Leadership Tip: How to know who is right and who is wrong

Did you ever get stuck trying to explain your feelings or understand someone else's feelings and you just couldn't figure out how to resolve it all? Here's how to fix that.

Are you reading this hoping to finally be able to tell who is right and who is wrong?

Bad news! I’m not going to tell you that.

The title is a joke. At least a joke to myself.

Because—when I am at my best—I don’t usually care who is wrong and right.

A Better Question

How does it help to know who’s right and wrong? Is it even possible to decide that?

Because most people are internally consistent.

That is to say, if I was them and I had their background and thoughts and biology, I would do the same as them and also feel I was right and justified.

You explain your perspective, then I explain my perspective, then you explain your perspective on my perspective and on and on it goes.

It makes for a present determined by a past I already didn’t like. Wouldn’t it be better to have a present determined by a future I do like?

What Do We Want to Create?

If I’m deciding to create a present based on the future I want to move towards, then who is wrong and who is right is not so much what I should care about.

What I should care about is:

• What am I trying to create in my life and between us?

• What are you trying to create in life and between us?

• Can we help each other create those things?

In other words, where do we go from here? What is important now in getting to the best possible future?

The Conflict Of The Day

I had a conflict yesterday morning. Well, not a conflict, really.

Someone had hurt feelings about something I had done. Before long, I had hurt feelings that they didn’t understand me.

We simply didn’t share perspective.

If we kept trying to figure out who was right and wrong, the more we tried to synthesize and resolve, the worse things would have gotten.

What we were able to do, instead, is be curious about each other and to try to understand each other from within each other’s frame of reference.

Literally, we plumbed and were curious about how our perspectives were different instead of trying to resolve them and make them the same.

Then, we began to be able to talk about what we wanted to and were willing to agree—or not agree—to create in the future.

What I Teach Leaders

This is how I teach my coaching leaders to deal with their reports.

Don’t argue about the past. Try to agree on what you want to create together, I tell them.

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⏸️ Take a Moment To Reflect Here:
Tell a story about a conflict your work or relationships where you focused less on who’s right—and more on what you want to create together? Let me know in comments.

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What if we cannot agree on what we want to create?, the leaders often ask.

Then, maybe, if that happens too often, you might have to recomprise your team, I say.

A leader expressing how they feel about what a report has done is not so important.

A report intent on sharing their feelings instead of concentrating on the future the team is charged with creating may not always be so great.

Here is what is important for a leader to ask:

Can I and how do I use this incident to create with this report what I want in the future?

Not just at work…

Even as a parent, I am finally learning—slowly—that when my daughter does something that is disagreeable to me, expressing to her how hurt I am is not so important.

What is important is using the situation to create our relationship into what I want it to be in the future.

Because I have a choice—as a leader, a parent, a friend, a romantic partner.

I can let my behavior be led by arguing over a past I don’t like.

Or I can choose my behavior to create a future that I do like.

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Let’s Talk About It

Before we move on with our day to day lives, I wanted to remind you that I moved my newsletter to Substack because it’s a place where we can converse. So today, I’d love to hear your thoughts about navigating conflict and shifting focus from “who’s right” to “what do we want to create.”

What has that looked like in your life? How have you practiced it? Please join in the conversation by leaving a comment below. I respond to every message.

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I wanted to leave you with is this thought:

To be understood is not in our control. Trying to understand is in our control. Isn’t it a relief to shift your focus from what you can’t control to what you can?

Love,

Colin

PS. Still arguing with your past—or are you ready to create your future?

In fifteen days, I’m leading a day-long retreat called The Alchemy of Personal Reinvention in East Hampton.

It’s a small retreat for humans (and coaches) who are tired of being hijacked by their emotions—and want to learn how to create beyond them instead.

If you resonated with today’s post—about choosing what you want to create over what already happened—this retreat is for you.

Saturday, July 26, 2025 | East Hampton, NY

This is where we pause and realign. Instead of inheriting our behavior from feelings we have about the past, we will learn to create our behavior in line with aspirations that would otherwise be impossible in the future.

Through guided conversation, experiential practice, and shared reflection—you’ll leave an understanding of how to create yourself from the future you want instead of incidents from past you didn’t want.

✅ For coaches and active clients
✅ Spacious, skillful emotional work
✅ Clarity and connection over reactivity

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