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Intro/outro (00:08):
This is The Happy Scientist podcast. Each episode is designed to make you more focused, more productive, and more satisfied in the lab. You can find us online at bitesizebio.com/happyscientist. Your hosts are Kenneth Vogt, founder of the executive coaching firm, Vera Claritas, and Dr. Nick Oswald, PhD bioscientist and founder Bitesize Bio.

Nick Oswald (00:39):
Hello, and welcome to another addition of The Happy Scientist podcast. This of course is the place to be. If you want to become a happier, healthier, and more productive scientist. I am Nick Oswald the founder of BitesizeBio.com. And today we draw on the wisdom of Mr. Kenneth Vogt, who is founder of the executive mentoring company, Vera Claritas, but he is also Bitesize Bio's, Mr. Miyagi, if you don't know who that is, look up, Karate Kid, it'll be an education for you. Today, and in all other Happy Scientist podcast episodes, you will get to benefit from his Yoda or Mr. Miyagi, like words of wisdom to help you increase your performance, enjoyment and success in the lab. Today's episode is called The Risks of Having to be Right. Okay. Ken, take it away.

Kenneth Vogt (01:29):
All right. Well, Nick comment, you commented offline before this. Well, the outline looks kinda long, so I'll, I'll have to move right through it, but, but then again, you know, it's cause it's, it's such a big deal to people, you know, we feel like we have to be right and, and it seems pretty easy. To make the argument about that. Well, what do you wanna be wrong? Yeah. You know? Well, no, of course we wanna be right. The, the question is why do you wanna be right? Are you actually passionate about the truth that you wanna get down to? What's really accurate? Or are you just circling into wagons because you don't want people to think you were wrong and you don't want the, you don't want the, the social stigma that comes with being the guy who was wrong. So is it, is it really that you want to be right? Or is it, you just don't want to be wrong?

(02:29):
Now, another, the thing is time matters when it comes to being right, cause let's face it. Knowledge has been unfolding and ongoing science has certainly been ongoing and unfolding. So what we know today and what we know tomorrow can often be quite different. And so is it that you need to be right already? That is, I need to be right right now. Or are you committed to so that you can continue to expand upon the accuracy of the things that, that you believe are true and that you want to stand for in the world. So, you know, we can have some fuzzy notions that are accurate, but we don't wanna stay there. You know, we wanna refine things we wanna keep driving on and, and making, making the things that were right about be better and better and better, but that's gonna practically require that sometimes when you thought you were right, you were wrong and you have to be willing to let go of that. You gotta give it up. Just we've probably all been in situations. And hopefully for most of you, it's not been very often, but were you stuck to a position? Not because you still believed it, but because, because of hurt feelings or because of embarrassment or, or because you were afraid of losing face, so, and you know what, you ended up embarrassed and you ended up losing face that's what'll happen if you stick to things when you're not right.

(04:09):
So, so first off let's, let's think about this from a standpoint of what are the practical reasons to being, to being willing to give up on the being right. Well, first off, if you're already, right, that means that you can never be wrong. And that means you can never learn and you can never grow. Now, how many of you have found that stopping growing has been useful in your life and in your career now it's just not, you have to grow. And in fact, you're in, in a strange business where you're dealing with biology and in biology, you got two choices grow or die, you know, so, you know, apply it, apply it in your own career, realize that that your career is a living thing. It's a, it's a breathing thing, you know, with breathing there's the in and the out there's the E and the flow.

(05:06):
So there are gonna be times when you need to actually be learning rather than being right. And then there can be other times you need to, to stand your ground. But, but it can't be all about being right. Is always the best thing, cause it's not some times it just isn't cause sometimes when you, even when you've had a position, maybe you've held it for a long time and now it's being shaken and, and what are you gonna do? Well, if you're gonna fix that, you, you can't refuse to acknowledge that there was something lacking. Maybe even something broken are wrong with, with what you were holding to as the truth before, you know, you, you've gotta, you've gotta be open to the possibility that things can be improved and can be made better. And you we've had, we had an episode in the past that some of y'all may recall about what you don't know.

