I was talking to my friends Maura and Shawn

Here’s the result of my developing and wondering and pondering and talking:

I want to start on open source project to create something – game, system, website, whatever – that incorporates elements of alternate reality games (as described by McGonigal) including the four defining traits of games^*, somehow tracking and recording practice toward 10,000 hours, and that focuses on intrinsic motivation with a tickle of extrinsic motivation.

My first focus would be on facilitating the adoption of Agile principles and practices in organizations, although it’s far from limited to that.

I’m not defining it any further than this for now, because I want to engage folks “out there” to work with me on this project. It feels LARGE. It’s certainly larger than I can envision and implement myself. Does it intrigue you? Would you like to join me in creating something that could make a significant mark on the world?

If you’re reading this, then you know how to reach me. That’s your first quest.

^* “When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.” ~Jane McGonigal, “Reality is Broken”

It comes up all the time, especially for those of us who have strong opinions, tend to be competitive, and focus on what we think is important to us: being right.

I’ll start with the simplest question: how important is it to be right?

I hear it all the time: “We had a fight because he/she wouldn’t accept that I was right!” Or “the meeting dragged on and on because they couldn’t see that I was right!”  Or “I’d rather be right and have my integrity!”

Sigh.

Why is “right” so important?

I say this as someone who was a pro at knowing that I was “right”.  And all of those years of fighting with people to try to get them to admit that I was right makes me very sad.

What’s the value of being “right”? Does it make the world better? Does it make a relationship better?  Does it make a conversation better? In what way does it make anything better?

Talking to my wife, which I do every day , I realized that every time I insisted on being right I drove a wedge between us. Why? Because if I was right, then she must have been wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong,… Needless to say, that didn’t make her feel good.

“You always have to be right! You’re always trying to make me feel stupid!” And I’m sure that she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. After all, I always had to be right with everyone else, too.

And you know what? I have to admit that she wasn’t altogether wrong.

More recently, I began to realize what was really important: our relationship. Treating her with respect, listening to her, actually thinking about what she said (as opposed to “how can I prove that what she just said is wrong?”), and allowing for the possibility that there’s more than one “right.”

While I’m using my relationship and communications with my wife as the example for this, it’s really about all relationships. And I think you know that I believe that any time you have a conversation, that’s part of a relationship, no matter how brief it might be. This applies to personal relationships and professional relationships. It applies in business meetings and conversations over lunch.

Showing respect is more important than being right.

Maintaining a relationship is more important than being right.

Sharing and collaborating is more important than being right.

Allowing for multiple valid views of right is more important than having the one right.

In fact, I think that being right is pretty far down the list of important things.

Motto

They are willing to argue, fight, persuade, convince, and argue some more to win you over to their point of view. This means that they have the tendency to dominate a discussion, in their passion for what they know to be true/right.

This has the effect of taking over a meeting so that it is entirely focused on the Zealot’s issue. Which suits the Zealot just fine, but does not contribute to the group’s overall success.

It is important to realize that the Zealot is thoroughly well-intentioned, believing that they are serving you/the group by convincing anyone and everyone of the rightness of their view. They have nothing but good intentions, in fact. You might find yourself having the opportunity to ask “the question” (see I feel sad) from Crucial Conversations.

Dealing with this requires the strength to choose when to cut off a conversation (The Facilitation Four-Step), offer to either park it or consider it done, and keep the group moving forward. Challenging, but relatively straightforward.  This also requires the support of the other participants, which is usually forthcoming.

Personally, I catch myself at it far more frequently than I’d like. I catch myself asking questions like “Whose fault is this?” rather than the question I much prefer: “How did we get here, and what did I do or not do that contributed?”

The idea of taking personal responsibility is an essential one in my life. It applies in my personal life, when dealing with family, friends and acquaintances.  And it applies in my professional life, when dealing with co-workers, colleagues, and business associates.

Assigning fault and/or blame is relatively easy to understand as a motivation – if it’s someone else’s fault, then it’s not mine, and maybe I can feel better about myself. Of course, in taking that approach, I abrogate responsibility for my own behaviors or inactions, and disguise my own contributions.

Sadly, it doesn’t really work. I don’t actually improve my self-image by passing off the fault. All I do is mask my own feelings of fear/inadequacy/responsibility/guilt.  Really, it doesn’t work.

What it does is build up a backlog of self-deception. That backlog will come to bite me. I will become defensive, aggressive, and hostile when I am approached – even kindly or lovingly – about any incident where I might have some responsibility. Why? Because I feel challenged to own up to my own dishonesty, and that’s just freakin’ hard.

Note that I say “responsibility”, not culpability, fault, or any other word that has judgment implied in it.

Responsibility is a good thing, and there’s no judgment attached to taking or accepting responsibility.  Only to denying or declining responsibility for my own behaviors.

The next time you find yourself looking for someone to whom to assign fault and blame, stop and ask yourself my question: “How did we get here, and what did I do or not do that contributed?”

Then, take action on your answer first before looking for someone else.

Here’s a great excerpt:

Examine the logic contained in the following five statements:

1. Everyone alive has hopes, dreams, and wants for themselves.
2. People who have no hopes, dreams, or wants are dead.
3. When people get out of bed and go to work, they have linked what they are going to do that day to their hopes, dreams, and wants in a way that makes sense to them. Or they wouldn’t get up, would they?
4. Therefore, all of us have our own excellent reasons for investing in work projects–even if we have learned to deny or hide those reasons, sometimes even from ourselves.
5. The best way for me to serve fellow workers is to help them uncover and focus on their own motivations–even if they attempt to convince me they have none.

If you agree with this logic, you can stop trying to dictate other people’s motivation today. The next time you need to motivate someone, try asking, “What’s in it for you to work on this project with this team?” and keep the other person in conversation until he comes up with the personal benefits that motivate him.

Isn’t that simple and lovely, yet exceptional. Ask the other person for their motivations. How well that ties into the concepts of teamwork.