance guy sorry you’re the evil ones
right because you just won’t let us
spend money on the stuff that matters it
is a pretty short walk from stupid and
evil to entrenchment and even hatred
especially if the person you’re arguing
with
when we cast other people as one of
stupid or evil on the basis of our
belief that we are right and they are
wrong it has really bad results and that
can be true even when it feels like the
answer is definitively the right answer
a few years ago I was asked to teach in
a program for executives working in
health care and I teach at a business
school so up to that point I had only
ever worked with business executives and
all of my examples are from the world of
business and I had a hunch that the
physicians and nurses and allied health
professionals were not going to be super
keen to hear about my business examples
and so I sought advice from people who
might have engaged with groups like this
before who have been members of this
group and one of my good friends a
psychiatrist and an educator gave me
some great advice about absolutely every
example needs to be a healthcare example
and so why don’t you come in and talk
about something really topical kind of
controversial and see what happens and
so I said oh great what what should I do
and she gave me a great example I went
ahead I went into that room about fifty
healthcare leaders and I happily and
confidently told them that we were about
to talk about the vaccine debate there
was a little hush that fell over the
room just for a moment as I felt waves
of hatred coming at me and then a
booming voice from the very back of the
room I can still hear quite vividly and
that booming voice said to me excuse me
maybe I was wrong in my choice of
example in that particular moment what a
really interesting thing happened
another voice from another part of the
room popped up and she said oh isn’t
there though
from a scientific point of view we know
20 years ago there was a single journal
article published that posited a link
between the MMR Mac vaccine and autism
that is the most thoroughly repudiated
piece of medical writing ever the person
who wrote it had his medical license
taken away and the medical community has
for 20 years said to anyone who does not
want to vaccinate their children at the
time and on the schedule that the
medical community recommends that they
are both stupid and evil and how is that
working for us every year fewer people
vaccinate than the year before
we’ve had outbreaks of diseases we
thought were eradicated people are dying
from measles and that should not happen
so what we ended up talking about in
that room was whether seeking to
understand the perspective of a parent
who believes it should be her
responsibility to make that choice for
her child whether understanding that
just a little more deeply could at least
change how we talk to her because we
have the right answer and we’re getting
the wrong results we need to get more
comfortable being wrong we need to stop
framing wrong people as one of stupid or
evil and say instead they are human
being wrong is human it is how we are
wired and so I want to encourage you to
think about how you can get more
comfortable inhabiting that wrongness
and so there are two things I believe
that we can do to get a little more
comfortable the first is to spend a
little more time thinking about our own
thinking not in the sense of reflecting
on our thinking the way we normally do
normally when we believe something we
look for evidence to support it
confirmation bias the most famous of our
cognitive biases exists and is
extraordinarily powerful and he
is how it works I’m gonna give you an
example that my husband loves me to give
because it is an example about him so
when we were first married he had a
deeply held belief about the world his
belief not mine and that deeply held
belief that he had was that all people
who drive Audi’s are jerks how do I know
that this was his Dell deeply held
belief because whenever we were in the
car if an Audi driver did anything
remotely objectionable he would point it
out to me and if an Audi driver did
something generous and kind like let him
in nothing or if heaven forbid a BMW
driver did something obnoxious again
nothing our confirmation bias is sticky
it is how we think about the world it
informs what we believe and why we
believe it and so the thing we need to
do is start to look for disconfirming
evidence believe what you believe but
ask yourself how might I notice what
does not fit how might I see things that
are not in the pattern of what I already
believe so starting with thinking more
about our thinking
the second thing very closely tied to
that is to start to see what you do not
see and the best way to do that is to
spend time with people who see the world
differently to seek to understand other
people’s points of view as an
interesting opportunity to learn
especially when that person says things
that feel wrong our natural reaction
again in that moment is to argue the
fight-or-flight reaction our amygdala
fires we want to argue take a breath
pause and consider without evaluating
just
consider and if you’re making amygdala
fires and you’re ready to fight give
yourself a little bit of time by just
leaning back and saying say more the
magic words it buys you all kinds of
time to just listen these two things
being more intentional about
understanding our own thinking and where
it comes from and being more open to
understanding the perspectives of others
are a step along the journey to greater
comfort being wrong and the change
doesn’t have to be huge
I’m deeply inspired on this front by a
young man that I met a few years ago
through a program at a school called
John Palani collegiate which is about 30
minutes north of here and this young man
was named Jabril he was finishing his
high school years and he took a course
that really was aimed at helping these
students be more comfortable being wrong
be more open to other perspectives and
to see possibilities to create something
new and at the end of that course we
asked him what had changed for him had
he seen any change in himself what was
that
and he told an interesting story he said
before he took this course before he was
aware of how his mind worked in the
world he was one of those guys who once
he came to an answer he was done right
he didn’t want to hear anything else and
even if evidence emerged a little bit
later that maybe he was wrong he did not
want to hear it because he’d already
finished and he said even on tests you
know how your teacher would tell you to
read over your test he did not want to
do that because he just wanted it to be
done and so he said the greatest change
he had seen in himself was that he used
to write all of his tests in pen and now
he writes them in pencil now that is a
tiny change but it signifies something
amazing because the answers that used to
be finished
can now keep getting better and better
so that really is my challenge to you is
to think about those moments when you
write someone else’s story in pen and
ask what would happen if I changed that
to pencil if I was just a little more
open to being wrong about that person or
that idea I believe that is the first
step to changing a lot of the division
and anger and hatred we see in the world
today but of course I could be wrong
thank you [Applause]
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