(06:03):
You don't know there was episode 31. There, there are times when the thing that you think is right, is based on what you know, but you don't know what you don't know. There, there may be other facts, other data that is critically important to the conclusion that's being drawn and you don't even know about it. Well, how are you gonna draw right to conclusions then? So you have to, you have to be open to the idea that everything that I believe is right at this moment could be wrong because, there may be other data that I am unaware of. Now, there are times when you think, well, there's no possibility. There's no additional data. That's gonna change my conclusion here.

(06:48):
I'm sure I'm certain that every one of you can think of examples in your own past or that statement proved to be utterly false. When you thought for certain that something was a certain way and then you finally opened up or were forced to open up to look at some new data and realized, wow, that was not the way it was. I mean, there, there are movie plots in Hollywood that are all the that's the whole premise of the whole movie that somebody drew a, a wrong conclusion. They stuck to it all the way through. And then when the truth finally came out, you know, they either looked like a fool or were dead. You know, we don't want that to happen to you. Yeah. so, so this is, this is the practical reason why you got to be open to not having to be right all the time.

(07:41):
Now there's another part of this. There is a social cost to being someone who has to be right all the time. It can leave you out, trapped in the weeds as it were. That is, you know, you're, you're out there and other people are going, you know, you should come over here to the nice mowed lawn, but, but you're out there, you're out there wandering around and you don't even see how neat and beautiful it could all be. So you, you can get, you can get isolated, you can get ostracized for your insistence on being right as a, as a guiding principle. Now I'm not saying that you, that it's wrong to insist on being right. When you really, when something, something specific is truly important to you and you and you, and you've put in the work to make sure that you're, you're up to speed and, and that you're coming from the right place. But if you're, if, if you start off with my principle, as I'm always right now, what well, and apply that to, you're gonna have a lot more problems.

(08:45):
One of the, one of the problems with that of always having to be right means that it means never taking responsibility. You might, how is that irresponsible? Well, think about it this way. If I insist that I'm always right, if something goes wrong or if something is missing or something is causing problems elsewhere, I will never own that. No, no, I did it right. I did the right thing. So I can't be part, I can't be responsible for the problem. Well, how far are you gonna get in your career? If you never take responsibility for problems that you never acknowledge that, you know what, maybe I, maybe you are right about this thing, but it has consequences. And if you're unwilling to acknowledge those consequences and let go of this thing, even if you feel you are right about it, because there may be a bigger context and in the bigger context, maybe you're not so, right.

(09:45):
So, so this that's another dichotomy that happens here. You can be right in a, in a narrow way of looking at it and yet be totally wrong in broader way of looking at it. And you know, we live in an analog world where every little thing doesn't, doesn't just sit in its own little cosmos. It it's all, everything is touching everything else. So everything that you insist on being right about, you gotta look around at the wider consequences for holding that position. Cause even if it's right in this one narrow area, it, it may be, it may be far from right in a broader context. And that could be very, very painful for you and people around you. And it could be very impacting on, on your career and about, and you know, on your work environment and you know, we've all seen that. I'm sure you've had to deal with people that are just, they just have to be right all the time. They're just insistent on it. And, and how do, how do we view those people? Well, we see them as pompous. We see them as arrogant. We see them as, as intractable. You know, those are not qualities that just describe people you wanna work with or people you wanna hire.

Nick Oswald (11:01):
It's interesting. That was one thing that just popped up in my mind there, my mind there, when you said that was how can anyone ever always be correct? And, and if someone always appears to be correct, how could you trust that? Because it's obviously a front,

Kenneth Vogt (11:17):
Right? Yeah. The, the, it becomes their knee jerk position. Well, I'm right about what, well, I don't know, what are we talking about? You know, you know, and the, the people who are like that, they, they, they often tend to be that it tends that they're not good listeners, you know, and being a good listener is a, is a critically important skill for a scientist. And whether that's listening to other people or listening to your experiments or to the data, you know, it really, really matters. You know, we had an episode on that also an episode 41. And do you listen and you don't wanna be in that camp, someone who is regarded as being a poor listener, again, people don't want to interact with those folks. It's like, why am I talking? They don't listen. You know, it it's gonna be a waste of my time because I'll be hammering my head against the wall, trying to get something through. They already think they're right. And there's no changing that.

(12:18):
Now another, another thing about this too, that if you're in that position where you have to be read all the time, you better have an armor, cause you're gonna be, you're gonna be acting on the defense all the time. It'll never end. And I mean that, that could wear you out. It just can just, just, just burden you down to constantly have to defend. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say, oh, well I could be wrong about that or, well, I, well, that's, that's, that's very interesting. I hadn't heard, I hadn't thought about that before. I hadn't heard about that. Well, those are disarming statements.

Nick Oswald (12:56):
Yeah. It's, it's interesting. What jumps into my mind is my, at my wedding reception where my, my wife's father gave a speech and he had, he was very good at giving speeches and he had like this piece of paper and he was playing this, this word, this piece of paper contains the most important word for any marriage. So he was give making you think it was love or sex or, or something like that. And then, and then he pulled it out and it was sorry. And I thought that was so good. But then at the time I kind of thought, yeah, that means just giving in when you know that there's, you know, in the beginning I thought that that means just giving in when you know that you're right. But it's not, it's, it's being willing to know that you is willing to kind of being willing to kind of acknowledge that you, you, you don't know, you know what I mean? It's not your not, it's not your own only your point of view that you're taking into account, you know, from the different point of view, then, then that could be, you know, things could look completely different and that's how to actually deal with someone rather than, you know, and maintain a relationship with, with someone rather than always basically giving no room for the, the possibility that your perspective is incorrect.

Kenneth Vogt (14:16):
So I mean, that, that leads to an obvious question. Why is it, did I feel this need to always be right? You know, what's going on there? What it is, it's a failed attempt to cover up insecurity And of course we all have insecurities and we have insecurities. Even in areas where we feel very capable there, you know, you might, you might have a reputation and be well regarded. And yet you still have insecurities in those areas. You still, you still are gonna have things that, well, I wish nobody knew that. I didn't know that, or I wasn't very good at this or, or, or I wish no one had ever heard that. I took that position back in the day. Well, If you've been this long enough, it's happened. Yeah. And you know, okay. So why, why are we worried about that? What if so, what if I was wrong? Why is that so scary? Well, cause we're afraid of what, what the, the ramifications of that'll be. Are we gonna get punished because we were wrong? Is there something that we're gonna lose because we were wrong? You know? And it's, it's possible, there are certain environments where that's true. If you're wrong, man, you're gonna have your head in for you

Nick Oswald (15:37):
Twitter.

Kenneth Vogt (15:38):
That's Twitter. Oh God.

(15:39):
Just stay away from Twitter. Oh man.

(15:45):
But you know, it does point out something. If, if you're finding I have to be right all the time, because the downside of being wrong is so awful, so painful because of my environment. Well, alright, well maybe you need to upgrade your environment. Now. I say that, that, that might mean yeah, it might mean simple things like getting off the Twitter, but, but it also may mean, wow, I need to get out of this lab. This lab is toxic. I need to be somewhere else. Or maybe it's like, you know, I've got a subordinate. They gotta go. They're a problem that, you know, the, the, because of this. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta look at your environment and see what can I do to stabilize my environment. So that being wrong. Isn't so awful.

(16:34):
Now, even if you've done that and, and maybe your environment isn't that bad people aren't beating up when you've insisted on being right. And you aren't but being wrong, triggers, anxiety, and that may have to do with stuff that goes way back. And you know, I'm not, I'm not here to do psychoanalysis and examine your childhood as to why that may be. But being aware that that it's triggering the anxiety to be wrong is a very useful thing. You can't deal with it until you know about it. When you know about it, then you're gonna, you often realized, well, this is silly. There's, there's no sense. Me being worried about this. There's I've been so afraid that, that someone, that the sky's gonna fall. If, if you know, if I'm wrong about something and then you realize, well, that's all because of that's something that happened in first grade and it isn't even, doesn't even matter.

(17:33):
That was like, you know, I don't need to drag that forward. And you, you can, you can let it go as a result. And even if you can't let it go, when you realize this is the anxiety that's coming up, it's like, I'm not gonna live my life enslaved to anxiety. And, and you can move past that. Now, now, again, this isn't psychological advice. I mean, some folks, anxiety is a real burden and a real problem, and they, they need to get some counseling or they need, they may need medication, you know, not talking about that. But you know, we all have all of us have some pop up for some of the time and we can make the choice to not let it be in charge. And if that's within your power, by all means, you know, exercise your power.

(18:19):
You know, another thing that, that we have to remember, we're just humans and humans can be ignorant. Humans can be foolish. Humans can be misinformed. So, and these are all different issues. You know, if you're ignorance, just, okay, there's some data. I just didn't know. I, I drew a proper conclusion based on, on my limited data. But now that I have more data, I can, I can draw a different conclusion. Now being foolish is another story. That's a are like, well, I've got the data to draw the right conclusion. I haven't drawn the right conclusion. You know, I, I was foolish about it. We've all done it. You know, it, it happens. You just, you didn't bother to take the data into consideration you had available to you or people are misinformed. That is, I was given bad data. I drew a proper conclusion if this data were accurate, but it's not.

(19:15):
So when you realize all the ways that all the outs, you really have the, you know, I don't have to be right because I could have been ignorant or I could have been foolish or I could have been misinformed. It's okay to be wrong. Because all those things happened to us all the time. Well, we get fooled all the time. We get misinformed all the time. There are holes in our knowledge all the time. And yet, you know what? You still operated through life. This far, you still, you still survived. You know, you, you still manage to take care of the kids and make the car payment and show up at work. You know? So you can, you can manage in this, in perfect environment and you don't have to be right all the time.

(19:57):
Now, another thing can happen is when, when we're emotional about things, you know, if we get angry about something, we may not be able to see, what's true. We can get so stuck on our position, cuz we're mad that we've been questioned. Or maybe it's not even specifically about that, but we could be, we could be mad about something that's totally unrelated. And it still makes us stick to being right about something. Cuz you know what, I'm mad at that person, therefore I'm, I'm not gonna flex for them. Not this time, not about anything. They, they made me mad about, you know, they, they embarrassed me in that meeting, so I'm gonna embarrass them now, you know? And so we stick to a position that isn't helpful. So If you take the moment to examine for yourself, if, if being right has been causing you problems or needing to be right, if you look at why do I always feel that need and start to take it apart? You know, these are some of the things you can look at and they can help you get out of that hole.

(21:06):
So the, the last point I want to make is kind of a funny one. The, the subtitle I had is the upside of being wrong. Like how could there be an upside to being wrong? You know, you know, here we've been talking about the downside of being right, which also didn't seem to make much sense until we've, you know, we took it all apart. Like, wow, there's lots of down on sides to insisting on being right. But what is the upside of being wrong? Well, there's freedom. There there's freedom in that. I don't have to be right all the time. You know, I can, I can take some wrong positions on occasion and get corrected and the sky doesn't fall and it's okay. And the fact is much of the things you've learned in life. You've learned because you were wrong now. It's great. If you could just start, you know, you know, green screen blue sky and then add new knowledge on top of that.

(22:02):
But that's not, not the whole of how you've learned. You've learned lots of things by making mistakes first. You know, how, how many of us learned to ride a bike without, without falling off, you know? And yet we wanted to learn and we were willing to learn, you know? And, and you learned from those things that couldn't, you know, mom or dad, couldn't explain to you how to lean into a turn. You had had to go do it. You had to experience it. In some cases you needed to experience doing it wrong to learn, okay, don't ever do it that way. You know? So learning has been a seriously beneficial part of your life. And that learning is often been sourced in being wrong. So relish the fact that you've been wrong, sometimes Here's one, I I've always found kind of funny. It's very disarming to others. When you unequivocally admit that you were wrong. People that are ready to fight with you, they've, you've, they've taken a position you've taken position and then you go, well, yeah, I'm wrong. What, you know, they, they, they don't know what to do with that. And, and it's, it's, it's, it's actually kind of fun to watch sometimes when you see somebody that's readying to fight and the first thing outta your mouth is, you're absolutely right. I was wrong about that.

(23:32):
It's great.

(23:35):
Now another part of it is one of the reasons we've probably wanted to be right is we wanted to control things and, you know, control is just not all it's cracked up to be. It's, it's not really that worthy of a goal. The fact is we can't control everything. We won't control everything. And in fact, we have a, we have an episode about that number 23, you've mentioned it before the siren song of control. And it is applicable in so many areas of your career in so many areas of your life control is isn't getting you that much. And so, you know, being right, so is to maintain control is it's not, it's not paying dividend it's, it's not worth the investment finding that will say that, you know, being wrong. Isn't so bad after all, you know, you can be wrong and just carry right. A just keep on going. It's no big deal. You know, you fall on skin, your knee, you put a bandaid on you and you go back out to play.

(24:35):
It's just not that bad. You know? So we, if you've associated having, you know, being right, being attacked for being right you can, you can break that association and realize it's just not that big a deal. And, and you're still gonna be right. A lot of the time. So it, it's fine. You don't have to give up on being right entirely. It's just be flexible enough that when the moment calls for you to give up on it, that you can easily lay it down and say, you know what live to fight another day. So, so that's what I have. There. Anything else, anything you wanna add to that, Nick?

Nick Oswald (25:16):
I think that was quite comprehensive and there's not a lot to add. Just,

Kenneth Vogt (25:21):
I actually do have one thing to add. I, I didn't even mention it during the course of this. There's a mean

Nick Oswald (25:27):
I was wrong or yeah,

Kenneth Vogt (25:28):
No, I, I missed it myself. There's a great book I had in the notes. I wanted to, to comment on it's the, the title of the book is Principles and it's by someone named Ray Dalio, Ray Dalio is he started one of the largest hedge funds that's ever existed from, from scratch. And you think, well, this is just a business book. It won't have much to do with me. It's, it's a, it's, it is certainly applicable in business, but it is, it's got a much broader reach than that. And it's the principles that he's learned over 50 years of being, you know, one of the most successful investors who ever lived in somebody who's been instrumental and on world affairs that go beyond just making money. And so I, I can highly recommend that book and, you know, we've something we've talked about in the podcast over the course of time that we want to bring in best practices from other industries and apply them in science. And this is a perfect example of that. There's a lot to be learned that have a lot of things that have been learned in other areas of, of life, other areas of endeavor that, that are quite useful when it comes to science and radi book principles is definitely one of them. So. Alright, well, that's, that's my wrap up for now.

Nick Oswald (26:52):
Definitely. Okay. Yeah, it's definitely worth, I read that book. Again, I mean, the only thing I would say is to reiterate again, is if you think you're right, why do you think you're right is to perspective respect the other person and it'll pay you dividends and yeah. And may, maybe we should include the episode about imposter syndrome as well.

(27:15):
If you feel like you're so insecure that you have to always assert the fact that you're right, then then maybe have a look at that. But again, the, that was a, that was another great topic that should be food for thought for a lot of a lot of people. Ken. So thank you for that. So again, just to wrap up to tell everyone that if you want to reach out to us and connect with us, we are on facebook.com/thehappiestscientistclub, all one word. And we'd love to see you there and that you can get all of our episodes, including episodes one to nine, which are the foundate. They contain the foundational principles of some of the ways that Ken looks at the world and teaches to his his clients and and people who work with him. And it's, it is a remarkable set of episodes. That's worth reading. If you want to have your perspective of, or rocked or at least give yourself some frameworks useful frameworks to view the world through those are all on bitesizebio.com/thehappyscientist. And there, you can jump out to all the different podcast platforms that this is published on. So again, thank you Ken, for another wonderful episode, and we will see you all again. Next time

Kenneth Vogt (28:43):
Right, bye.

Intro/outro (28:50):
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